Dating Sarah Cooper (17 page)

“And I told you it wasn’t!”

“No, you said ‘great’! I remember; it was the morning after the party. You were happy I was talking to him and you gave me your approval. So after that I was sure there was no way you were confused like I was. So I went after Sam. Then when you went back on that, I called you out and you still just insisted Sam was a bad guy. I gave you so many chances.”

“Well…” I hesitated, thinking back. And then I deflated. She was kind of right. “…Sorry?”

“Apology accepted. God.” She stepped toward me, closing the distance between us and kissing me. I blinked, wide-eyed, and then pulled her impossibly close to kiss her back. This was happening. This was
happening
.

She rested her forehead against mine when she parted, and, grinning back at me, explained, “So when we did this earlier today, after you’d been avoiding me… I thought you knew. I thought you knew how I felt after the night in my bedroom, and I thought that that was why you hadn’t been kissing me lately. When I told you we could end it all this morning, I thought I was doing you a favor.”

“I thought it was your nice way of rejecting me,” I admitted. Then I chuckled as a thought struck me. “My parents are going to freak. They’re convinced I’m in love with you.”

She pulled away suddenly, looking serious. Her hand squeezed mine. “They knew you were gay because you are,” she realized.

“I think that kind of comes with being in love with your best friend,” I acknowledged. “Yeah.”

“I’m not,” she admitted. “Gay, I mean.”

“Yeah, I know.” I smiled at her. “I don’t care what you are. Bi, straight with an exception… whatever.”

She chewed her lip for a moment, and I raised an eyebrow, realizing she was going to elaborate. “I spent some time alone with Hattie. We talked a lot.” She saw the look I was giving her and emphasized, “Talked. That’s all. Anyway, she’s bi and I was playing the role, saying what I thought I should as someone who was pretending to be bisexual too… and it fit. It just felt right. I think I could love anyone. I mean… if I can go ten years with you without being aware of my own feelings, the possibilities are kind of endless.”

“I knew,” I admitted. “Deep down. I’m looking at you like you’re the only thing that matters in half of those pictures we’re using for the fliers. I never liked Austin. I just did whatever you did to feel normal. It took an awkward conversation or two to face the truth.”

“I wish you’d told me.”

“I wish
you
’
d
told me,” I countered.

She smiled shyly. “Yeah, well… those damn books screwed me up.”

“Oh, did they?” I laughed out. “Sad endings scarred you? I guess you should’ve picked up the erotica after all.”

“It wasn’t even that, okay? Book number 1: one of the girls realizes she’s straight. Book number 2: one of the girls realizes she’s bi and loves a guy, and the other girl ends up alone. Book number 3: they both get murdered by vampires.”

“That sounds so dark for
lesbian
Twilight
.”

She punched my shoulder, giggling. “No matter what I picked up, there was always someone who got screwed over. I didn’t want to end up like that. I mean, have you seen how it ends for Dana and Alice?”

“Dana and Alice date? What?”

“Oh, you hadn’t gotten that far? I’m sorry. Spoilers.”

“Oh my God,” I laughed out, shaking my head. “We are so strange. Please kiss me.”

“Well, if you insist.”

Chapter Fourteen

W
ith Winter Formal just around the corner, things were a little… complicated. Sarah and I had been a fake couple that everyone thought was a real couple, and now we were a real couple that everyone thought was a real couple but that
Jessa
knew had been a fake couple at one point. Our friends at lunch noticed the difference, too. We didn’t force touches and pecks anymore; we just did them because we could. And I didn’t want to stop doing them. I could kiss Sarah whenever I wanted, without any excuses. And she’d always kind of been into PDA.

“I’ve gotta say, guys… I’m glad you two feel this comfortable around us now after three months of dating, but I’m trying to eat.”

I pulled away from Sarah shyly and shot Hannah an apologetic look, but luckily she was smirking at us with amusement.

“I wondered when Sarah would sway Katie on the whole PDA thing,” Dina remarked, looking to Josephine. “Clock it at what, about eleven weeks?”

“Sorry,” I hurried to say, before they could get in any more digs. Sarah shot me a wide smile and I had to hide one of my own.

“Aw, look at them. They’re proud of their grossness,” Josephine declared. “That’s adorable.”

“Shut up,” Sarah shot back, but her hand squeezed mine under the table, and I couldn’t hide my smile this time.

My parents found out about us three days later, when they got home earlier than expected after a night out together and caught Sarah and I on my bed with my shirt half up over my head. So that was fun.

They sat us down on the couch and gave us this long lecture about safe sex – though I was pretty sure they knew just as little about lesbian sex as I did – and then sent Sarah on her way, much to my chagrin. Then Dad high-fived me when Mom’s back was turned. Neither of them seemed very surprised, and I decided that maybe they didn’t need to know about the whole fake-gay-relationship-turned-real-gay-relationship thing. My home life was a lot less complicated that way.

They were gone the next night, as well, and I was more nervous than I’d ever been for Sarah to come over. We hadn’t gotten farther than the singular attempt to get my shirt off, and tonight seemed like a likely time. I wanted my first time with a girl to be special.

I waited for her in the living room, clicking through television channels to pass the time, and she entered without ringing the doorbell, a stack of board games under one arm. I raised an eyebrow at her. “You brought board games?”

“Just in case you didn’t want to do other stuff,” she elaborated. “I know it’s all new to you. I mean… it’s new to me too, of course. I don’t know. Last night was…”

“Nerve-wracking?” I filled in.

“Yeah,” she laughed out nervously. “I mean, it was good, I just don’t… actually know anything. About anything. Which I’m not used to.”

“Welcome to my world,” I acknowledged, sweeping an arm as though introducing the living room to her. “I might as well be a sexless amoeba.”

“You’re cuter than an amoeba.” She collapsed beside me on the couch, smiling over at me. “Wanna just watch a movie?”

“Maybe.”

“Okay. It’s your turn to be big spoon, though.”

“I hate being big spoon.”

“Well, you’ll just have to deal.” She stretched out her legs and cuddled into me, and I settled on a channel five minutes into some eighties horror movie. I didn’t really pay attention to it. Being with Sarah like this was unlike anything I’d never felt before. Yes, there’d been Austin, but hanging out with Austin felt like hanging out with a friend who had a crush on me. When I was with him, it was a chore, and when we did anything past kissing I’d just wanted it to be over as quickly as possible. But I wanted to sit here with Sarah forever.

I laid my head on hers for a moment and told her, “You smell nice.”

“You feel nice,” she whispered back.

“You look nice,” I countered quickly.

“You taste nice,” she shot back, almost accusingly. When I gave her a questioning look, she stuck her tongue out to touch my neck.

“Gross!” I wiped it off with my hand and flicked her in the bicep.

“You started it,” she mumbled, burying her face into my neck again. I relaxed into her and closed my eyes. “Neither of us are watching this movie,” she admitted a few minutes later.

“Nope,” I agreed.

She raised her head and kissed my cheek, then tilted my chin with her hand until we were face to face, our noses nearly touching. “Would it totally freak you out if I wanted to go up to your bedroom?”

“I don’t know,” I said instinctively.

“Your heart rate says yes,” she joked, gesturing to where her chest was pressed to mine. “Or maybe that’s mine; I can’t tell.”

“Why are you nervous?” I asked, brushing her nose with mine. “It’s me.”

“That’s why I’m nervous. Things are so nice with you. They’re perfect. I want this to be, too. What if I screw it up? I mean, I’ve screwed everything
else
up.”

“No, you haven’t.”

She shifted, sitting up and facing me. “Yeah, I kind of did. I shouldn’t have spent so much time on Sam. Or
any
time on him. I knew he was an ass, and I knew you were right. I didn’t know how you felt, but I knew he was using me and I knew it was wrong to hook up with him. If I’d just listened to you we wouldn’t have fought as much as we did.”

“If I’d told you I liked you we wouldn’t have, either,” I pointed out.

“Yeah, but you can’t be blamed for that. You didn’t know how I felt.”

“And
you
didn’t know how
I
felt. So we’re even as far as I’m concerned.”

She chewed at her lip for a long moment, then leaned forward to kiss me. My eyes fluttered shut, and then opened when she pulled away. But instead of moving away from me, she came forward again and kissed my cheek, then my jawline, and then my neck. I let out a shaky breath and rolled my head to one side. I couldn’t think, and breathing was getting harder.

She kissed back up to my lips and then watched me, smiling faintly as I looked at her with half-lidded eyes. “Dazed?” she whispered, amused.

“And confused,” I confirmed.

“Hey.” She leaned in to kiss me again, and then pulled away and moved her lips to my ear. “Thank you for being so perfect. I don’t think I deserve you.”

I wound my arms around her and pulled her closer. “You deserve me. Thank you for the fake relationship idea.”

She giggled into my ear. “Bet you thought you’d never say that, huh?”

“Let’s go to my room,” was my response.

“Hate to say I told you so…” Jessa teased, catching up to me at my locker the day before the Winter Formal. I’d seen her at LAMBDA meetings before now, but this was the first time she’d caught me alone since Sarah and I had begun dating.

“Well, I am happy to say you told me so,” I joked, smiling over at her. “Thank you for being supportive… in your own, you know, not at all supportive way.”

“So you’re gay,” she stated. “And Sarah’s…?”

“Bisexual.”

“Okay.” She looked thoughtful for a moment. “I think I could like you guys.”

“We’re not open for threesomes,” I remarked.

“Ha ha. Hilarious. I meant I might like you
as people
. With enough time. God knows it’ll make LAMBDA meetings less hellish. Everyone else there worships you two so I might as well jump on the bandwagon.”

“You only like us because we actually turned out to be gay?” I asked her, feigning a gasp. “Doesn’t that make you a little…
heterophobic
?”

“Oh, shut up,” she replied, rolling her eyes at me. I grinned back at her. “Just win the crowns tomorrow night, you big faker.”

“That’s the plan,” I confirmed. Jessa waved goodbye to me and hurried away, and I moved to shove two textbooks into my locker. The hallways had already thinned out; the bell would ring any moment now.

“Sooo…”

I turned in the direction of the new voice to see Christine Goddard leaning against the locker next to mine. She looked smug.

“Hi,” I said, simply. “Was there something you wanted?”

“Nice open conversation in the hallway,” she complimented. “I learned a lot. Really helped put the puzzle pieces together, you know?”

My heart dropped when I realized what she meant.

I’d let my guard down. Things had been so easy lately, what with losing the stress of faking a relationship and with things going so well with Sarah now. Jessa’d backed off of us, and we were so close to winning the crowns at Winter Formal. I should’ve known it was all too good to be true at this point, but for a moment, I’d truly thought Sarah and I were going to get out of this unscathed.

“The driver’s license was bad, but I have to admit I wasn’t expecting this,” Christine remarked coolly. “I just figured she was cheating on you.”

“You knew they were sleeping together, and that didn’t strike you as something you should talk to your own boyfriend about?”

“I don’t care what Sam does,” Christine shot back. “I really don’t. I just want that crown, and he’s popular enough to help me win it.”

“Aiming high,” I complimented, my voice dripping with sarcasm. She leaned in closer to me and lowered her voice.

“Everyone’s gonna hate you and Sarah when they find out your relationship started out as a pathetic attempt at getting attention from Sam.”

“Well…” I hesitated, and then shut my locker. “It’s real now. You’re a little late.”

“I don’t think I am. Because if you two win those crowns, I’ll tell everyone the truth. And you can say goodbye to all your new queer friends.” The bell rang, and she smirked at me and then stalked off, leaving a lump in my throat in her place.

I sat down with Sarah in my next class, and she immediately noticed something was off. “Are you okay?”

“We need to talk,” I hissed, and swallowed hard.

“Is there anything we can do about this?” I paced back in forth in Sarah’s bedroom, fists clenched at my side.

“I mean… she knows. I don’t think there’s anything we can do about
that
.”

“God, I’m such a screw up,” I groaned out. “We were finally done with all of this. We were together, and things were so close to not being complicated anymore. We could’ve kept our friends and stayed in LAMBDA and did all of the things we said we were going to with them. It’s ruined now.”

“It’s not ruined. Look, I’ve screwed up way more than you have. Remember me accidentally doing things that made Jessa suspicious? And actually being the one to let her know the truth?”

“Okay, but Christine is worse than Jessa. So much worse. She has no reason to keep this to herself.”

“Yeah, she does. She gave you her reason: she wants to win the crown tomorrow.”

“So? We can’t control everyone’s vote, Sarah.”

“We could drop out.” She looked to me and shrugged her shoulders. “I mean, if you wanted to.”

“And do that to LAMBDA?”

“I guess so.” She shrugged again. “I don’t really want to, but…”

“If we do that, we lose them,” I pointed out. “And Jessa might tell everyone the truth anyway.”

“
Might
. But if we don’t drop out, we probably lose them anyway, thanks to Christine. And we lose everyone else.”

“Maybe… maybe if we just…” I tried, and then exhaled loudly when I came up empty.

“Katie, I don’t think there’s a right answer here. We can drop out last-minute and risk Jessa, or we can stay in the running and hope for a loss. If we lose, we lose. Maybe Jessa keeps her promise and doesn’t say anything. And if we win… then we win.”

“And Christine tells everyone everything,” I acknowledged.

Sarah shrugged her shoulders again. She looked thoughtful now. “Well… not necessarily.”

“How? If we win, she’s telling. We’re not going to change her mind.”

“But she doesn’t have to be the one to tell,” Sarah pointed out. “
We
could.
I
could. I’m the one that started it.”

“For the last time, you’re not taking all of the blame here,” I sighed out.

“Okay. I won’t. But I could do the talking. Maybe if our friends hear it from me it’ll soften the blow. Maybe I can explain it all.”

“What, and they forgive us since we actually wound up gay?” I asked. “That hardly makes what we did any better. I mean, Jessa can think one thing but that doesn’t mean everyone else will agree.”

“Hey, if Jessa’s cool with us now, I bet anyone could be,” Sarah joked. “I mean… it’s worth a try?”

“So that’s it,” I said. “We don’t drop out?”

“Is that what you want?” she asked.