Forgetting to Breathe

Chapter 3-1

Chapter 3

All weekend, I obsessed over the events at the football game. The look on Keira’s face. The guilt I felt, which I would immediately suppress by the pep talk Jenny had given me. If they had broken up with over the weekend. I wondered if Keira was thinking of me. How school would be Monday. Or if maybe she wasn’t thinking about it at all.

Either way, I was on my way to math and I was going to find out. I was nervous, to say the least. What if Sadie slapped me? That’s irrational, she wouldn’t do that. Right?

I was the last to arrive to class—I was taking my time, due to my nerves. And that backfired whenever I came in and the entire classroom looked at me, including the two girls I were afraid to see.

“Ms. Engles, nice of you to join us,” Mr. Dunphy said, and I could tell he was not pleased. I mumbled out an apology and sat down. My chair made a loud squeak as I scooted forward. How embarrassing.

I stared at my desk, not daring to look in the direction of the gorgeous golfer and her girlfriend. My face was hot, as I could feel them looking at me, but I told myself that was not likely and that I was overthinking.

“Anyways, class. Now that we are all in attendance,” the teacher took a dramatic pause, to shame me. “We can carry on with business as usual. I want you to team up with your partners from last week and finish the packet. At the end of class, we will go over our answers, okay?” He put his glasses back on and sat back at his desk, pulling out his Stephen King novel, as he did every day.

Great. The one day I didn’t want to be partnered with Keira. I felt like I was going to die. Would she be mad at me for putting her under the impression that I was straight?

“Hey, math buddy,” she cheerfully said and sat down in the chair next to me.

“Hey, study buddy,” I smiled back at her, but inside I was freaking out.

“So, how was your weekend?” she asked, grabbing her packet out of her folder and flipping to the page we left off on.

“Oh, it was alright. Went skydiving. Had a paint ball war. You know, the usual,” I sarcastically replied and she looked at me and smiled again.

“And by that you mean hung out and home and watched Netflix?”

“Ooh, you see right through me,” I responded and she chuckled a little. She was a hundred percent correct.

We started on a few of our math problems and it was pretty uneventful. No mention of the football game. Maybe she was so drunk, she didn’t notice at all.

“Okay, so number nineteen. What the heck is this—hieroglyphics?” I asked her, causing her to giggle.

“So, you know what I was thinking?” she asked me and my heart started beating faster.

“Hmm?” I tried to sound normal.

“So, I know I drank a little Friday, but I could have sworn I saw you kiss a girl?” she questioned and looked into my eyes. The eye contact made me uncomfortable.

“Oh, yeah,” I replied to buy time. I panicked. What should I say? I thought back to Jennifer’s pep talk. “Yeah, she’s my…girlfriend.” The words sounded foreign coming from my mouth.

“Oh,” she trailed off, looking back at her paper. “I was under the impression that you were straight,” she stated, still looking at the packet.

“Oh, yeah, I…” It was my turn to trail off now. I didn’t know what to say. She looked up at me now, waiting on my reply. “We just…I just wasn’t ready to really be out, you know?” I could feel my face getting red and I had no clue why. She was still staring at me and I couldn’t read her.

I couldn’t help but look at her pink, plump lips. I wondered what they tasted like. Her bright brown eyes had a flake of gold in each of them. I hadn’t noticed that before. It made her even more flawless to me. I came back to my senses and noticed she was still looking at me. I looked away and so did she.

“That’s understandable,” she simply said, and we continued with our work.

* * * *

“That’s it? She just said that’s understandable’?” Jennifer asked, incredulously.

“Yeah. And that’s it. What does that mean?” I sighed.

“It means that she is reasonable and realizes it’s understandable,” Ariel chimed in from the living room.

“Always the voice of reason, Ariel,” Jenny responded, rolling her eyes. “What look did she have on her face?” She looked back towards me. I was lying on the bed, splayed out in a dramatic fashion.

“She just…stared at me.”

“Stared? But what did her face look like?” my best friend tried again.

“I don’t know. It was blank.”

“Maybe she is just trying to suppress her feelings,” Ariel responded, coming into the bedroom and sitting at my desk, facing us.

“That could be it!” Jennifer hopefully responded.

That would be nice, but I wasn’t so sure. I should have looked over at Sadie to see what was going on there, but I was too afraid to look at her. Keira hadn’t mentioned anything about her in class. That wasn’t unusual, though.

“But just in case, we need to hatch another plan,” Jenny got up from the bed and was pacing around the room. I watched her, amused. “Hmm. Okay, how about we get them to join us on a double date?”

“Are you out of your mind? And how would we do that? Say hey, wanna go on a date with me and my girlfriend. Why? Because us lesbians have to stick together’?”

“It’s not the craziest thing ever, actually,” replied Ariel. She was filing her nails now, distracted, but joining in nevertheless.

“Thank you!” Jenny said, loudly. “Just hear me out. Look, us going on a date will show her what a great girlfriend you would be to her. Think of it as an audition.”

I don’t know if she was the devil on my shoulder or my voice of reason, but she had me on board. It actually made sense. But was I prepared to spend an evening with Sadie giving me evil looks?

“J, why are you going along with this? Isn’t it going to make you uncomfortable?” I asked her.

She grabbed my hand and spoke softly. “Ash, it is my duty to make sure my best friend is happy. Plus, I’ve already seen you naked, we cuddle all the time…We are practically dating already,” she replied and winked at me, causing me to laugh.

“That’s for damn sure. You two are a cuter couple than me and my i***t,” Ariel said and we all shared a laugh. I had the best friends in the world.