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Bree has been avoiding Avery ever since they kissed.
Avery saw her in the halls a few times, but the moment she made eye contact with Bree, Bree would swerve and power-walk away into the crowd.
Avery had been messaging her, relentlessly. Pathetically. She just wants to talk, nothing much, but Bree has been leaving Avery on seen, or answering questions about when she would be available to talk with a thumbs-up emoji.
Bree had not spoken a word to Avery, which fucking sucked because Avery could feel herself teetering right on the edge of becoming something more.
That afternoon, after the kiss, they had been so close…
To something Avery couldn’t quite name.
Or rather, something she was too afraid to look in the eye.
She knew she was scaring it off already; she didn’t need to intimidate it further.
Finally, Avery had managed to come within Bree’s direct vicinity, a feat that felt much harder than realistically possible. Avery had to chase her through an empty corridor; it was pitiful.
Now or never, go big or go home, this is the moment.
A bunch of shitty clichés fill her head all at once. She listens.
“Congrats on student council president.”
Bree turns around and meets Avery’s eyes.
“Thank you,” Bree says. She blinks hard. Bree looks as if she’s about to run.
“Can I talk to you?”
Bree forces a smile that looks more like a grimace. “That’s what we’re doing now, isn’t it? Go ahead.”
“So… what are we?”
Bree doesn’t respond. Avery gives her adequate time, but Bree does not respond.
“Because… I think I’ve made it clear- I’ve been making it clear that I really like you,” Bree’s gaze drops to the floor, but Avery continues anyway, “and you’ve just sort of been ignoring me ever since…”
The last of Avery’s scavenged confidence runs out. “I just want you to tell me directly,” she says in a whisper.
Bree doesn’t respond.
“If you don’t like me, just say that. If I’m freaking you out, just tell me, and I promise I’ll leave you alone.”
Bree doesn’t respond.
“I just… I don’t know… you kissed me, and I guess I thought that meant… We almost… like, before you just left, and- I don’t know. Just…”
Avery trails off, does everything in her power to cue Bree into speaking, yet still she remains silent.
“Anything, Bree. Please.”
Avery can feel her face burning up, like the beginning of a fever. She can feel the sickening, sweltering sensation beneath her flesh, searing through her nose and making a home right behind her eyes.
Her tears feel hot against her lower eyelids, almost like acid.
Avery’s always hated embarrassment.
It was inherently awful for people to see you at all.
Even more so to be punished for making yourself visible.
So now, with her bleeding heart throbbing and writhing on the floor in between them, Avery noticed there was something even worse, even more uniquely horrible about people knowing how much you cared.
She had it all out in the open now.
And now, this might just be the most embarrassed she’s ever felt.
Humiliated.
When Bree finally responds, it almost melts into the hot air around them.
“It’s not that I don’t like you…”
Avery’s almost mad, keyword: almost- “What’s that supposed to mean?” She could never actually be angry at Bree. Not when she looks so…
Conflicted? Dejected? Resigned?
Bree’s jaw is clenched; she’s looking anywhere except at Avery. Her arms are folded tightly against her chest.
“I really like you.”
“I like you too-”
“I can’t like you.”
Bree looks like she’s about to take off, sprint away and escape, go as far away as she possibly can. Avery’s certain she’s about to run again.
But she doesn’t.
Instead, Bree just stands there. Like she’s stuck in the horrible limbo between fight and flight. Her shoulders stiff, and her nails digging into her palm.
“Why?”
“What?”
“Why can’t you?”
“You wouldn’t get it.”
“I’m one of the- what, three out lesbians in our grade? I think I’d get it.”
“That’s not-” Avery thinks she hears the voice of an old friend inside of Bree’s.
When she was thirteen and would take ‘am I gay?’ quizzes over and over again, guessing which answers would change the outcome. Writing her name and picking a random guy in class's name to put alongside it, drawing a heart around it, desperately trying to make it mean something.
Avery wants to help Bree.
She really likes her. And when you like someone, you can let go of your own expectation and focus on their happiness. If they don’t like you, it’s fine, if you really liked them, you’d want them to be happy. Even if that doesn’t include you.
Her mom taught her that.
“I can’t be like that,” Bree begs. To no one in particular. Or maybe to Avery for making her like this. Avery knows that feeling.
“Look, I’m not going to force you into something you aren’t ready for, but… I think it would be good for you to talk about it with someone who might get it?”
“You won’t get it.”
“Try me!”
“My dad graduated from Tsinghua. Have you heard of it?”
Avery shakes her head.
“Number one university in Asia.”
Avery listens.
“Do you know what he does now?”
Avery thinks. What do Bree’s parents do? Avery can’t imagine it, no matter how hard she tries. She can’t decide whether she thinks Bree is upper or middle class. She assumes she’s not lower class, but even then she can’t be sure. She has no evidence.
“He’s a tax preparer at a strip mall. Back home, he could’ve been chief economist of a state bank, but he threw it all away to get me here.” Avery is certain there are tears in Bree’s eyes. “My parents have worked so fucking hard; I cannot be ungrateful. I can’t waste all that.”
“How would being gay make you ungrateful?”
Bree almost laughs. “Are you serious?”
It sounded like a reasonable question when it left her mouth, but now Avery knows she fucked up, so she stays silent. She wants Bree to go back to not looking at her.
Avery is certain she doesn’t know this feeling anymore.
Instead, Bree looks her directly in the eyes. “The least I can do is marry a nice Chinese guy and give my parents grandchildren. I need to get a good job, start a good family and lead a good life so my parents can look the people back home in the eye and prove that they didn’t fuck up. I need to do good, so they have something to show for wasting their lives.”
Avery’s mouth dries up; her own tongue feels like sandpaper.
“So no, Avery, you don’t get it.”
Avery thinks about what to say, or if she should say something at all.
“Okay.”
“Okay?”
“Yeah… I- uh,” Avery became suddenly very aware of the lack of weight on her own shoulders, “I’m sorry. I shouldn’t have assumed. I don’t know what it’s like to be you…”
Bree looks as if she had been bracing herself for an argument that didn’t come. She looked shocked at Avery’s ability to concede, to admit.
Avery thinks it would be stupid to do otherwise.
“But I can listen. If you want?” Avery tugs at her sleeve. “No pressure, like we don’t have to be anything; I just-”
Bree has this strange look on her face. Before Avery can shut up and digest it, Bree is pulling her closer.
Pulling Avery towards her by the front of her shirt.
Kissing her so hard she’s pulling Avery’s hair.
Bree tastes like mint.
Bree pulls away. “fuck my life.”
Under normal circumstances, Avery might be offended by that. She doesn’t have much experience, but a girl saying ‘fuck my life’ after kissing you seems pretty obviously like a bad sign.
But now, she finds herself worried.
She watches Bree work herself up even more. She knows what regret looks like, and this is a different beast. Something harder to fight.
“I can’t- They’d hate- I can’t do this to my parents.”
“Do you want this?”
When Avery is met with silence, Avery tries again, “What do you want?”
Bree wipes her face with her sleeve, but her eyes are still puffy and red.
“I want you.”
She sounds so small when she says it. Tears running down her face like that, it does something to Avery.
It’s like Bree’s confessing to something shameful.
Avery has never wanted to reach for someone so badly.
Avery wants to hold her tight, kiss away her tears, plant an arm around her waist and whisper reassurance into her ear. She wants to tell Bree it’ll all be okay.
That none of this will hurt.
That it will all work itself out.
But she knows better than that.
“Avery, I don't think I’m ready to date you, but I want to so badly.”
“We don’t have to date.”
“But I want to be something with you. bad.”
“We can work with that. You don’t have to decide anything right now. You don’t have to tell your parents, or anyone at school… we don’t even have to be girlfriends or anything.”
“Then what would we be?”
“We’d be not nothing.”
Bree laughs through tears. “That’s not exactly helpful.”
“It doesn’t have to be a label, if that makes things better for you.”
Bree thinks for a second.
“But what if I’m bad at this?”
“At what?”
“Being… whatever this is,” Bree looks down at her hands, “what if I’d just make you miserable?”
“I think I’m the one who gets to decide whether I’m miserable or not.”
Avery continues, “Right now you’re not.”
“You say that now…”
“I mean it now.”
Bree goes quiet, looking intently at Avery, like she’s studying her face.
“We can take it one thing at a time. We can hang out. We can kiss. We can get to know each other without having to figure all of this out at once?”
“And you’d be okay with that?”
Avery would be more than okay with that.
“Yeah.”
“And if you needed- wanted something… you’d tell me?”
Avery nods. Bree is considering her, and it almost brings her to tears.
“Promise?”
“Promise.”
Bree looks around them, the corridor quiet and empty. She pulls Avery in for a hug, burying her face in Avery’s jacket.
Avery revels in how it feels to hold Bree in her arms.
“Would we be exclusive?” Bree asks softly.
“Would you like to be?”
Bree nods, “Yes… very much.”
“Then we’re exclusive.”
Bree’s shoulders loosen. Avery gets unreasonably giddy at that. She wants to be the person who makes Bree relax.
“Fuck. I’m sorry, I just made this even more complicated.”
“Yeah, but that’s fine. I really like you.”
“I really like you, too.”
“Well… since we’re not nothing, can I take you to the arcade after school tomorrow?” Avery tests the waters.
“Like a date?”
“Can you go on dates and not be actually dating?”
“We can.”