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I kept my eyes closed and ran my fingers up and down the inside of my thighs. As always, I tried to picture my ideal man. I needed some sort of visual stimulation to get off. I created him in painstaking detail, but it just wasn’t working. He was . . .  blurry. I stroked myself and tried harder. He would have blonde hair and wasn’t too muscular, just enough so that you knew he probably ran or did some sort of activity. He had a sexy voice and didn’t call me “baby” because that was patronizing. He had just a few tattoos on his chest.

I growled in frustration. It wasn’t working. There was just too much on my mind to get myself there. That had been happening more and more lately. Stupid stress. Stupid senior year messing with my masturbation. I opened my eyes and gave up. Maybe I’d try again later when I was in bed.

My mind drifted to other things as I washed my hair. I replayed the day and for some reason, I kept seeing Stella walking by me this morning. Like my brain was stuck and just kept replaying it.

What the hell? I shook my head and shoved it aside, but the moment I did, there was a twisting in the pit of my stomach. My heart started to race, as if I was running from something, and I quickly finished my shower and got out.

After I scrubbed myself with the towel so hard that my skin was red and raw I yanked a brush through my hair. It snagged more than a few times and I ripped out a few hairs. I told myself to calm the fuck down and get my shit together. It was nothing.

It was totally nothing.

“P
ull up, pull up, you’ve almost got it,” I said to Joy as she attempted to hit her scorpion. She was so close to having her back arched perfectly with her foot pulled behind her head. Almost. Just a bit more stretching and she’d have it.

She made a face at me and then let her foot snap back to the floor.

“I feel like I’m bending myself in two,” she said, getting down on the floor to work on her splits.

“Well, you kind of are,” I said, getting down on the mat and joining her. As a senior captain of the cheer squad, one of my jobs was to take some of the JV girls under my wing and help them out. Sort of like a big sister/little sister situation. It could be kind of a pain in the ass, but at least Joy wasn’t obnoxious and really seemed like she wanted to listen to what I had to say.

After we stretched, we hit the locker room. Our big/little time was supposed to happen outside of practice, so we had to work it around both our schedules. If I didn’t hurry, I was going to be very late for work, so I took a quick “baby wipe shower,” changed my clothes, and said goodbye to Joy before rushing to my car. I knew I was sweaty and my hair was a mess, but that couldn’t be helped.

I pulled into the vet’s office and I was two minutes late. Shit. I dashed in the back door and nearly crashed into Maggie, who was dealing with a very grumpy golden retriever who didn’t want to be doing whatever she was trying to get it to do.

“Sorry!” I said as I nearly tripped over the leash and we got tangled together. I regained my balance and we untangled ourselves as the dog moaned and groaned.

“What are you doing to this poor boy?” I asked.

“Giving him shots. I’m a terrible person, aren’t I, Gunnar?” We both looked down at the dog as he howled like we were murdering him. I just laughed and moved past her to the back room where I could stash my bag. My scrubs today had little hearts on them. I’d gotten them around Valentine’s Day, but I figured hearts could be worn year round. I hustled to the front desk where the receptionist, Margie, gave me a look.

“Sorry, sorry,” I said, sitting down and booting up my computer. It was one of those terrible ancient desktops that was roughly the equivalent of a computer dinosaur, but the clinic didn’t have a lot of extra funds for new computers.

I signed in and got to work. Since I wasn’t even a vet tech, I didn’t get to interact much with the animals outside of checking them, and their owners, in. Most of my job involved boring clerical work, but if I wanted to get into vet school, this was one of the first steps.

I worked on schedules, checked people out, filed, organized, and did a bunch of other little tasks, and soon it was time to clock out. That was one of the reasons I loved it. Never a dull moment. I ended up breaking up a potential fight between a dog and a very old, very mean cat whose owner refused to use a cat carrier, and then ended up consoling a girl whose hamster was put to sleep.

“Busy day,” Margie said as I organized my desk again. I wanted it to look the same every day when I came back. I was weird that way.

“Same as always,” I said, giving her a little wave. “See you tomorrow.” She covered a yawn with her hand and I made my way into the back to grab my stuff. A few of the dogs who were there for overnight observation barked as I went by, begging me to release them.

“Not today, guys,” I said, but they didn’t listen and kept barking. My stomach yelled at me as I got in my car and turned it on. Shit. I was almost out of gas.

“Perfect,” I sighed. Just one more thing I had to do today.

“I
’m home,” I called an hour later when I came through the door with a few bags of groceries.

“Hey, Star,” Dad said as I dropped the bags in the kitchen and gave him a quick hug, then he started helping me put everything away.

“How was work?” he asked, putting the cereal box on the wrong shelf. He didn’t appreciate my organizational skills, but that was fine. I’d arrange them correctly later.

I filled him in on my day and asked how his had been.

“Good, good. I assigned
Hamlet
today so we’ll see how that goes.” He rolled his eyes and I laughed. He was an English professor at the local community college and needless to say, a lot of the students in his classes weren’t exactly fans of literature. They were forced to take English and liked to punish my dad when he tried to teach them something.

“
Sweets to the sweet
,” I quoted, handing him a bag of apples. I’d grown up with him testing me on literature by quoting passages and asking me what book they were from. Sometimes he’d reward me with Hershey’s Kisses.

“
To thine own self be true
,” he said, pointing at me. I rolled my eyes.

“I’ll get right on that.”

After we put the groceries away, dad started making dinner and I went to do my homework in the den. This was one of those times when I was happy that it was just the two of us. My mom had left us when I was a toddler, and my older brother Gabe was off at Columbia studying journalism. I missed him like crazy, but we talked at least a few times a week and he texted Dad nearly every day.

I worked steadily, hitting my least favorite subjects first and leaving my English reading for last. Dad was still pissed that I hadn’t signed up for AP English, and I didn’t think he was going to let it go anytime soon.

“Are you coming to the game?” I asked as I twirled spaghetti on my fork.

“I’m going to try. I have exams to grade, but I’ll do my best.” He always did. Sometimes he made it to see me cheer and sometimes he didn’t, but he tried. He always tried and that was what mattered.

“Have you thought any more about signing up for AP English?” he said and I sighed. I knew it.

“No. I just think that it’s not worth it. They don’t weigh AP classes, so I can get a perfect grade in regular English. Or I can take AP and have my GPA potentially take a dip. I don’t want to do that.” Now he was the one to sigh and I was treated to another lecture on the fact that I could gain college credit for taking and doing well on the AP test and blah, blah, blah.

He put down his fork and gave me a long look. Fortunately, I’d gotten most of my looks from him including hair color, eye color and shape, and our mouths did the same thing when we were trying not to smile.

“What if I told you I would give you some money so you could trade in your car and get a nicer one.” Shit. He’d picked the
one thing
that I would go for. My car wasn’t exactly a piece of crap, but it wasn’t really nice either.

I glared at him and he narrowed his eyes and glared back.

“Fine,” I said through gritted teeth. “I’ll sign up for AP English.”

W
e watched TV together; we always liked the same shows, and then I headed to my room. I worked through my nightly stretches and then got in bed.

The lights were off, but I closed my eyes. This was the only time I let myself think about it. About how when I thought about kissing, it wasn’t a boy I imagined. It was a girl. All sweet curves and soft lips. Sometimes her hair was long, and got in my way, sometimes it was short, the blunt ends tickling my fingers. We’d twist around each other until it was impossible to tell us apart.

The desire rushed through me and I welcomed it. I hadn’t, at first. It had always been followed by shame. By guilt. Why was I thinking about girls that way? I’d been twelve and most of my friends were swooning over the boys, but I couldn’t seem to feel that way. I tried. I tried so hard. I put posters of boy bands in my room and danced with them and tried to flirt with them, but it was just . . .  wrong. I didn’t like it.

I dated boys here and there, but never went further than that. They would try and I would slam a door in their face. Eventually they lost interest and moved on. I’d given up on that charade a while ago. I was who I was and no boy was going to change that.

I couldn’t imagine telling my father and my brother, at least not yet. I would have to someday, obviously, when I got into a relationship. They weren’t homophobic, or at least they had never said anything overt, but I didn’t want to test them either. Things were fine right now and soon I’d be off to college and I could go all in with whomever I wanted. I’d set that goal for myself and I was going to stick to it.