Page 63 of Puck Me Twice

I thought I had moved on. I was fine. Instead, I think I was really just repressing everything, pretending everything was okay.

I never dealt with it. I’ve been avoiding romantic relationships for years, sticking instead to brief sexual encounters to scratch the itch, and obtaining my need for companionship with a lively group of friends who love me unconditionally.

Because I thought Robby did. Love me unconditionally, that is.

“Sometimes we don’t know what’s missing until we find it,” Elsy says slowly. “It’s like—when I’m composing, I can hear it in my head, but I can’t always separate each instrument with each note until I really start looking for it.”

“I don’t follow.”

“His being attracted to men has nothing to do with the time he spent with you,” she says. “Dating is like… like picking locks. You have an infinite number of keys, and you don’t know which one will be the right fit, but you keep trying. Because that’s what you have to do—you keep trying. And sometimes it’s not a perfect fit, but it works well enough that you can jimmy it open, at least for now.”

Scooping out another glob of cookie dough, I consider this.

“And then it turns out that instead of being one key for each lock, there are multiple keys. So the first worked for a while until it got sticky, so you try something new, and when you find the next… you might not be looking for it or expecting it to work, but when you try it, it just… fits. And you… maybe you don’t forget the first key, but you know this second one fits better. It doesn’t invalidate everything you had with the first key. It worked for a while, until it didn’t. This new key, though? It fits like a glove.”

She smirks at me. “Or, alternatively, like a condom, snug and tight.”

I roll my eyes.

“Nothing will change the way that he felt about you back then. I know we didn’t know each other yet, but I’ve heard the stories and I’ve seen the photos. He adored you,” Elsy continues. “He just found out something new about himself. It’s not like he purposely led you on or hid it while you were together. He found out something new. That doesn’t make him a bad person. That makes him human.”

“No, no, I know,” I tell her. “I just… We were talking about getting married. We were talking about forever. And then he decided…”

She shakes her head. “He didn’t decide to be gay. It doesn’t work like that.”

I sigh. “I know. But⁠—”

“He made a dick move when he broke up with you,” Elsy says. “That doesn’t make him evil. It makes him human.”

“So what do I do?” I hate how helpless I sound. How helpless I feel.

“You forgive him,” she says, like it’s that easy. “And then you don’t punish Sven, or the next one, for something that Robby did. You heal.”

“Okay…” I pause. “So, the second part of this issue is—how do I tell my maybe-not fake boyfriend that I like him, but I don’t know if I can marry him?”

Elsy blinks. “You… tell him that. With words.”

“But, like… how?”

She shakes her head. “We can’t do this right now.”

“We can’t?”

“You need to get up, put away the cookie dough, and take a shower,” she announces. “I’ll call the girls. We need a club meeting, stat.”

twenty-one

. . .

Vanessa

An hour and a half later, I’m surrounded by my friends at our favorite local dive bar, and—well, all is not right in the world, but it’s slowly getting there.

I think.

Maybe.

Possibly.