Page 64 of Open Water
Priya nodded, slow. "So. A year and a half of history. Three months of sleeping together. He's in another state right now and he's texting you." She picked her fork back up. "But sure. Not a relationship. Definitionally."
"It was a secret," I said again. Like that explained anything.
"It was a secret relationship," Noah said from his side of the booth. "Those are still relationships. The secret part's the modifier. Not the noun."
I didn't say anything. Twirled spaghetti I wasn't going to eat.
The thing was, they were right, and I hated that they were right. I'd been calling it nothing for so long because nothing was safer. Nothing didn't break your heart. Nothing didn't get pulled out of your hands by a guy's father. Nothing couldn't ruin your rowing career. And now that it wasn't a secret, people were looking for a label.
The truth was it had never been nothing. It was always a thing. I just hadn't been allowed to look at it straight.
Maybe it was a relationship.
Maybe it had been one for a while.
Noah paid the check because Priya said "the loser buys dinner and we lost" and Noah said "we placed second" and Priya said "second is first loser" and they argued about it all the way to the register while Carlo watched them with amusement.
***
Later, the three of us were freezing outside Priya's dorm. She hugged Noah and then turned to me.
"It was good to finally hang out, Liam."
"Yeah. You too."
"For what it's worth, I think you're handling all of this better than you think you are."
"Thanks, Priya."
She walked down the path to her dorm. Noah watched her go with the expression of a person who couldn't believe his luck.
"She's something," I said.
"Yeah." He was still watching. "She really is."
We walked back to the dorm. The campus quiet. End-of-semester energy — everyone either studying or gone for the weekend. Our breath visible in the cold.
The room. The door closing. Both of us changing into sweats and climbing into our beds the way we'd done a hundred times. Noah reaching for his phone dock. The whale sounds app queued up.
He didn't press play.
"How do you feeling being out?" He asked in the dark.
"Weird," I said. "It's weird."
"Weird how?"
I stared up.
"For over a year I had this thing I didn't understand. And it took up a lot of space." I shifted. "Now it's just out there. Anybody can know. I keep waiting to feel relieved and mostly I feel like I got caught doing something wrong."
"But you didn't do anything wrong."
"Yeah. Tell my body that."
Noah was quiet. Listening the way he does, all the way.
"Everything looks the same," I said. "Campus, boathouse, dining hall. But people look at me different now. Or I think they do. Hard to tell." I paused. "Some of them are cool. Girl from my A&P class told me I was brave. Some of them get weird. And some of them don't care at all, which is honestly the best one."
