Call It What You Want To

Chapter 3: Taya

By the time I reached lunch the next day, I was already wiped out. At around 3:30 in the morning, Mila decided that she was awake and so should the rest of the house despite all of our alarms being set for 6:15. So, even after a large iced coffee and a donut from Dunkin', I was ready to fall over by the middle of my third period. It didn't help that I also had my Strength and Conditioning class where we ran almost 3 miles in the cardio room.

"I wanna die, no scratch that. I wanna go to bed. I wanna go to bed for a long time," I groaned after Andre, a guy that's on the powerlifting team and at my lunch table, asked why I looked like The Walking Dead.

"Yeah, cardio didn't fuckin' help either," Dylynn said as she stabbed her fork on her mac n cheese. If you were on the powerlifting team, you had to take the Strength and Conditioning class that was taught and run by the coaches. So the thirteen of us that were on the team made up about 75% of the class.

"For real though," Andre said, as if he didn't also do the cross country team "for fun".

"No, Mila just woke us all up early and I couldn't go back to sleep. I'm just tired."

Between the six of us at the lunch table, we all traded analogies about how tired we were and debated which class we'd sleep through. I really debated sleeping through my AP Government class, but there was a test tomorrow and I couldn't risk missing what the test was over. Dylynn was the lucky one that would be sleeping through her next period study hall.

"Dawg, if you ever wanna sleepover and get away from that, you can sleepover at my place," Andre offered. "You know my mama don't care. She likes you more than me!"

I laughed at the thought of sleeping over at Andre's. "Yeah, just cause she doesn't care doesn't mean that my mom doesn't! No way she'd let me sleepover on a school night or at a guy's house."

"As if you're not already a raging homosexual?" another powerlifting girl, Hallie asked jokingly. It sent Dylynn doubled-over laughing. I rolled my eyes and laughed with them.

I figured out I was attracted to girls the summer before my freshman year. This realization was only moments after kissing Grace McDaniels in the bathroom at our eighth grade graduation party. This kiss felt nothing like the few kisses I had with my recent ex-boyfriend, Chase Easton (who I broke up with only about a month after we started dating). I used to think one of us was just a really bad kisser, but then I realized I didn't actually like kissing him. Kissing Grace on the other hand? Now that was something I could get behind, and Grace was a really, really, good kisser.

Too bad she moved to New York a week later.

All my friends and family were supportive when I decided to come out a few months later, a lot of them saying "I just want you to be happy". My dad was super supportive cause it meant there was virtually no chance that I'd end up as a teen mom.

I've had a few here and there flings and dates throughout high school, but a lot of the gay girls at Greyhaven were, to put it nicely, 100% not my type at all. Not that I want to single people out, but I was not exactly interested in the girls who thought being a lesbian was a trendy word to put with their persona of wearing cat ears and constantly making obscure internet references no one understood. Not saying that all the gay chicks at my school were like that, but a good vast majority of the minority was.

I was into girls that were like Adelaide Fisher, my most recent ex-girlfriend. She was tall, had long blonde hair, and was a little bit more masculine presenting than my tomboyish nature. We started dating after some shameless flirting at one of the football games, and then we went to homecoming together that fall. She broke up with me last school year after Prom with the simple phrase, "I just don't love you anymore." After that, I dedicated the summer to myself, friends, and my family after deciding that I was not going to let someone like her ruin my senior year when I already had so much riding on my shoulders.