14. Michaela
MICHAELA
“Ahhh sorry I am a little late,” Kevin said as he sat down next to Michaela.
“You’re not even really late. Got tied up in class?
” she asked from her chair. She had just logged into the computer in front of her, and was just about to begin brainstorming what to write for the Alliance’s backed newspaper, Other Voices.
She’d met with Ms. CeCe on her way to work and had thrown around some ideas.
Ms. Cece had assigned her to the Lifestyle section and had mentioned a big draw for that section was romance and dating.
When Michaela had mentioned she didn’t have much experience with dating and romance, she just laughed and said, “Not yet!”
“Nah, got caught up with messing around with Callie,” Kevin said easily as he logged into the computer on the opposite end of the long desk that faced the entrance to the library.
Their jobs were basically to be on call for any issues on all three floors of the library.
This consisted mostly of printers running out of paper or computers needing an “Out of Order” sign placed on them.
Every now and then, the phone rang with a request from a TA or professor to see if there was a certain book available.
Otherwise, the job so far was pretty low key, giving Michaela plenty of time to either do her homework or attempt to work on her other job.
“You two have been hanging out a lot,” Michaela said, smiling, only a hint of teasing in her voice.
“Yeah, well, the rest of the Collective lives together,” Kevin shot back.
“Yeah well, circumstances, you know,” Michaela said. Iris and Davis had explained their situation to Kevin and Callie when they’d first come over to the suite. “Besides, you know you both are always welcome.”
Kevin smiled then. “I’m just giving you shit.
” With a more thoughtful look on his face, he said, “You know it’s weird, but, I don’t know,” he said, looking around.
It was a Thursday evening; they would be missing dinner with the Collective, and the library was pretty sparse.
Most parties started on Thursdays, given students didn’t have Friday classes.
“I always thought I was always?” he said quietly, questioning.
Michaela looked at her friend, who had his gaze fixed on the computer screen in front of him, a sword earring glinting in the overhead light.
“Thought you were gay? Wait, are you into Callie, like, into her into her?”
“I don’t know. I love men, in all shapes and sizes. But there is something about my time with Callie that keeps scratching the back of my brain, I don’t know. Either way, it's been a new development and you and I have four hours here so…”
“Wow, so we aren’t friends, just what, locked in this job together?”
Kevin turned to her, his dark eyes soft. “Not what I meant. I just know you’re close to Jay. Iris has Davis, and you have Jay, and well, I have Callie.”
Michaela felt her smile slip. “We have each other,” she corrected him. “Jay and I live together, and I’m pretty sure Davis and Iris are married for life,” they both laughed at that, “but we all have each other.”
Kevin smiled mischievously and Michaela smiled but rolled her eyes at the friend group name that she couldn’t quite accept. They weren’t a band, for crying out loud. “Don’t say it—”
“Michaela? Are you saying we are the—”
“I hate you all—”
“The Collective?” Kevin said, waggling his perfectly arched dark eyebrows.
Michaela groaned but couldn’t fight her smile.
“Maybe. But whatever, listen, you do know that not everything is fixed right? I thought I was gay, then straight, and now maybe gay again?” Michaela looked up in thought, trying to figure out how to explain things because it was hard for her to even explain to herself still. Everything was still so new.
“I get that,” Kevin said, and Michaela looked at him and found him nodding his head. “I mean, I love a skirt, but does that mean I want to be a girl? I don’t think so,” he offered.
This made Michaela’s smile return and she nodded. “I feel like there are all of these boxes, and I am trying to figure out which ones I belong in and which ones I don’t.”
Kevin nodded and said, “I think the only box I have put myself in is a closet, with my parents, but that’s not changing anytime soon. So here, I refuse to box myself in anymore.”
This made Michaela think of Jay, who seemed to be in either all the boxes or none, Michaela was pretty sure Jay didn’t care either way.
“So, what topic did you get for the paper?” Kevin said, switching gears as he typed something into the computer in front of him.
“So sick we each get a computer and can work on this stuff for the paper, too. Hey, it turned out great that you already had met Ms. Cece, right?” Kevin said, turning to look at Michaela once more.
“Yeah, I’m glad it all worked out.”
“So come on, tell me what you got! I got culture—music, art and stuff. Pretty psyched.”
Michaela frowned. Why couldn’t she have gotten that topic? There was more than one person on a beat, but only like two people on each. Her lack of contribution would go very noticed.
“Kayla…” Kevin said, using her new nickname that she loved. Only Jay used “Mickey,” and Michaela didn’t mind that. It felt like it was something Jay had just for her. Something shared just between them. “Earth to Kayla, where did you just go?”
Michaela snapped her focus back to the present. “I have Lifestyle, like romance and dating and stuff,” she mumbled.
“Oh wow! That’s exciting!” Kevin said.
“Yeah?”
“Hell yeah, why do you look so sad about it?”
“I mean if you’re into it,” Michaela started, ignoring his question, “would you want to trade?”
Kevin stared at her for a moment, his dark eyes searching. “Why? Why would you want to?”
“I’m asking you—”
“Tell me why first,” he said, sitting back in his chair with a smirk on his face.
Michaela rolled her eyes. “Because I don’t have any experience, okay? And it will show. I don’t even know how to begin to write about this stuff.”
Kevin pursed his lips, and then said, “Yeah, doesn’t sound like your last relationship was really romantic. But maybe you could start there, like what you’ve learned from it, and how it taught you what you do and don’t want.”
Michaela frowned slightly, thinking of Kevin’s words. “I don’t really know what I want,” she said without thinking.
Kevin nodded, taking her response in. “You could make a list or something, or you could just watch a bunch of romance movies and compare them to the experiences you really want to have?”
Michaela put her head in her hands. “This is so embarrassing.”
“No way girl,” Kevin said and Michaela looked up at her friend, “look, sex and romance and dating are all natural things that some people are into. And if you want to do them, then there isn’t much to be embarrassed about.
Feel how you feel, but just know that. We have enough shame thrown our way in our community, and I for one am trying to live to the fullest before I have to deal with even more in the outside world, namely from my parents. ”
Michaela took this in. He was right; she had been pushing herself, and this likely presented an opportunity for her to do so. If only she knew where to begin. “Still, it would be easier if I knew what I wanted…”
“Well, I mean do any of us know right now? I was a closeted kid sneaking blow jobs to jocks in high school.”
Michaela jerked her head slightly at that.
Not in judgment, just once again taken aback by how easily Kevin offered this side of himself.
He had already explored this side of himself, even if he thought he didn’t have answers.
“I mean, I just told you there is something about Callie. I have spent so long working out the fact that I love guys, am gay, and all the emotional shit that comes with not telling my parents, all for what, the universe to throw me a little curveball?”
Michaela felt like she could relate to that. “You know, there is such a thing as being bisexual,” Michaela offered.
Kevin nodded his head. “Yeah I’m aware, it just feels like —I don’t know, it’s stupid.”
“Tell me anyway,” Michaela said softly.
“It makes me feel like, this whole time, have I just been choosing men over women? I have a cousin who caught me once, looking at a boy. When she confronted me, she told me it was just a phase, me rebelling against our upbringing. If I can like girls too, this whole time, was she right?”
Michaela scrunched her face slightly, digging deep to recall everything she’d read before coming to school.
“I don’t think it’s so much about choice, it’s just what is,” she chuckled because she knew she sounded like Jay.
“I mean, when I thought I had no choice, I lived as a boy. A gay boy. But then when I realized there might be another option, it’s not so much that I made a choice as I let myself follow what felt right to me. I don’t know if I am making sense.”
“No you are, like, you just are going with the flow, so to speak.” He started singing Toni Braxton’s Let it Flow, which made Michaela smile.
“Yeah. And if you feel one way towards Callie or another, dude, go for it.” As Michaela said these words, her mind drifted back to dancing with Jay at Sasha’s.
Shaking the thought from her head before she could give herself an after-school special moment, she said, “I get it, wanting to go from boning dudes to Callie could be confusing. But it could just be a little crush or fascination,” like she was convinced it was with her and Jay, “but you won’t know till you try.
” And there she was, the pot calling the kettle black again.
Kevin looked up and met Michaela’s eyes, a slight blush spreading across his porcelain skin. “The thing is, I don’t want to fuck Callie, I—”
“Like I said, it could be a fascination or crush or—”
“I want to be fucked by Callie.”
They sat in the silence of that revelation for a moment, Michaela again taken aback by what Kevin had said, but mostly by the comfort and ease with which he said it.
They were in the library and even though no one was around, Michaela couldn’t imagine just saying those things aloud.
She turned and looked at the blank screen of her computer.
Kevin really would make a better writer for lifestyle.
Or maybe she just needed to try to imagine those same kinds of things and share them. Maybe. After a drink, or two.
“Kayla?”
Michaela turned back to her friend, who had a full blush going now.
“I mean, do you think Callie would be into that?” As Michaela asked, she thought of the free-spirited woman, and thought there was probably little that fazed her, into it or not.
“No idea, but we are friends, you know? And wow, this conversation has already gotten way deeper than I wanted it to,” Kevin said sheepishly, “but whatever, We are supposed to be figuring our shit out here, where we can have a little sliver of freedom, right?” When Michaela nodded, he continued, “That’s what I was saying.
Explore, Michaela, and then write about it. ”
“Easier said than done,” Michaela said.
“No way, look at that man who was all over you last weekend! You’re gorgeous, you could have some real experiences here, I would bet.
” And then Kevin got another one of his mischievous looks on his face.
“Hey, how about we pinky promise each other something?” Michaela had a feeling she wasn’t going to love it but gestured for him to continue anyway.
“Let’s go with the flow, wherever it takes us—well, no death and destruction. ”
At that last part, Michaela chuckled as Kevin wheeled his computer chair closer to her.
“Come on, and you can use it for your paper topic, too,” he said, holding out his hand.
Michaela could see his nails were painted an icy pink.
The sight made her smile and think of her own toenails, which Jay had repainted a deep purple.
“Okay,” she said, and held out her hand, and linked her pinky with his.