CHAPTER 11
“So, can you walk us through how you met? Be as specific as possible,” Larissa said as she pressed the record button on her phone. “What I’m looking for here is the story of how you fell in love and the factors that might have influenced it, kept you apart, or helped you get together.”
“You want to know how we met or how we fell in love? Those are two different things,” Maia said.
“It would be great if you could start from the beginning, including the period of time when you met but you weren’t yet in love. As much as you’re willing to share. And if there’s something you don’t want to tell me, just let me know.”
“Okay,” Maia said with a nod.
Larissa hadn’t remembered their application at first. In the end, she had gotten more than sixty and, technically, she was still accepting more of them because she hadn’t turned off the form people could submit and didn’t plan on doing so until she had a good idea what this book would be about and how she’d tell these stories.
She knew Harlow was interested in the stories and supposed she was, too, but she had started this looking for a way to bring sometimes complicated science to the masses to help them find love themselves or maybe recognize it when they saw it and take action instead of letting obstacles get in their way.
She’d pictured couples coming up to her at some imaginary book tour where people would want her to sign a book, and then, they’d tell her how they either found one another or got together because they read it.
She knew that was far-fetched, but it had been her hope when she had first started.
Now, they were doing their third interview, and Maia and Winter hadn’t initially been on her list of couples to talk to.
She squinted, which she did when she was deep in thought, because she actually had several couples she wanted to talk to that she would’ve prioritized over these two, but Harlow had seen their questionnaire and had insisted she send them an email to see if they were able to come in person.
There would be some video interviews, too, and she thought about making the form go wide, posting it on more boards and maybe throughout the university’s network as well to get as many responses as possible, but for now, she just wanted to sit in this room with her best friend, who was very much into this whole thing, and the two women who were about to tell them their love story.
“So, Winter is a year older than me, and she was in the same grade throughout school as my brother, Mike. We’ve known each other for a long time.” Maia laughed a little.
“Not that long. I’m twenty-eight.”
“She has a thing about turning thirty,” Maia shared and shook her head. “As if that’s a big deal. And she knows I’m only a year behind her anyway.”
“You dated Maia’s brother first, didn’t you?” Harlow asked Winter.
“Mike and I were friends at first, but yeah, we went on a few dates.”
“A few dates, she says.” Maia laughed and wrapped her arm around the back of Winter’s chair. “They dated for six months.”
“Barely,” Winter argued. “He only got to second base.”
“And I got to slide into home? Is that what you’re going for there?”
“Yes. I wanted to make that part clear: I never slept with your brother.”
“Thank God for that,” Maia stated on a sigh.
“So, is that how you met, you dating Mike?”
“No,” Winter replied. “We knew each other before that. I was a sophomore when she was a freshman, and we had the same PE class for a semester. We talked a little here and there, but I had no idea I was bisexual. She had no idea that she was gay, or at least, she was just starting to think it.”
“She was the main reason,” Maia added with a smile.
“Winter?” Larissa asked.
“Yes.”
“You figured it out because of her?” Harlow asked.
“Mostly,” Maia replied, nodding. “I just thought all girls felt how I felt. We never talk about it, you know? The things we go through as teenagers. We keep everything in and assume no one feels the same way. Then, we grow up and–”
“Still kind of do that?” Winter finished with a question.
Maia chuckled and said, “Yes. But as teenagers, it felt so much worse, so much more important and life-changing. I guess I knew I liked girls, but I didn’t fully understand at that point that it was different from other girls liking girls.
When I met Winter for the first time, it was in the locker room.
We had to change for gym class, and I remember trying to avert my eyes because she was so pretty, and I didn’t want her to think I was staring.
I got dressed quickly and left the room.
She was still in there when class started and got in trouble, so she had to run extra laps and was pissed.
” Maia laughed. “Then, the teacher paired us up to do some stretches, and I blushed the whole time. I still didn’t put things together yet, and we only talked in PE when we had to for the class because her friends were there and my friends were there, but the next year, she had a class with my brother.
They became friends, so she would come over sometimes, and we started hanging out a little. ”
“What did you feel when you got paired with her that first day?” Larissa asked. “If you can think back and tell us how it really felt.”
“That was a long time ago now. I was fourteen.” Maia sat back in her chair, and her eyes drifted to the ceiling in thought. “Well, I thought she was pretty, and she looked cute when she was angry. Then, I told myself she wasn’t cute.”
“Why did you do that?” Harlow asked, giving Larissa a chance to take a note.
“Because I was supposed to like boys, not think girls were cute. I remember feeling like everyone could see it on my face, like they could see the gay somehow. We had uniforms in school, so I dressed like everyone else and tried to act like everyone else, but I felt like any second, before I came out, someone was going to see it on me, and I’d be outed.
When I met her for the first time, I didn’t know I was gay yet, but I knew there was something about myself that I didn’t want others to see. ”
“Been there,” Harlow shared. “It’s hard, being a teenager and figuring this stuff out.”
“Tell me about it. I had to watch her date my brother.”
Maia hooked her thumb at Winter.
“Can you tell us about that?” Harlow asked Winter.
“Dating her brother?”
“He got to see her boobs. My brother has seen my wife’s boobs. I hate that.”
“They were barely even there back then, babe. I was a late bloomer. You’re still the only one who has seen my adult boobs.”
“Still…”
Larissa laughed silently to herself.
“When I was a junior, Mike and I got put in the same history class. We were friends for a month or two, but then he asked me to the homecoming dance,” Winter shared.
“At that point, I had spent time with Maia, too, whenever Mike and I were hanging out. He didn’t like that his younger sister was with us, but I liked Maia and wanted to spend more time with her.
I didn’t realize it back then, but part of the reason I kept going over to his house when we were friends was that I wanted to see her.
I ended up sleeping over once, but her parents weren’t thrilled with the idea because they thought I was only doing it to try to sneak into Mike’s room in the middle of the night. ”
“Yeah, he thought that, too, and was definitely disappointed,” Maia added.
Winter chuckled and continued, “I just wanted to spend more time with her, so I slept in Maia’s room, and we talked all night long.
I remember wondering what I was doing with Mike because he was a nice guy, but I just wanted to hang out with his sister, not him.
It scared me a little, so when he asked me to the dance later that weekend, I said yes. ”
“Can you tell us what made you so scared?” Harlow asked.
“For one, she’s a girl. There’s that obvious issue that’s not really an issue now but was to me then. Two, she was a year younger than me, and when you’re in high school, that can make a big difference. Three, she was Mike’s sister, and I knew he liked me.”
“It was pretty obvious,” Maia added.
“You knew he liked Winter?” Larissa asked.
“Oh, everyone in school knew. My parents knew, too, which was why they thought she’d sneak over to his room.
They thought Winter and Mike were secretly dating already.
He had a big thing for her, and I knew I was into girls at this point – specifically, into one of them – so I was just hoping she wasn’t into him. ”
“I wasn’t, really,” Winter said more to Maia than to Larissa or Harlow. “But I didn’t know what to do. I didn’t want to say no to the dance because I’d have to go alone.”
“You could have gone with me.”
“As a friend, sure. But not as a date.”
“So? We still could’ve had fun.”
“Yes, but we were both hiding parts of who we were then. Not sure how wise it would have been to basically put out to the world that we were falling in love with each other on a dance floor while your brother stared at us from the punch bowl.”
“I know. I just still hate that you two were a thing.”
“Can you tell us about that now?” Larissa asked.
“Mike and I dated for six months, but it wasn’t ever real for me. I knew he liked me, and I knew I liked her.” Winter pointed to her wife. “So, I guess he was my beard. He was a seventeen-year-old boy, though, so he expected certain things at times in our relationship. We kissed a lot, mostly.”
Larissa watched Maia cross her arms over her chest and thought about how this had taken place well over a decade ago, but Maia was clearly still hurt by the fact that Winter and her brother had been a couple for at least a little while. She wrote a few notes about that as Winter continued.
“One night, he wanted to go further. I’d been making him wait for the entirety of our relationship, so I let him get to that second base I mentioned before, but when he…”
“It’s okay; go ahead. I’m being mature,” Maia told her when Winter looked over at her.