Wish That I Could be your Lover | Ronance

Chapter Four

Nancy

The slam of the door as Robin stormed out of the room caused Nancy to flinch, feeling like a slap to the face. She wasn't sure why she was pushed over the edge that day or why she ended up snapping. Maybe it was because she was so sick and tired of dealing with the loss of Robin by herself, or the fact that no matter what she did the girl still found some way to be upset with her.

She was tired of taking all the blame for the situation they were in when Robin refused to meet her halfway, she was so tired she was exhausted.

The way Robin had left the room only made the hole in her heart more hollow, it reminded her all too well of the last time she had seen her before everything went to shambles the thought of that memory was enough to burst the dam of tears in her eyes she tried so hard to hold in.

10 months earlier, March 1986

She wasn't sure when her feelings for Robin started exactly. Usually you can tell the exact moment that you begin to fall for someone, but when it came to her feelings for the taller girl, Nancy wasn't able to name a specific moment. She kind of crept up on her, with her annoying yet endlessly cute rambling when she was nervous, the way she so selflessly took care of everyone in the party. It was a combination of events that led to Nancy realizing she had a crush on a friend she had just made, nonetheless a girl.

And that terrified her to no end.

Nancy wasn't clueless, she wasn't dense. Maybe she got called a priss at school, among other names, but no one could claim she wasn't smart. She knew she liked girls from the time she was in middle school, sitting next to Sarah Bennett in Mrs. Jeffers English class. The way the young girl would whisper jokes to her during lectures made her heart flutter, the way she would flash her bright grins and laugh whenever their teacher tripped up on a word when reading from their class book.

From a young age she knew liking girls was not something she was supposed to do. She had never seen any sort of out queer people at her small, rural school in the middle of nowhere Indiana. Of course every now and then there would be rumors someone was gay, and from there that person was endlessly harassed and bullied, slurs thrown at them on a daily basis. Nancy never wanted that to be directed at her, so she shoved the feelings so far down she eventually forgot about it for the most part. She would still find girls pretty and get nervous when a beautiful girl talked to her, but she never acted on it or spoke to anyone.

Then she met Steve, and later on Jonathon, and she had loved them both. This only confused the hell out of her more, she thought it was only possible to like one gender, to either be straight or gay. She liked girls and clearly liked boys, so where the hell did that leave her? She began to convince herself that part of her didn't matter and she would keep it hidden, and at that point she had been in love with Jonathon and couldn't imagine being with anyone else beside him.

Then their relationship began to fall apart when he moved to California, and then she met Robin Buckley.

Sure, she knew of the girl from school, and the time at the mall, but she didn't know her. At first she found the girl incredibly annoying, always seeming to doubt her plans (later on she would learn she was just a skeptic) and constantly talking when Nancy was trying to concentrate. She always noticed her beauty and how attractive she was from the first time they met, but Nancy told herself she was just focusing on the obvious.

She started noticing little things after their trip to the library. She noticed how incredibly smart Robin was, also quick to catch onto whatever was happening. When she stood up and went on a rant at Pennhurst, Nancy had immediately been in awe of how passionate and determined she was, despite the fact that she clearly hadn't wanted to go along with the plan in the first place and how much she protested wearing the frilly clothes Nancy shoved at her.