Short LGBTQ+ Shorties

Gin & Tonic

Gin and Tonic

A/N: A short story concocted with a few real-life experiences, a dash of exaggeration, a drop of happy endings and copious amounts of self-questioning and self-doubt. This will be part of one of my upcoming short story collections that will contain never before seen stories! An audio version will be coming out soon on my YouTube account (links on my website - link in bio).                                                                                                                                           ~LOL

~*~

She stared at her black phone screen.

It had been months since Ginny had texted back. Not even a 'How are you?' Or a 'Miss you Xxx' could get her to text back. Tonya even used a second Instagram account to reach her after losing her old account. She didn't cry over the ghosting. She never cried for Ginny anyway. It wasn't anything serious. A few texts, a few pictures, a few common interests. She was an experiment. It was nice at the start, bouncing back and forth with gaming gibberish and sharing passions.

Tonya looked away from her phone and leaned back into her chair, wistfully staring off into space, looking in the direction of the nearest wall.

It had been nice for Tonya to have someone to talk too. They shared a love for a certain game and a certain band, they had bonded over the fact that Tonya said the Ginny looked like Jenny from Gossip Girl.

Ginny was older than her, but Tonya liked that, made her feel good about herself. Felt more grown up and it made a nice change from talking to her real-life friends who didn't completely 'get' her.

Then it turned interesting. After a few more pictures and compliments, Tonya was aware of Ginny's attraction to her. And Tonya couldn't deny the fact that Ginny was absolutely gorgeous, dark, bleach blonde, and mysterious, but she had never considered the idea of liking girls. Not exactly. She had always appreciated the way girls looked, but she'd never thought much further than that. She acknowledged Ginny's obvious, plain-as-day crush on her; they agreed to not make anything of it. To take it slow until Tonya knew for sure she actually wanted to start anything like that. With a girl, older than her, and purely online.

It had been late one night. It just seemed to have happened. They chatted, compliments were given out, fan-girling over a new song release. The next thing Tonya knew, she had agreed to be Ginny's girlfriend. They never used the term girlfriend, at least Ginny didn't. Going out was what she used. But Tonya liked labels and having a word for something. It helped her organise herself and her thoughts. So that's what she used.

It was sweet at first. The little cute pickup lines and the more meaningful goodnights. Pictures became more frequent. Ginny painted her nails and wrote each letter of Tonya's name on them.

Then there were three. And Tonya was the jealous type. Although this trio had started out as just talking over the same games, it became more, and Tonya wasn't comfortable with that. Pressure began to build. Little and often, it could easily go unnoticed but there, it lingered in the depths of her heart. Pictures became more revealing. Self-esteem issues grew, despite the nice enough compliments. Tonya never put her face in the pictures, she knew better than that. But it didn't stop Ginny, and their new friend, sharing similar but more daring pictures. The third member was even younger than Tonya, and it made her feel uneasy seeing these pictures and reading the conversations. In the end, it turned out that the younger had many problems, ranging from family to mental health. Tonya had to take a step back. She distanced herself and stopped chatting so much. She played the games without informing them what she was up to, unless they asked. Until the younger girl became 'missing-in-action', and Ginny soon followed. Tonya moved on with little looking back.

There was then this girl, another blonde beauty. Not dark and mysterious, but she shone like the sun and had a name that made Tonya daydream. She was real, the same age, foreign with a beautiful accent, a smile that made her weak at the knees, shy, and right in front of Tonya, not hidden behind a screen somewhere in the world where she couldn't reach.

While watching her study one day in the library, Tonya secretly had her phone hidden in her pencil case. The girl was reading a translated version of Twilight. Something they connected over; Twilight was the first 'proper' book Tonya read after refusing to read the books she was supposed to read for class back in high school. Thank you Google synopses. She did not want to read about an 18th-century girl trapped in a crypt of an abandoned church after getting mugged, having a man save her, who wants to take her traveling across the seas, only for him to have a really creepy uncle who was part of her capture in the first place. Tonya much preferred vampires and werewolves to that.

Her phone was on silent, and she stared at the very last message Ginny had ever sent her. Three months ago. Back when Tonya was a nobody, her friends were in different schools and her resting face looked to have a constant scowl, not very approachable her old classmates used to say. Now, she was in university with new and old friends together. She was still alone in the library, wanting to catch up on her homework so she would have less to do at home, but she got caught in a daydream. Her head and heart blatantly ignoring each other, Tonya was as if she was a child having to choose a parent to live with after a nasty divorce. Impulsively, she took her phone, placed it in her lap hidden under the table and deleted her messages, the pleas for Ginny to answer her. Once deleted she decidedly got up, gathered her things, and walked over to the angel looking girl.

Tonya experimented. She didn't like to use that as the term for what she and Ginny had. But now that she wasn't alone in her room, windows blacked out by the night sky, no one to text due to having the one person she wanted to talk to was resting against her shoulder as Tonya stroked her hair, it was easier to think of Ginny as such. Someone she used to know. She knew it wasn't ever anything serious; Ginny had issues and Tonya had her own to deal with. There were no fights, just silence. Until the silence became permanent. She lost her old Instagram account and all their conversations disappeared along with it and the more recent calls for attention deleted. She still had that picture of Ginny with Tonya's name on her nails, when someone asked about it, she'd say she was just an old online friend, and a good friend. That one picture when Tonya had become a bit more confident in herself, that one was buried deep in her laptop never to see the light of day ever again. Happy memories even though they were fleeting. At least she could still thank Ginny in her mind from time to time. For the experience. For helping her discover who she wanted to be, who she was. For opening her heart.

She had asked that girl who read Twilight if she had a crush. That girl said yes and proceeded to ramble on about some boy, breaking Tonya's hopes in the process. But she didn't give up on finding her happily ever after. Two years later, she was dumped by her boyfriend of one year who ripped her heart out, but instantly decided to come out in full force, wanting to show the world who she really was. Tonya met that girl a year after her breakup. They now laid together in their apartment, watching Disney films and planning their future together. That girl just took the longer way round to finding herself. 

~*~

A/N: Have you ever had an online relationship(s)? Share your story, I would love to hear them. And let me know any LGBTQ+ experiences you would like to share, so I may be inspired by them in upcoming stories, with your consent of course. ~LOL