Chapter 17 #2
Searching out how deeply rotten and necrotic public opinion of me is makes the damage mine to inflict. If I choose to hurt myself, no one else can hurt me as badly. I’ll destroy myself before I give someone else the power to do it first.
“What do I do about Darcy?” I ask, not wanting to waste their time on things I know I won’t change. “I miss my best friend. I need her.”
“Have you talked to her?” Oliver counters. “If memory serves, that was your big advice to me when I was mucking things up with Tilly.”
“She doesn’t want to talk about it. She’s made that much clear.”
“But does she know how much everything is bothering you? I think if she knew how badly you were hurting she’d talk to you.”
I shake my head. Talking to her about everything would require me to be dangerously vulnerable with her. It would hurt too much to have her reject me like everyone else.
“Are you sure you want Darcy as your friend?” Tilly asks.
I frown at her. “Of course I do. She’s amazing. She’s my favorite person in the world.” Ollie slants me a glance and I roll my eyes. “Present company excluded.”
Tilly raises her hands in surrender. “I didn’t mean it like she isn’t a great person to be friends with. I mean can you handle her being just your friend when you want more?”
Tilly’s question stuns me, every word rattling my bones as my stomach bottoms out. “Who said I want more?” I ask, mouth dry and pulse pounding.
She tilts her head, fixing me with a knowing look. “Cubby … come on.”
“I thought you like guys,” Oliver pipes up, as if his girlfriend hasn’t sent me into an utter tailspin and has me asking myself that exact question at an alarmingly loud volume.
Tilly scowls at him. “Your compulsory heteronormativity is showing, Oliver.”
He rolls his eyes. “That’s not what I mean, and you know it.
It wasn’t until I was ten that I realized not everyone has two mums. But, Cubby, you’ve always dated guys.
It’s not like you’ve dated many … I mean, Connor’s been it, yeah?
But I feel like any time you’ve talked about someone you’ve liked, it’s been a boy. ”
He pauses for a moment, looking at me. I can tell by his frown that my face must mirror the circus of panic tumbling through my gut.
“I guess you didn’t talk much about liking anyone, now that I think about it,” he continues. “Connor popped up in conversations awhile back, but before that it’s always been … Darcy. Your friendship with Darcy.”
I bite my lip, tearing my napkin to confetti with shaking hands, trying to get my breathing under control.
Oliver has a point. My mums are queer, so it’s not like it would ever be an issue if I were too, but I’ve always thought of myself as straight.
Although, I can’t say I ever really thought about it much at all.
It’s rare for me to like someone to begin with.
Connor is the first person I remember admitting to myself—and subsequently, Darcy—that I might fancy, but even that took many years of getting comfortable around him for anything more to develop.
I never gave my sexuality much brain space because I just …
didn’t think it was different than what most people were experiencing?
I had my best friend and my band and this bone-deep urge to make music, to pour every bit of myself into those things.
I mean, I’ve found people attractive. There are a few fit guys from our hometown that I’d nod in agreement about when Darcy talked about her crushes, and I’ve always noticed girls as almost ethereal creatures.
Soft skin, shiny hair, rounded curves, good smells … What isn’t to like?
But everyone feels that way. Right? Everyone wants to, like, touch a girl’s skin and run their hands over her hips and braid her hair just to feel it between their fingers and cuddle and hug and giggle and touch and …
Holy fuck.
Do I like girls?
Am I … gay? Have I just, like, never known this very pivotal-seeming potential fact about myself?
A tiny, hysterical voice in the back of my head shrieks with glee that hooking up with a girl was probably a good indication of such, but I smother that voice immediately, nerves swirling into a fury as the entirety of who I’ve always thought I was rearranges itself.
It dawns on me—suddenly and confusingly and excruciatingly obviously—that these feelings for Darcy are exactly like a primary school crush …
Although it feels more like I’m being crushed.
“Cubby?” Oliver says, giving my hand a squeeze. “Are you—”
“I don’t know what I am,” I blurt out, gaze bouncing between him and Tilly. “Holy fuck, I don’t know what I am.”
“I was going to ask if you’re okay, but the answer to that seems fairly obvious,” Oliver says, eyes widening with worry to match mine.
My breathing becomes choppy and short, the world tipping as I try to understand what’s happening, a flood of emotions and ideas and memories previously explained away ripping through me like the opening of Pandora’s box.
Oh my god. I think I like girls.
I … I know I like guys. At least, I think I like guys? Do I like guys? Do I like anyone?
“Cubby.” Tilly cups my cheeks, tilting my face to hold her gaze. I’ve never seen her so still and steady. “You don’t know what you are,” she says in an even tone. Something about her unwavering focus unlocks my tense muscles a few degrees.
“I don’t know what I am,” I echo, not daring to blink.
“You don’t know what you are,” she repeats. “And that’s okay.”
“A wreck is probably the best word for it,” I say with a harsh, self-deprecating laugh, a few more tears rolling down my face. She doesn’t indulge me, and I feel even more pathetic. Instead, she wipes away the wet streaks with her thumbs, then gives my head a tiny rattle.
“A wreck is an okay thing to be too,” she says, finally releasing me. “You’re allowed to find peace in the perplexity.”
“What’s it like, dating Brené Brown?” I ask, turning to Oliver, trying to joke my way out of these ginormous feelings.
He gives me a blank stare. “I have no clue who that is.”
Tilly knocks my shoulder with hers. “You’re ridiculous.” There’s a weighted silence, then she clears her throat. “Are you okay?”
I shake my head, then shrug, folding my panic into a box and locking it tight.
“I need to get back for sound check,” I say, glancing at my phone. There’s a string of social media notifications, and I have the sick compulsion to dive in, wade through them so maybe I can feel something sharp and staggering that jolts me out of this painful daze of confusion.
“Okay,” Tilly says, voice quieter than I’ve ever heard her. I’m so pitiful I even dim sunshine incarnate.
She drives me back to the venue, attempting to cheer me up with some small talk at first, then letting the quiet linger.
Oliver sits in the back with me, staring at me with that knowing, twin look of his.
I choose to ignore it, pinching his ear to get him to stop. He wraps me up in a hug in response.
“Talk to the band, Cubby,” he says when we arrive. “Save yourself from this. You deserve so much better.”
I nod, slipping on a flippant smile. “I’ll be fine, Ollie.” I reach around the driver’s seat and give Tilly a hug goodbye, telling them both how much I love them, then I walk to the venue’s entrance, Oliver’s words echoing with every step.
You deserve so much better.