A/N: I submitted this piece to a literary journal but that was over a year ago now. I think it’s safe to say it’s never going to be published, and I can probably post it here instead. It’s about the best and worst parts of being bisexual before you realise you’re bisexual. Enjoy 🙂

How do I explain to you Aditi?

Everybody wanted Aditi. 

I wanted Aditi for a long, long time, if only to convince myself I was good enough for a girl like her. For a human like her. A real, living, breathing masterpiece with a heart born with a hole in a New Delhi courtyard. 

But I never captured her imagination long enough, deeply enough. I was never addictive enough. 

She captured me, though. Every last one of my eyelashes was trapped inside her. 

The first time she kissed me it was a joke. She wanted to up her numbers. I was happy to help her as long as I was highest. It was under the spotlights in crimson. She knew exactly what I was going to do before I did it. She bit my lip. 

The second time it was serious. In the broad translucence of the smoking area, held out over the roughening sable sea, I wound my fingers into the wire railings and the angel’s horns sounded. No one batted an eye. 

“I love you,” she said, searching. The line in the sand.

“I love you, too!” I giggled. The gentlest of breezes. 

There weren’t enough excuses after that, so we never made them. She would sit on my lap and kiss my neck while the whole flat cheered and sent the epic to Snapchat, and every time she dried my tears, every time she brushed my hair I would wonder, has it always been like this?

On that school trip when I found Megan crying. I gave her my sandwiches and she asked me not to tell anyone what happened. The way I blushed once I knew that moment was ours. 

When I gave Izzy my art project because she hadn’t cared about the topic until she saw my creation. A tiny, sea-foam sea turtle that I knew she’d throw away as soon as she got home. 

Or am I just desperate? To be loved? For attention from any source that I can sap it? Too lazy to untangle what’s happening in the sheer, unintelligible profundity of my soul. Too content to follow teachings even if I don’t believe them. 

Had that fascination been as infinite as it felt? Fascination and friendship. 

Aditi scraped the stone, the line inching backward. I defended her at every sign of danger. At midnight, I was hers. But rarely did I earn a rank above ‘mate’. Never did I find my way into a photo that didn’t capture everyone else we knew. Never was I the name in her bio with a specially selected emoji, the background on her phone that she so laboriously decorated. 

I held back nothing, put my tongue in her mouth. Never did I match Harry or Alex or Josh. 

In the epilogue she texted me. Told me she’d dreamt of me, of the chaos we’d caused before we ran home and fell asleep on her bathroom floor. Or perhaps when I’d listened to her vomiting. 

“I love you,” she said, searching. 

I didn’t reply. 

And that’s the slice of Aditi. The wound that I cannot quite heal. The soft hand on the door, pushing from the outside. 

A memory.