Dating Sarah Cooper (11 page)

“You’re very fortunate to have parents like that,” he said.

“Yeah, but I’d have preferred ones that didn’t tell me I’ve always been gay when I’m not sure how I feel about anything or anyone anymore. Things were a lot less confusing when I hadn’t kissed any girls.”

“You’ve kissed Sarah,” he guessed.

“And another girl,” I mumbled. Both of his eyebrows shot up, and he looked genuinely thrown for a loop.

“
Really
? Multiple girls?” Then he paused, amused. “So I see. Between that and the response from your parents, you’ve built a quite a good case for liking girls.”

“Exactly. So how do I know for sure whether I do or not?” I watched him expectantly, eager to hear his answer.

He shrugged his shoulders. “I can’t tell you, to be perfectly honest. All I can say is that you have to answer that for yourself. Look inside your heart.”

I sank back in my seat and deadpanned, “Seriously? That’s all you’ve got?”

He gave me a sympathetic smile. “Katie, I know it seems like I haven’t helped, but nobody else can tell you whether you’re gay or not. Not even your parents. I can tell you how
I
knew, and you can read all of the books you want, but the answer is something only you can give to yourself. Do you like how you feel when you’re with Sarah? Do you like kissing girls? How about boys? And most importantly: Do you really want to spend hours on end worrying about a label right now? I’ve found that my life got a whole lot easier when I stopped thinking so much and just started
feeling
. That was how I got my answer.”

Owen took a breath, and continued, “My suggestion is that you go with the flow. You’re already facing the negative consequences of being openly gay, so the upside is that you have a lot less to lose than most questioning teens. It’s a small comfort, but a comfort nonetheless. So that’s my advice. Stop thinking and let yourself feel.” He got to his feet, and that was my cue that we were done.

“And hey, listen,” he added as he moved to open the door to his office, “what I
can
be sure of is that gay, bisexual, straight, asexual, pansexual,
whatever
you are… you will always be welcome here.”

“Thank you,” I said. As unresolved as my issues felt, his words were still oddly comforting.

“And please,
please
be honest with your friends, when you can be,” he added. “It won’t be easy, but it’s the right thing to do.”

And then we were out of his office and heading back to Jake, and I was still confused, but strangely,
thankfully
, being confused felt
okay
.

At least for now.

Chapter Nine

“S
o I heard about you and Sam. Monday night, right?”

Sarah looked up from her spot across from me on her bedroom floor. She was halfway through painting the toenails of her right foot a dark blue-green color, and a Calculus book sat open beside her. It was Friday, and I’d given her two days to tell me about Sam herself. Now it was clear she simply hadn’t planned on sharing. I wasn’t sure what that meant.

“Uh, yeah.” She went back to her toenails, sounding distracted. “He asked me to study.”

“You know he’s not actually interested in studying, right?”

“Of course.” She arched an eyebrow at me, pausing again. “Wasn’t that the plan all along?”

“I guess.” I shrugged my shoulders and looked away from her. My mind felt scattered, and I noticed another book – the one she’d checked out from the resource center earlier in the week – lying on her bedroom floor, just a few feet away. The bookmark stuck inside of it told me she didn’t have long to go before she was finished with it.

“You don’t sound very convinced,” she observed.

“I just…” I trailed off, then took a deep breath. “Um, wasn’t there some other girl he was flirting with? The one from the party?”

“Yeah, Christine. I texted him; asked him about it. He said they’re not serious.”

“What if he’s lying?”

She laughed and shook her head, eyes still on her toes as she painted them. “Why would he lie?”

“Because jock assholes kind of do that?”

She pursed her lips together as she finished with the nail polish, then closed the bottle and set it aside. Her eyes snapped to mine, then, and she tilted her head to the side. “I didn’t know my spending an evening with a guy I’ve liked since freshman year would be such a problem.”

“It’s not,” I retorted instinctively. “I just think you should be careful.”

“Well, thank you for caring,” she replied, sounding not very thankful at all. I shifted uncomfortably. This was going about as well as I’d expected it would.

“Look, Sarah. All I’m saying is that there are guys out there who don’t respect girls. I’d hate for you to get hurt.”

“You know, that’s funny, because last week you said it was
great
that I was getting attention from him. Now all of a sudden it’s not a good idea? I’m kind of getting mixed signals here, Katie.” She got to her feet and crossed the room to her desk, putting her nail polish away.

“You’re pissed,” I realized, sighing deeply.

“I’m not,” she countered. “Just frustrated.” She rejoined me on the floor with a sigh of her own, and her eyes met mine. She didn’t look away, and I felt strangely exposed as she told me, “Katie, I get that things have been weird lately. I’ve thought about it a lot, and I get all of it. If you don’t want me to hang out with Sam, you can just say so.”

I swallowed the lump in my throat, and told her, quietly, “I don’t want you to hang out with Sam.”

Her eyes didn’t leave mine. “Okay. Why not?” she asked.

I swallowed again. This time, the lump didn’t go away. “I… um.” I paused, closed my eyes, and then avoided her gaze as I told her, “I just don’t think he’s a good guy.”

She didn’t really react, beyond a sigh I was half-sure I imagined, and then she was reaching for the Calculus book on the floor and pulling it onto her lap.

“I need to study, so let me know when you want me to take you home,” was all she said, and I felt confident in that moment that the lump in my throat would be there forever.

Sunday, LAMBDA met Owen at the resource center as planned, and I kept my distance from both Owen and Sarah. She sensed I wasn’t very eager to talk to her, and spent most of the day with Hattie and Henry, cutting out circular stickers and printing out fliers that advertised National Coming Out Day, while I found myself hanging out with Violet and Jake, making banners to hang around the school. That was Jake’s plan: to decorate the halls and walls and lockers early Monday morning. I wasn’t sure how well-received his idea would be come Monday, but it seemed well-intentioned enough, and so I was excited to finally start paying my dues to the people I’d felt like I’d been using for the past month.

“If we can make even one more person at our school feel like they have a safe environment if they want to come out, we’ve done our jobs,” Jake declared to the rest of the group at the end of the day, when we’d finally finished the decorations. “Now all we have to do is get a few volunteers to come to school early tomorrow morning and stick this stuff up everywhere, and our work here is done.”

Owen gave us a round of applause, and we all joined in, sweaty but grinning. I had one banner I was particularly proud of; I wasn’t a great artist, but I’d managed to paint a pretty massive rainbow flag onto it, and both Violet and Jake had complimented me on it.

As we all filed out of the building, Jake nudged me and asked, “Are you gonna help Monday morning? We’ve got a lot of stuff to put up.”

“Sure,” I agreed. “I’ll be there, if you’ll give me a ride.”

And I was. Monday morning, most of us came to school early. Jake and I were the first ones there, and we got started on the main hallway. My rainbow flag banner went up first, and Jake taped several fliers to the walls and put one small sticker in every locker. When everyone else from the club finally showed up, he handed out stacks of the stickers and delegated us to different parts of the school, so that every locker would get one.

Sarah, to my surprise, showed up as well, but it was Hattie who wound up assigned to the same hallway as me, and as we walked along opposite ends, I asked her, “Do you think this sticker thing’s a good idea? I mean, what if people don’t want them?”

“It’s just a sticker,” she laughed out. “People are ignorant, but I can’t imagine anyone’d make that big a deal out of it. Would you get mad if the chess club left a sticker advertising National Chess Day in your locker?”

“No,” I admitted. “Maybe I’m just paranoid.”

An hour later, at seven thirty, students began piling into the school by the dozens. I went to my first class, which started at eight, and honestly, I didn’t think much more about the whole National Coming Out Day thing.

I met Sarah by my locker after class, just off of the main hallway, and we played nice for the students who still wasted their time staring at us, despite the fact that things were still a little tense between us. Once I’d gotten my books for my next couple of classes, I moved in the direction of my next period, toward the main hallway. Sarah grabbed my arm quickly.

“Hey, do you mind if we detour? I need to refill my water bottle.”

“You fill it up every morning,” I dismissed. “Shouldn’t you have plenty left?”

“Yeah, but I need more,” she replied weakly. I rolled my eyes at her, a little suspicious, and continued toward the main hallway. She fell into step beside me, fidgeting.

“What’s up with you?” I asked her.

“Nothing. I just… really think we should go a different way.”

“Why?”

She bit her lip and didn’t answer, and a moment later, I found out why.

In the main hallway, the banner I’d worked hard on now rested on the floor, torn into several pieces and sporting dozens of dusty footprints. Even as I stared, several more students walked right over what remained of it. I took it in with furrowed eyebrows, my throat tightening.

“Cool,” I mumbled at last, and hurried on to the next hallway, Sarah barely keeping up with me.

“It was probably Brett Larson and the other asshole football players,” she told me. “You know he’s had it out for you since that day you stood up to him.”

“Other asshole football players. Like your boyfriend?” I shot back.

“He’s not my boyfriend yet,” she countered.

“Well, I’m sure you two will be very happy together after tonight.”

“That’s really not fair of you to say after-” she started to say, but before she could finish, Connor suddenly appeared in front of us, his eyebrows pulled together anxiously. Both Sarah and I stopped in the hallway, staring at him, but his eyes were only on me.

“Hey, Katie. Uh…” He glanced to Sarah at last, looking nervous, and, when he realized she wasn’t going anywhere, simply lowered his voice and asked, “I was kind of wondering if you would come over to my house after school? Just to talk and stuff.”

I saw Sarah tense beside me out of my peripheral vision, and my response was completely instinctive; a dumb, heat-of-the-moment decision.

“Yeah, sure. I’d love to,” I told him. He looked surprised by my answer, and gave me a small smile. It was unlike him, but it suited him better than his usual cocky grin.

“Really? Awesome. See you then. And at lunch, but… yeah.” He nodded once and then left us alone, and Sarah glared at me when he was gone.

“Seriously?”

“What? You’re the only one who can spend an afternoon with a guy?”

“That’s really clever, Katie,” she snapped, and left without waiting for a response.

I watched her storm away, my eyebrows furrowed, and then, right around the time she was turning a corner and disappearing from my sight, I realized what I’d just agreed to. I wasn’t remotely attracted to Connor, and now I’d agreed to go to his house. It really was an awful idea. But at the same time, there was something satisfying about knowing that it bothered Sarah.

I got through lunch and a couple of classes with Sarah easily enough. We ignored each other, and weren’t so great at hiding that we were ignoring each other, which left everyone involved in our personal lives aware of the fact that we were upset with each other. That situation had been awkward enough back when we were just friends, but now that we were pretending to be a couple, it was even more uncomfortable.

By the end of the day, I wanted to tell Connor that I’d changed my mind about going home with him, but as we walked out to his car together, I saw Sarah joining Sam in
his
car, and that strengthened my resolve. Even if I didn’t actually do anything with Connor, there were some upsides to letting Sarah
think
I had.

I think Sarah expected me to chicken out, too, because as I passed her and Sam and climbed into Connor’s jeep, I saw her look directly at me, her eyebrows furrowed and her mouth turned down into a frown. But then Sam said something to her and her attention was on him, and Connor was starting his jeep and telling me, “Thanks for coming with me. I kind of thought you’d say no for sure.”

“Yeah, well… you asked nicely. I’m not used to that from you,” I admitted.

“Yeah,” he echoed. “I know I’ve been kind of an ass.”

“You say that like you’re done being an ass,” I said.

“Maybe I am,” he replied.

We reached his house within minutes, and I felt my trepidation grow when I realized there were no other cars in the driveway or in the garage. His parents weren’t home.

“I guess the basement’s as good a place as any,” he suggested once we were inside. He opened a door to reveal a set of stairs that curled into the darkness, and when he saw my hesitation, he insisted, “I just wanna talk. I swear.”

“Would you blame me for not really trusting you?” I asked him, moving away from him when he offered me his hand.

“Not at all. But I’m asking you to,” he replied. I studied him. There was something different about him. Gone was the arrogant asshole I’d known for a couple of years now. Instead, Connor seemed anxious. Nervous. And he was staring at me pleadingly, which was certainly not a look I’d ever seen on him before.

I sighed and took his hand. “Okay. But if you murder me, Sarah knows I’m here.”

He laughed as he led me down the stairs. “Damn. And here I thought I was going to get away with it.”

We reached the basement, and he turned a light on. I was pleasantly surprised. The room was finished, with a carpet and a couch and several video game stations that rested on a large cabinet alongside a television. “This is kind of cool,” I admitted.

“Right?” he agreed. “My parents had it put in for my brothers and me when we moved in.”

“I didn’t know you had brothers.” I took a seat beside him on the couch and folded my hands in my lap. I considered, for the first time, that I was supposed to be dating Sarah, and yet Connor had invited me here anyway. He wasn’t acting like a jerk, but it certainly seemed like his goal was to try and “turn me straight”, or whatever it was guys like him thought they were doing when they hooked up with girls who called themselves lesbians.

“Three older ones,” he confirmed, and then cleared his throat abruptly. “Anyway… so here we are.”

“Here we are,” I echoed, growing uncomfortable again.

“Um…” He took a deep breath, and when I looked over at him, I noticed that he was trembling slightly. “Look, I really am glad you came, especially because I know it pissed Sarah off and caused trouble for you guys. I didn’t know who else to talk to. I’ve never done anything like this before, and I guess… you were so nice at the party when I was upset, and I get that you don’t remember most of it because if you did you wouldn’t look so confused right now.” He forced a laugh, and I blinked at him, clueless. I had absolutely no idea what he was talking about.