Chapter 11 #2
A pause, then from across the room, Harper simply said, “Ah.”
“About this person connected to work,” Nadia said.
“Yes.”
“And these dreams are…new?”
“Yes.” Miller’s throat felt tight. “I’ve never— I don’t dream like that. Not about anyone, not ever. But now it’s every night, and I can’t stop thinking about—”
“About them?” Nadia supplied.
Miller squeezed her eyes shut. “Her.”
The word hung in the air, small and terrifying but true. She heard Nadia set down the dish towel and felt her mother’s warm hand clasp her shoulder.
“Her,” Nadia repeated, and there was no surprise or judgment in her voice, just acknowledgement.
“I don’t—” Miller’s voice cracked. “I’ve never— I’m not—”
She couldn’t finish any of the sentences. Every word she reached for dissolved before she could grasp it. She wasn’t gay. She’d dated men, slept with them, even. She’d built her whole life around the assumption that she was straight, that the story she’d told herself was true, and now…
“I don’t understand what’s going on with me,” she whispered.
Nadia’s hand moved to her back, rubbing in slow circles the way she had when Miller was small and couldn’t sleep. “Tell me about her.”
“I can’t. She’s…” Miller laughed, a broken sound with sharp edges. “She’s everything I’m not supposed to want—professionally, personally, literally every single way you can think of. It’s impossible.”
“But you want her anyway.”
“I can’t stop.” The confession scraped out of her. “I’ve tried. I’ve been trying for weeks, and it just keeps getting worse. I don’t know what’s wrong with me.”
“Nothing’s wrong with you.”
“Something is.” Miller spun around, and there were fresh tears on her face now, but she couldn’t remember when they’d started. “Something has to be because I’ve had relationships with men all my life. I thought…”
She stopped and pressed her hands to her face.
“You thought what?” Nadia asked softly.
“I thought that’s just what it felt like.” Miller’s voice came out muffled against her palms. “I thought everyone was exaggerating about the butterflies, the spark, all of it. I thought it was just…marketing hype and stuff in movies and that real life was comfortable and you made it work.”
“And what about now?”
Miller dropped her hands and looked at her mother through tears that blurred her vision.
“Now I know they weren’t exaggerating because I feel it.
I feel all of it. And it’s not comfortable or fine.
It’s terrifying because if this is what it’s supposed to feel like”—her breath caught in her throat and she cleared it—”then what the hell have I been doing for thirty-five years? ”
Nadia’s expression shifted, something old and sad moving across her face. “Oh, sweetheart, you’ve been surviving.”
Miller stared at her. “What?”
“You did what you thought you were supposed to do and dated who you thought you were supposed to date. You followed the script because no one told you there was another option.” Nadia stepped closer, cupping Miller’s face in her hands. “It didn’t mean you failed. That’s just the way things were.”
“But you and Mom…I grew up with you. How could I not know?”
“Because you’re not us.” Nadia’s thumbs brushed the tears from Miller’s cheeks. “Because having gay parents doesn’t automatically make you question your own sexuality. Because you liked boys well enough and that was easier and nobody, including us, ever pushed you to look deeper.”
From the doorway, Harper cleared her throat. Miller turned to look at her.
“For what it’s worth,” Harper said, her voice rougher than usual, “we wondered sometimes, but it wasn’t our place to say.”
“Wondered what?”
Harper exchanged a look with Nadia, three decades of silent communication passing between them.
“You never brought anyone home,” Harper said finally. “Not once in all the years you were dating. You’d mention them, but you never wanted us to meet them. It didn’t seem like you cared if it worked out or not.”
“I cared.”
“But did you?” Harper’s voice was gentle. “When Marcus ended, you seemed relieved. And that guy in law school, what was his name?”
“Garrett.”
“Yeah. When Garrett wanted to get serious, you ran. Every time someone got close, you found a reason to leave.” Harper pushed off from the doorframe and walked into the kitchen, coming to stand by Nadia. “We figured you just weren’t ready…or maybe you hadn’t met the right person.”
“And now you have,” Nadia said quietly. “And she’s a woman, and suddenly none of those old scripts work anymore.”
Miller’s legs felt unsteady. She reached for the counter, needing something solid to stabilize herself. “I don’t know who I am,” she whispered. “If I was wrong about this, about something so basic, then what else don’t I know? What else have I been lying to myself about?”
“You weren’t lying to yourself.” Nadia’s voice was firm. “You were doing the best you could with what information you understood. That’s not the same thing.”
“It feels like lying. It feels like my whole life has been—” Miller pressed her hand to her sternum where it felt like she was cracking from the inside out. “I feel like the ground has disappeared and I don’t know how to stand anymore or which way is up.”
Nadia pulled her into another hug, and Miller pressed her face against her shoulder, her whole body trembling with the effort of keeping herself together. She felt Harper’s arms wrap around both of them from behind.
“You’re still you,” Nadia murmured. “You’re still our Miller. This doesn’t change that.”
“But everything feels different.”
“I know. But different isn’t wrong. Different is just…different.”
They held her until the trembling stopped and Miller’s breathing steadied. Harper was the first to pull back, and when Miller looked at her, Harper’s eyes were red-rimmed.
“Christ,” Harper said, wiping her face with the back of her hand. “We’re a mess.”
Miller laughed, the sound watery and raw. “Sorry.”
“Don’t apologize.” Harper squeezed her shoulder. “This is what we’re here for.”
Nadia guided Miller to the kitchen table, pressing her down into a chair. “Sit. I’m making tea.”
“I don’t need—”
“You’re getting tea.”
Miller didn’t argue. She sat at the table while Nadia filled the kettle and Harper dropped into the chair beside her. The kitchen settled into a wrung-out kind of silence.
“So,” Harper said after a minute, “this woman.”
Miller tensed. “What about her?”
“You don’t have to tell us who she is, but…” Harper paused, choosing her words. “Is she worth it? All this upheaval?”
Miller mulled over the question. She thought about the gray-blue eyes that had softened when no one else was looking, about a voice that could cut glass in a crowd but went quiet and uncertain when they were alone, about the way Astoria had looked at her in that conference room as if she were impossible to look away from.
“I don’t know if it matters whether she’s worth it,” Miller said. “Because I don’t think I get to choose. It’s just…there, whether I want it or not.”
“That’s not what I asked.”
Miller met Harper’s eyes and bit her lower lip before answering. “Yes, she’s worth it. She’s worth everything, but I can’t have her and I’m not sure that changes anything about how I feel.”
Harper nodded slowly, something like approval crossing her face.
Nadia brought the tea over, setting a mug in front of Miller. “Drink.”
Miller wrapped her hands around the warmth. The heat seeped into her palms, grounding her.
“So, what does this make me?” she asked, and her voice sounded very small. “I dated men, sort of. In a—”
“In a fine way,” Harper filled in. “A comfortable way.”
“Yes.”
“And now you’re attracted to a woman.”
“Yes.”
“In a not-fine way.”
Miller almost smiled. “Definitely not fine.”
Harper shrugged. “Sounds bisexual to me, but you don’t have to call it anything if you don’t want to.”
Bisexual.
Miller turned the word over in her mind. She’d never tried it on before, never had a reason to. She’d always been straight. That was just who she was, as fundamental as her eye color or her left-handedness.
Except maybe it wasn’t. Maybe it had never been.
“Bisexual,” she said, testing the word out loud. It felt strange in her mouth, but it didn’t feel wrong. It was like a door she’d never noticed before that was suddenly visible. “I’m bisexual.”
“If that’s what fits,” Nadia said.
“I think it does.” Miller looked up at her mothers, these two women who had built a life together, who had raised her with love and openness, who had somehow known her better than she even knew herself.
“I think it’s always been true. I just didn’t have the…
I didn’t let myself see it,” she said finally.
“And now you do,” Harper said.
“Now I do.”
The kitchen was quiet, and Miller felt hollowed out and exhausted. But underneath the exhaustion, there was something else, something that felt like relief.
“I still don’t know what to do,” she admitted. “About her. About any of it. It’s still an impossible situation.”
“Maybe,” Nadia said. “Or maybe not. Things change.”
“And what about in the meantime?”
Nadia reached across the table and took her hand. “In the meantime, you learned something new about yourself. That’s everything, sweetheart.”
Miller thought about the week ahead: the case, the work, the inevitable moments when she’d have to see Astoria and pretend like she wasn’t falling apart on the inside, the yearning that wouldn’t go away just because she finally named it.
But she also thought about this moment, sitting in her mothers’ kitchen with tea warming her insides as a word settled into her chest that had been waiting her whole life to be spoken.
She wasn’t okay and the problem wasn’t solved, but something had shifted into place. For the first time in days, she felt more like herself again. A different self than she’d been a week ago, but still her.
“Thank you,” she said.
“For what?”
“For being here. For not—” Miller’s voice caught. “For letting me figure it out without trying to fix me.”
“There’s nothing to fix,” Nadia said. “Just something new about yourself to discover.”
Harper stood and stretched. “Stay as long as you need tonight. There’s no rush.”
Miller nodded. She wasn’t ready to leave yet.
She wasn’t ready to go back to her apartment and face the empty rooms and sleepless nights.
But for now, she kept sitting here with the two people who’d loved her before she knew who she was and would continue to love her now that she was finally learning.
It was enough. For tonight, it was enough.