𝐐𝐮𝐞𝐬𝐭𝐢𝐨𝐧 𝐌𝐚𝐫𝐤𝐬 || 𝐂𝐡𝐚𝐞𝐥𝐢𝐬𝐚✔

Chapter 9

"I like a girl."

Brown eyes blink back at me. The lips press together and the eyebrows knit over the nose, and then the entire head gives a collective nod.

"I can do this."

A thumbs up. A supportive wink. Another nod.

I turn away from the mirror and rip open my bedroom door, almost racing myself down the hallway, like I'm trying to beat my thoughts to the living room. If they catch up with me, I know I'll chicken out and crawl back to my bed and bury myself in my mattress like a groundhog. I'm tired of shielding myself because before all of this happened I always thought of myself as a brave kind of person - you don't sing and dance and act in front of hundreds of people at a time if you aren't - and this is the ultimate test. It has to be done.

Because I like Chaeyoung. I want Chaeyoung. I need Chaeyoung.

I've known that for a long time, but much like I've spent a lot of my alone time in the shadows of my blankets, those thoughts were pressed down, hidden. I didn't want anyone to see them, to have even the slightest hint of their existence. Not even me. Especially me. I thought I could get away with passing this whole thing off as a phase, something I would grow out of, something to blush about when I was older and married and told my husband in secret, and he would get all turned on by it and ask if I would ever think about hooking up with another woman and I would get mad and make him sleep on the couch and -

I had it all planned out, really, when I wasn't with Chaeyoung. But after our anniversary, I was with her practically every day. I didn't enjoy much of anything when I wasn't near her. I wasn't pushing her away anymore. The tension that had locked me up whenever we were in view of the public melted away. And she never once pressed me about any of it. She's always been totally content with us when we're alone; the safety of her bedroom, mine, and our laughter vibrating the air, and her lips meeting mine, and our hands speaking with fingertips across the canvases of our bodies. And it wasn't a sudden realization - a struck by lightening, stop-everything-I'm-doing kind of moment. I didn't wake up and see her next to me and become overwhelmed with all of my feelings for her. Like everything between us, it was slow and gradual, and I still suffer under the glares of my sister, and some nights I do find myself pulling the blankets over my head and patting the bones over my chest as if to calm it down. But they're becoming fewer and further between. Chaeyoung kisses my panic away.

There was a moment, though, that sticks out. We were at school and Chaeyoung was chattering away. I really was listening, at the time, but in hindsight I don't recall what she was going on about. All I know is that, as always, I was captured by how animated she was, how her lips were smiling to the point of splitting her face in half with big, blinding white teeth flashing in and out of view. It was right after lunch and the bell was about to ring - I don't have my next class with her, so we usually just waved and moved on with promises to meet up later. She shut her locker and and smiled at me, bouncing on her toes. "See ya, Lisa!" She had said.

And I had smiled back at her and nodded. "See ya." My hand had touched her elbow and the world shrunk around us. Hollywood Arts wasn't there. California, North America, the oceans and continents shrunk away until my entire universe centered around a red sun, and I almost kissed her, right there in the hallway. It was the widening of her pupils that alarmed of what I was doing, where I was, and the galaxies exploded again. I gasped loudly and Chaeyoung blinked, confused, but there was a flickering light of something joyful in her eyes. She touched my hand as I tried to say something, anything, but couldn't.