8AN: This story is very personal to me. In a very real way, it's how I feel on the inside.
That said, please do not hesitate to give a bad review should you see fit. I welcome criticism.
Lastly, this story has strong lesbian themes, but nothing graphic, and I think it will stay that way.
I'm not a lesbian, at least not what I think of when I think of a lesbian. Lesbians are attracted to women, lesbians are icons of sexuality, and are typically masculine. I'm none of those things. I don't want sex, I'm not attracted to women, and I'm not really masculine at all, I'm about as girly as they come. Pink sheets, multicolored pens, stuffed animals, I own them all.
Tori is a lesbian, though. She always made wild and unsubstantiated claims to her sexuality, like she kissed one girl or the next, everyone in our classes knew, sometimes even the teacher. When we were younger, she once told me that she made out with Arnold Schwarzeneggar's daughter when she went to California this one time. I didn't care, for lots of reasons, she never claimed to have a girlfriend, and most of the girls I knew that she claimed to have kissed were the exact opposite of me. But I didn't care mostly because I wasn't a lesbian, and I didn't care.
She was so boyish, but ever since we were little girls, she was my best friend. She lived next door with her father, and even though we had other friends on the little suburban street of ours, we spent most of our time with each other as kids. We rode bikes a lot, we watched a lot of tv together, we were into the same shows growing up and even now. The other kids were nice and all, but Tori was interesting, and fun. She was a fan of the outdoors, and there was a little patch of woodlands behind our backyards. Her favorite place to go was this limb of a tree that was jumping distance from a cliff, and from that limb you could see above the treetops below you, and if you listened you could hear the little stream that ran behind our neighborhood. I didn't like it so much, because of the height, but on the rare occasion she coaxed me up there, it was always stunning.
In hindsight, her father was by no means a bad person, he just had too much work to do, and not enough time for his daughters. Her father was a realtor of sorts, but he put in long hours, and turned to the job to cope with the death of his wife when Tori was only 6. Tori's older sister did what she could, until she moved out after Tori turned 8. I was the only real girly influence she had after that. We took care of each other, an oath we swore shortly after her mother died.
She likes my femininity, she used to tell me that the only reason she didn't try to kiss me was that she was sure to ruin that quality of me somehow, as if her personality would consume me. It wasn't until I was in the 8th grade did I figure out she had a crush on me. I couldn't have known, I wasn't experienced with dating back then.
I had always thought she was joking about kissing me, and as for the rest of the signs, holding hands, cuddling up to watch movies, I thought that was natural, even if she did it a lot. Once, when we were younger, we were riding our bikes through a developing section of our neighborhood, she found a piece of plywood, and set up an impromptu ramp on a downhill slope. She was convinced that if she went fast enough, she would be fine, but when she went off it, she landed and lost her footing causing one of the pedals to whip around into her knee. I rode over to her and as she lazily came to a stop and dismounted her bike; I could see that it hurt. she sat down on the pavement, tears starting in her eyes, and in an empathetic rush, I sat down and hugged her tight. Receiving me, she asked me to kiss the wound, and as it seemed as though she was perking up, I tenderly kissed her knee, and she smiled, so I did it again while looking at her, and she giggled that time. She put the other knee beside my lips and I kissed that one as well. She hugged me, telling me that I was perfect, and that I should never change. It wasn't true, but it was sincere. To this day that was the biggest compliment anyone's ever paid to me.
I had my first boyfriend in the 8th grade. He told me that he thought she was interested in me. I told him that she just does those things, and not to judge her. He claimed that he has three sisters close to his age, and none of them act like that towards any of their friends. I told him that Tori has been my friend since I was four, and I can tell when she's interested in someone. Later that year, Tori caught him kissing another girl, and when I asked him about it he told me that she was lying and trying to split us up. I told him that I was certain that she would never do that, and that he has no reason to accuse her of doing such a thing. He told me that if he wasn't good enough, then I should just go sleep with her, and with that, he stormed off. Within a week, rumors spread that I was a lesbian.
Tori came over to help me cope with it, her advice consisted of denying the rumors, and playing a prank on my ex-boyfriend. Although I had no intention of actually pranking someone I was interested in what she was thinking. She suggested that we find a way to drug him, something she picked up from her taste in tv. Another idea of hers was spreading other malicious rumors about him, but her best idea involved deploying a stink bomb on his clothes at the beginning of the day, and having him smell bad for a whole school day. I told her no, but the thought made me feel better. She hugged me, which she hadn't done since I got a boyfriend, and as if she were some kind of prophet, it happened. As we were hugging I started to notice things about her that I never noticed before. She had been playing footsies with me this whole time, and I noticed that it stopped. I noticed her breast nuzzling my ribcage, her hair smelt nice, but most importantly, I noticed an attraction between us. She let go, and the footsie's started again. She told me not to worry so much, that it will blow over and be replaced by another rumor. Almost as if she was in my head, she also said that if I were a lesbian, she would know it. At that instant I felt watched by my own best friend, as if I were under constant scrutiny as a suspected lesbian, and that somehow, I always had been, and in some sense, she was waiting for me to come around.
Adding to my confusion was the fact that Tori didn't say anything about how she felt about me. That night, in my pink sheets I remember wondering what I should do, wondering if I act on those feelings, would I like it? Did I like her? She's cute, there's no denying it. Beauty has a way of being reliant on circumstance, attire, makeup, setting; but cute happens wherever you are, whatever you're dressed as. And Tori had a lot of cute, something I was almost jealous of; it was so effortless for her. Tori had a lot if kindness in her too, but I was really the only person who knew it was there, she's usually pretty callous toward others, even her own family. I was starting to think that perhaps she did care for me beyond just friendship, that perhaps I knew her this way because she was in fact interested in me.
I was convinced it was an unhappy path. I would be admitting to myself that my ex-boyfriend was right, and admitting to Tori that I have feelings for her. I was worried that others would find out about us, because we certainly wouldn't be open about it. And I certainly wouldn't ever want to hurt her. I thought lesbians were looked down upon as second class citizens, and I didn't want to be a part of it.
I had a boyfriend in less than a week. It didn't last, and that feeling of relief never came. I knew I was looking for something to tell me that I wasn't gay, but I couldn't find it. The question was eating at me, like an elephant in the room of my mind, my friends could see something was bothering me, but only Tori would understand, and I wasn't about to ask her if I was a lesbian.
The school year ended, and I was ignoring my problem under what I saw to be the easy way out: I just wouldn't date anybody. I didn't have anyone to go to, I didn't want anyone to know or ridicule me, or in Tori's case, I didn't want her to get the wrong idea about me. I wasn't even sure myself. My parents especially wouldn't approve, devout protestants, pious as long as I can remember. Besides, there was nothing to tell them, nothing to talk about. I was still their little girl, the one who wanted to be a doctor when she grew up, the one one who wanted a Volkswagen Beetle when she turned 16, the one who liked pink, and showed all signs of normality.
That summer, Tori got her first girlfriend. I met her, she was boyish too, taller than both tori and I, and she was really nice and cute. that was the first time I ever saw Tori kiss someone else. Tori probably didn't mean anything by it, but as much as I didn't want to admit my feelings for her, it hurt to see her kiss someone else, and every time she did it, it felt like she was doing it in front of me on purpose, like she wanted to show me. They were hardly together, but Tori and I spent less time together that summer. Until I talked to her about it.
AN: I wrote this and the second chapter before I uploaded it. The only reason I split them up is for the content and style, the next part has actual dialog.
By the beard of Zeus I order you to review if you have read this far or so help me I will complain, stop writing and otherwise do nothing about it. So please, for everyone's sake, review the story and tell me what you liked and didn't like.