Dating Sarah Cooper

by Siera Maley

  “Why not? You need to come out of your shell a little. It’ll be fun!”

  “Sam’s playing Spin the Bottle,” was my response. I nodded in the appropriate direction, and she turned. “If you hurry, you might be able to kiss him.”

  I watched her take in the circle of people for a moment, and could practically see the wheels turning in her head. Relieved that I’d distracted her, I let myself relax a little, and finished my first drink. It was strong, and it took me a moment to get it all down, so by the time I’d set it aside, she was facing me again, a small smile on her lips.

  “So, that dance, then?” she asked, and offered me her hand. My lips parted in surprise, and I looked past her, to Sam and the others.

  “But Sam-” I tried, and she cut me off before I could finish.

  “Sam’s not my concern tonight.” She looked down at her hand for emphasis. “C’mon. I’ll teach you to grind.”

  “Are you serious?” I asked, flushing. “I’ve done it before.”

  “With that doesn’t count,” she said, tilting her head in Austin’s direction. “He’s terrible. Like, I feel really sorry for that girl he’s with right now.”

  “He wasn’t that bad,” I argued, mostly to keep her distracted. I didn’t know what was good and what was bad, honestly. I thought about offering to get her another drink to bide some time.

  “He was bad,” she retorted, and, sick of my stalling, reached over to grasp my hand with hers. “Look, let’s call it what it was back in LAMBDA two weeks ago: We’ve made out. And we’ve been dating for a while, haven’t we? There’s no going back at this point, and if you’re as dedicated to acting like a couple as I am, you’d dance with me, since it’s not like I can get away with dancing with anyone else anyway. C’mon.” She winked at me. “I’ll try not to get you too hot and bothered.”

  I rolled my eyes at her, fighting off another blush. “Trust me, we’re good there.”

  “Then what’re you scared of?” She tightened her grip on my hand subtly and tugged me gently toward the dance floor.

  And I’ve never been happier to see Connor in my life than I was right then, when he came at us out of nowhere and planted his feet right between us from behind, then threw an arm around both of our shoulders. I could smell the alcohol on his breath as he announced, “I love you guys! Seriously, screw Hannah. Like, you two are where it’s at.”

  Sarah and I exchanged knowing looks. Poor Connor. Rejected again.

  “I agree,” I told him, offering Sarah a sickeningly sweet smile. “You know, you two should definitely go play Spin the Bottle together. They’re doing it right over there.”

  “Actually, you and I were going to dance, Katie,” Sarah shot back, but Connor’d already lit up at my idea.

  “Yeah! Katie, come play with us, too. It’ll be fun!”

  I immediately looked panic-stricken. “Actually, maybe I should go dance, after all. I think Dina and Josephine are in that crowd somewhere with Bonnie. You guys go ahead, though.” I moved to leave, but Sarah grabbed my arm to keep me in place.

  “Oh, no you don’t,” she said, smirking at me. “If we’re going, you’re coming with us.”

  And just like that, Connor was leading us over to the circle that’d formed. When Sam and the others saw we were joining, they clapped encouragingly, and I found myself being handed a beer as I took a seat. Sarah and Connor sat down on my other side, and I avoided Sam’s eyes, but felt his gaze on us along with the rest of the group.

  A girl with blonde hair that I recognized from the cheerleading squad offered Connor the empty bottle. Christine Goddard. “You guys start the next round off,” she suggested. “Girls have to kiss girls, but guys don’t have to kiss guys.” She eyed Sarah and me and then said, in a tone that made me think it wasn’t intended as a friendly jab, “That shouldn’t be a problem for you two, I assume.”

  If Sarah heard the taunting in her voice, she ignored it. “If girls are kissing girls, it only seems fair that it should be the same for the guys,” she teased.

  “Nobody wants to see dudes kissing,” one of the other boys countered, and Connor abruptly spun the bottle a little too roughly, his coordination off after what had obviously been quite a few drinks. It landed on some poor girl I didn’t know, who ended up on the receiving end of a sloppy kiss from Connor. She wiped at her mouth, her nose wrinkling in displeasure as I was handed the bottle.

  “You’re the lesbian, right?” the boy sitting next to Sam asked. I nodded, almost afraid of what he’d say next, but he grinned and just replied, “Awesome. Here’s to you getting a chick.” Then he tipped the bottle in his hand back and downed the rest of his beer.

  I set my own bottle down and was just about to spin it, when a new voice just behind Sam asked, “Hey, mind if I join?”

  I looked up and saw Jessa standing over our group, a drink in her hand. I was too busy being surprised she was here at the party to notice what was said, but a moment later, she was seated across from me in the circle and waiting patiently for me to spin. I felt Sarah tense beside me. Even if Jessa had become nicer over the past couple of weeks, Sarah’s dislike of her hadn’t lessened. But I didn’t mind Jessa, even if I was still a little wary of her. She’d been right about Sarah and me. Sarah just hated the idea of not being able to outsmart someone.

  “Go,” Christine urged me, sounding impatient. I spun the bottle hastily, and it rotated wildly across the floor, finally slowing to a stop on Jessa.

  I looked up at her to see she had both eyebrows raised. She looked excited at the prospect of kissing me, and I wasn’t sure how to feel about that. “Cool. Katie’s cute,” she said, shooting me a smile that felt more like a smirk. I glanced at Sarah, but her eyes were trained on the ground. Her jaw looked a little tighter than usual, and I knew she was upset that someone who appeared to be her girlfriend was meant to kiss someone she didn’t like.

  I looked back at Jessa, overly aware of everyone watching us as she moved first, crawling on her hands and knees across the circle to place herself in front of me. I sat, unmoving, as she wordlessly took my chin in her hands and guided her mouth to mine.

  My hands stayed at my sides as we kissed, and while I was acutely aware of a few whistles and clapping from the guys in the circle as her lips moved over mine, I was mostly stuck in my own head, mentally comparing her to Sarah. Jessa and Sarah both knew how to kiss, and they both left my heart pounding and my lips buzzing, but kissing Jessa was mostly nothing like it’d been with Sarah, and I could tell that she was only enjoying kissing me because Sarah was watching.

  She pulled away after a few seconds, and I blinked repeatedly as she swept a finger under my chin and then returned to her spot in the circle, that smug smile back on her lips again. We got a few more claps as Sarah grabbed at the bottle, and I tried to clear my fuzzy head – both from the kiss and the alcohol – as I watched her take her time. I wondered for a moment if she knew something I didn’t about rigging the bottle, and if she was trying to figure out how to get it to land on Sam. Sarah was a smart girl when it came to anything academic, with the exception of a couple of the sciences. I couldn’t remember at the moment if Physics was one of them.

  Finally, her jaw tightened again, and instead of spinning the bottle, she twisted it back as though she was about to spin it, and then abruptly twisted it all the way around, her grip tight on it. When it was pointed at me, she released it, and dared anyone to challenge her. No one said a word, beyond a few shared grins and some raised eyebrows, and I barely had time to wonder why she’d given up a shot at kissing Sam before she’d taken my face in her hands and I was suddenly being kissed again.

  I’d spent the weeks following our first kiss convincing myself that it was an anomaly; a fluke kiss that’d only been so good because it’d taken me by surprise. And thank God I was able to use that excuse for this one, too, because it was just as good as the first.

  With Jessa, I’d kept my hands at my sides, but with Sarah, they flew right to her body
like they belonged there, starting on where her thighs rested between us and then slipping to her sides by the time one of her hands had moved to my neck.

  She deepened the kiss quickly, lips moving gently against mine, and I felt her pull me closer as her tongue sent sparks straight to behind my eyelids. My stomach churned and flopped and for the first time, I was sure I knew what people meant when they talked about another person giving them butterflies.

  We weren’t anywhere near done when I vaguely registered someone saying, “Oh, man, that’s hot,” and remembered where we were. In an instant, I’d pulled away, and Sarah blinked at me, looking just as dazed as I was. I felt my cheeks burn and my stomach turn unpleasantly, that comment ringing in my head, and I couldn’t bear to look at anyone else in the circle, but Sarah’s eyes held my focus anyway as they slowly lost their glazed look. She swallowed once, visibly, and then her hand moved down to grip mine.

  “C’mon,” she said, firmly, and then she was tugging me to my feet and pulling me out of the circle and through the living room.

  I followed, confused and a little tipsy as the drinks I’d had began to take their effect. Sarah, too, was obviously not sober, because she wasn’t quite walking straight as she led me. “Where are we going?” I asked her, but she pulled me down a hallway without answering, trying a couple of doors before she finally found one that opened. A second later, I’d been yanked inside a bedroom and the door was shut behind us.

  I stared at Sarah, growing even more confused as she rounded on me and moved back toward me. Her lips were on mine again before I could register that she’d moved close enough to kiss me, and my eyes fluttered shut even as my eyebrows furrowed. It was hard to think now that the alcohol was taking over my senses, but my body thought it’d be a good idea to kiss her back, and what section of my brain was still operating agreed with that decision until right around the time I realized that we were alone.

  We were alone. Why were we kissing if we were alone?

  I stopped thinking about that when I remembered how good kissing Sarah felt, and then my lips were moving against hers fervently, my eyes squeezed shut as I gave up on rational thought. Sarah was kissing me and kissing Sarah felt great; fantastic even, and that was all that mattered.

  But we were both drunk. And still alone. And we were both girls who were supposed to be straight. This was not very straight.

  I gasped when her tongue ran along my lip, squeezed my eyes shut so tightly it started to hurt, and then forced myself to gently push her away.

  She opened her eyes and I watched them struggle to focus on me. Her lips were swollen from kissing me and she was breathing hard, and in that two seconds before exactly what we were doing really hit me, I think I’d have died to see her like that over and over again.

  But then those two seconds passed, and we were two drunk best friends who’d just fooled around in a bedroom whose owner we’d probably never met. I swallowed hard, trying to stop seeing double, and at last, declared, “So I think I’m really drunk right now.”

  Sarah licked her lips even as her eyes fell to mine. “Yeah,” she breathed out. Then she tilted her head to the side, and told me, matter-of-fact-ly, “I like kissing you.”

  “I like kissing you, too, Sarah,” I agreed amiably, nodding my head, and we stared at each other for another long moment.

  Then the corners of her lips tilted upward, and suddenly, we were both slumped against the wall side by side, giggling hard until our stomachs started to hurt.

  We stumbled out of the bedroom together at some point soon after that, and the next morning, I’d remember thinking, right then, that I’d definitely not been drunk enough for what’d just happened, and that more alcohol sounded like a good idea.

  And then I wouldn’t remember much after that.

  I woke up in Sarah’s massive king bed the next morning with a pounding head. Sarah wasn’t with me, but the mystery of where she’d gone was solved within a few seconds, because she came back into the bedroom a moment later with a water bottle in each hand. I realized that her getting out of bed was probably what had woken me up in the first place.

  “Hey, you’re up,” she croaked, her mouth and throat sounding as dry as mine felt. I accepted the water bottle from her thankfully and downed half of it while she sipped from her own. When I was finished, I set it aside and blinked the sleep out of my eyes as I rubbed at my head.

  “Dude, I can’t remember most of last night,” I realized, alarmed. “What happened?”

  “God, where do I begin?” she mumbled, collapsing back on the bed next to me. “I’m trying to remember myself. I just know you got wasted and Dina and Josephine had to help us up to my room.”

  “Well, that’s embarrassing.”

  “Yeah,” Sarah sighed out. “Let’s never drink that much again. I think I was pretty bad too; you just got bad a little quicker than I did.”

  I closed my eyes and wracked my brain for memories. I had everything up until kissing Sarah in the bedroom, but I was perfectly content to lose that memory… or at least act like I had and then never mention it again. There was something about dancing with Josephine, Dina, and Bonnie at some point afterward, and then trying to cheer up an upset Connor, I think… and there was something about Sarah and Sam in there, but I didn’t know what.

  “You hooked up with Sam,” I guessed, glancing over at her. “Congrats.”

  “No, I don’t think so,” she disagreed, shaking her head. “I just remember talking to him for a while. I think you were dancing.”

  “Well, that’s still good.” I started to get out of bed, feeling her eyes on me as I reached for my water bottle. I needed to use the bathroom.

  “Is it?” she asked me. I turned, my hand on the knob of her bedroom door, to see her staring at me, eyebrows furrowed, from her spot on her bed. I didn’t want to think about why she’d ask me that.

  “Yeah,” I said, and then left the room.

  I had to stay at Sarah’s for a little while to make sure I felt one-hundred percent recovered so that there was no evidence of where I’d been last night. But once I was feeling better, she took me home and dropped me off. My parents were waiting inside for me: Dad in the kitchen reading the paper, and Mom working on brunch.

  “Hey honey, did you have a good time with Sarah? I could use some help with cooking, if you’re up for it,” Mom said.

  “It was fun,” I lied. “We actually stayed up until, like, five in the morning, so I think I might go back to sleep, actually.”

  “Oh, okay.” Mom sounded intrigued more than disappointed, and I saw her and dad exchange a look. “What’d you two do all night?”

  “Um, just talked and stuff.” I shrugged my shoulders.

  “Okay,” Mom repeated, and I went to my room.

  Once I was there, I took out my phone and exchanged a few texts with both Dina and Josephine, who I’d sent about a thousand thank-you texts to earlier after what Sarah’d told me they’d done. They both seemed amused more than anything, which was nice, but I was still really embarrassed. Last night hadn’t been like me; I’d never really been anything more than tipsy before, and I vowed right then to never drink that much again.

  I leaned forward as I sat in my bed, closing my eyes and resting my head in my hands. Everything felt confusing now, and I just wanted this thing with Sarah to end before I wound up more frazzled than I could handle. But it wouldn’t end. We still had over seven months left to go.

  “It’s fake, it’s fake, it’s fake,” I murmured over and over again, and then I laid down, and, at some point, mercifully fell back to sleep.

  Chapter Seven

  LAMBDA’s first out-of-school meeting was the following Tuesday. Rather than sitting in our usual circle in room 405, we all carpooled to a place about ten minutes away, which Jake described as “Flowery Branch’s local LGBT resource center”. I hadn’t known such a place existed, and Sarah expressed the same ignorance as we drove there.

  With Sarah and I included, the
re were fifteen people in our club, and we all gathered inside the building – which featured a small rainbow flag outside its front door – to have a talk with a man named Owen Bradshaw, although he told us immediately that he preferred to just be called by his first name. He was in his late twenties and worked at the center.

  “Our general mission is to make sure the local LGBT youth… or, in other words, you guys,” he said, “feel comfortable having a place to come to when you need somewhere to turn, whether it’s for answers to questions or if you have family issues and don’t feel comfortable returning home. We’ve housed teens overnight, and we’ve also given them hot meals. But for less serious circumstances, we’ve had people stop by just to borrow a good book or a movie from our collection over on that shelf.”

  He pointed across the lobby, to a bookshelf filled to the brim with DVDs and novels. I raised both eyebrows, surprised there were enough to fill the shelf. It’d been like pulling teeth for Sarah and me to try and find any books or movies a couple of weeks ago.

  “So, anyway, why you guys are here. We were contacted by Jake about some of you potentially being unaware that we were here, although I will say I do see a few familiar faces amongst you.” He smiled. “Additionally, we’ve decided we’d like to do something small for National Coming Out Day, which is coming up when?”

  Owen raised a hand to his ear expectantly, and the rest of the group chorused, “October 11th!” as Sarah and I stood dumbly amongst them.

  “Right. So, for today, just feel free to explore, look around, talk amongst yourselves… and I’m sure Jake will keep you posted, but we’ll probably meet back here in a few days on Sunday the 10th and work out what we’ll be doing on the 11th. Let me know if you guys have any questions or need anything. We’ve got some food out on the table over there if you’re hungry; help yourselves.”

  Our group of fifteen immediately dissolved into several familiar cliques. Henry, Hattie, and Jessa headed for the buffet table with some others, and I saw Jake stay back to talk to Owen.