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Alyssa Greene was straight.
There was no bend, no curvature or edge or variation of any kind. She was straight; full stop, end of story, period.
She had to be straight. Everything in her life was counting on the fact, was depending on it as a house would its foundation. If Alyssa wasn’t straight, everything would fall apart. She wasn’t sure how, couldn’t give a reason why- she just knew it would. She heard the way her friends talked about non-straights, heard the way her mother belittled them and stripped them of everything except their sexuality. A gay valedictorian was just a gay, a bisexual philanthropist was just a bisexual. Achievements didn’t count uniless you were straight it seemed, meaning everything Alyssa had worked her ass of for would be worthless if she was gay. Which, she wasn’t.
And then she met Emma Nolan, and no longer was she so certain (as if she ever had been to begin with).
It started out innocent enough. Emma helped her in chemistry every now and then, Alyssa watched her play guitar whenever she’d let her. They were friends. Like she was friends with Kaylee and Shelby- friends, that was it.
But then she found out Emma was gay. It was weird how much it changed things, weird how much more Alyssa wanted to be near her after her discovery. She’d never met a real life lesbian before, only heard whispers and rumors about them, like how they all had AIDs or were yearning to convert straight women to their devilish cult. Alyssa never believed any of that. She didn’t know the first thing about lesbians, just like the rest of the town- the only difference was that she admitted it.
She never brought it up, never found the right way to ask about it. Instead, she just kept hanging out with Emma, making every excuse when her mother asked about it. Mrs. Greene had thought she was hanging out with Kaylee at her house. If she knew where she really was, found out whose bed she was sprawled across, everything would be lost. Alyssa wasn’t a lesbian, but she may as well have been one at that point. The consequences would have been the same.
Alyssa couldn’t call herself straight when she was around Emma.
She’d always wondered what love felt like, always wondered what boy would elicit such wonderful feelings. Alyssa always expected it to be one of the football players. Cheerleaders were made to fall in love with the big, beefy jocks, after all. That being said, you can only imagine how shellshocked she was when she looked deep into Emma’s eyes one night, noticed the magnificent way her eyes shone, and felt her heart leap out of her chest.
Alyssa tried to convince herself that she was still straight.
Girls had crushes on their friends all the time. This was obviously just some silly girl crush, something she’d overcome within a week or two and then she’d be back to normal. But she had never felt anything this strong before, never had felt so desperate to be near someone before. It even drifted to the realm of attraction, somewhere she was sure no straight girl had gone before. There was something intoxicating about Emma, something so undeniably beautiful that she often found it hard to avoid staring. She’d find herself just watching Emma, not for any reason, not even fully focusing on her- just watching.
Within days, her girl crush had developed into something worse. Something unavoidable, something she couldn’t push to the back of her mind and forget about. By the next month, it was unbearable. She couldn’t be alone with her without wanting to kiss her, without being both clingy and cautious at the same time. Hugs grew longer, cuddles became more frequent. Alyssa tried to shove the feelings down, to suffocate them and snuff them out forever, but the little fuckers were resilient. They refused to die.
But then, things went from bad to worse when Emma asked her out. Alyssa had thought she could ignore her urges until graduation. She’d never expected for Emma to actually like her back, hadn’t thought of a plan to deal with the situation should it ever arise. She knew she should say no. She could pretend she was straight all she wanted while she was single, but there would be no room for debate if she was dating Emma. If she said yes, she’d be signing herself up to a life of ridicule, of mindless rumors and a condemnation to being renamed to “that one gay sophomore”. She would be unable to cling to the achievements she once lived off, no longer be able to easily cruise by as Alyssa Greene. She would have to fight to prove herself as Alyssa Green, lest she drown in a sea of slurs and insults.
Saying no would have been so much easier.
By saying yes, Alyssa Green finally came to terms with one simple fact:
Alyssa Green was a lesbian.
There had always been a bend. It just took Emma Nolan to help find it.