Prank Date [✔]

Part 22

"I wish I could be you," I said to Kuma, who was wedged between my knee and the back of the couch, sighing contentedly. "Dogs have it easy. No messed-up family, no complicated revenge plans, no chaotic love life."

I stopped. Love life? Where's that coming from? I shook my head and focused on my laptop.

The calendar on the screen glared at me with big numbers. Just two more weeks until Thanksgiving, and with every passing hour, my nervousness grew. My fingers moved in shaky little circles over the laptop's touch pad, making the mouse arrow stagger across the screen.

How am I ever going to pull this off? I've never been so unprepared for anything in my life. My doubts grew. Would it be better to call off this whole plan?

Then my stubbornness asserted itself. No! Giving up once things got tough was something that Jin might do. I had always stuck it out, no matter what. I can do this. It's worth it. Just once, Jin deserves to know what it feels like to be tricked.

But was tricking Jin into believing I was in a relationship with Lisa really what was making me so antsy? If I was honest with myself, I knew that more was going on deep inside of me. Jisoo's words still echoed through my mind on auto-repeat. Maybe your reaction isn't about Lisa and her sexual orientation. It's about yours.

I shoved the thought away. One problem at a time. Calm down. Think. What do you normally do when you get nervous? The answer was easy. Since my private life was almost nonexistent, the only thing that usually made me nervous was a client with a large, complicated account. Those situations I handled by digging in, researching whatever I didn't know, and asking colleagues for advice.

So what's the problem? Just do the same now, and everything will work out. I breathed deeply and tried to calm my thoughts, which were going a thousand miles a minute. Okay. Ask someone for advice. The only lesbian I knew was Lisa. So ask her. You're in this together. She'll know how to handle Thanksgiving.

The thought that Lisa and I would deal with the problem together took some of the weight off my shoulders. Okay. What else? Research. I can do some research.

Feeling better already now that I was doing something, I opened my browser and stared at the search engine. My fingers lingered over the keyboard. I bit on my lip, trying to come up with the right search words. How to convince my brother that I'm gay?

But I couldn't imagine that anyone else on the Internet had blogged about a problem like that.

Start with something easy. My fingers felt stiff when I typed in "lesbian relationships" and pressed enter.