5 Celeste
O nce upon a time in college, Celeste Min fell in love with a girl named Gemma.
Gemma Cho was a friend of a friend, and they’d only ended up rooming together because Kayla Peterson, Celeste’s roommate of two years, spontaneously moved in with her boyfriend the summer before junior year. Since she felt bad for ditching her, Kayla brought in her other friend, Gemma, to replace her in the apartment they’d already signed the lease for.
Celeste hadn’t minded, especially after she saw how pretty Gemma was. Since Kayla, a Taylor Swift look-alike who now has three kids with her own Travis Kelce, was—and still is—one of Celeste’s straightest friends, Celeste had assumed Gemma only liked guys, too. But then she realized that, while she couldn’t stop staring at the beautiful girl she’d somehow ended up living with, the girl was also staring back at her .
Gemma told Celeste that she’d never dated a girl before. But after countless days and nights of going on dreamlike dates around LA and whispering sweet nothings in each other’s ears, Celeste had hoped she was the exception.
Now, alone in a dark, crowded bar in San Francisco, she sips her drink.
Celeste had never expected to see Gemma again, not after Celeste’s mom got sick and she had to temporarily drop out of school.
For her first four months back home, Celeste drowned, floundering in medical trauma and familial expectations. She only survived because of Min-joon, her best friend in Seoul, who, as a bi man also from a deeply traditional family, could understand her struggles of taking care of someone who never fully accepted who she is.
But nothing could mitigate the intense pain and betrayal Celeste felt when she’d finally managed to pull herself back to the surface, only to discover that Gemma had moved on with someone else just a few months after she'd left. Like Celeste had never existed.
Since then, Celeste had refused to do relationships, a rule that Gretchen Sanders had blatantly ignored. But Celeste can’t exactly blame Gretchen. It’s only natural for someone to think they would be the exception, that they would be the one to change someone else and achieve that pipe dream happily ever after.
After all, Celeste once thought she was special, too.