Bizarre Love Triangle (lgbtq+)

4 PLANNING

When I came into the kitchen, Noel had already made me a coffee.

"I love you, thank you!"

"You're welcome, Hun."

"Looking good there, Harington!", I said when I saw that he was wearing a suit.

"Thanks. I got an interview at 8. If I get the internship, I'm gonna spend my summer here. I don't know, I thought maybe you could stay too, and we could – I don't know what we would do but it would be nice, wouldn't it?"

I smiled: "Yes! Maybe I'll be looking for a summer job in the city."

He smiled back at me. "Cool."

We drank our coffee in silence. I couldn't stop smiling. When Noel and I moved together, we didn't know each other in person, only online but we hit it off right away. Still, I couldn't believe that he actually liked me. He was this cool person with a fantastic taste in music and movies and art and I was just a normal person with a mediocre taste in music, basically no standards on movies and no knowledge whatsoever in art.

"See you later, Hun," he said, placing a kiss on my forehead.

"Is everything okay with Noel?" Elia put one arm around my shoulder. It felt weird. Not as ordinary as before. Or maybe that's just me.

"Yeah, why?"

"Because he wasn't ours's yesterday."

"Because he wasn't at David's yesterday."

"Oh, yeah. He had to prepare for a job interview." And a second later, I added, "Nothing to worry about."

Elia nodded understandingly. With her arm still wrapped around my shoulder and my heart still pounding in my chest, we entered the lecture hall.

"What will you guys be doing during the summer?" I asked Nas and David, sitting down next to them.

"I'm going home to see my family, maybe do a little summer job or so," Nas said.

"What about you, David?"

He shrugged nonchalantly. "Not sure yet. Going home too, probably."

"Cool," I said, dragging the os.

"We're gonna go to Israel to visit the mishpakhah," Elia interjects. She spoke Hebrew fluently and even taught me some words like "family".

"No one wants to stay here over the break?"

"No, why?"

"Noel and I talked about it this morning and we thought it might be fun if we all stayed in Chicago."

The others were quiet for a moment. "Sorry, but I got to see my family and my friends," Nas apologized.

Not if you don't have any friends and your family doesn't want to see you, I thought. But I didn't want to play the pity card.

"I might come back early," Elia said, and her face lit up. "I mean, we could all go home for three or four weeks and then come back before the new year starts."

Nas and David looked at each other for a quick moment, then she said, "I can't promise anything yet, but that sounds pretty good."

Elia winked at me. She knew about my situation and probably thought I was about to say something like: Not if you don't have any friends and your family doesn't want to see you.

I settled for her proposition.

"How does your family cope with the fact that you're a lesbian?"

"Oh, they don't know. In Israel, I will go back to hetero-femme-Elia. I will wear dresses and braid my hair. I won't look at any girl's ass and I will flirt with all the men they introduce me to. I will do what it takes to keep my saba from having his third heart attack."

I let out a joyless laugh. "But why are you okay with playing that role?"

"It's not like I have a fiancée and want my family's blessing. I don't need to blare my sexuality out to them, mostly because I really don't want to be the reason my grandfather dies," she said emphatically.

I didn't know what to answer.

"Look, I know it was important to you to come out to your family, but I don't see the benefit, to be honest. It would only cause trouble."