PART ONE ; confessions
"Cynthia Rose?"
Chloe was twisting her hands, waiting for the younger woman to walk towards her.
"Yeah?" she asked with a frown of concern at the apparent hesitation from Chloe, which was very unusual.
"Can I... uh.. ask you a personal question?" she finally said, avoiding the other Bella's puzzled look. Her palms were sweaty, her throat dry from nervousness, and she swallowed loudly when her friend scoffed with a smirk.
"Since when do you ask permission to shoot a personal question?" Surprise was painted all over Cynthia Rose's, but as she was about to make another comment about it, she saw Chloe's eyes; like a trapped animal. The girl was actual anxious to ask her something, and that never happened.
"This is.. uh.. this is different." She darted her blue eyes away, scanning the almost empty auditorium nervously.
"Ok Chloe, now you're gettin' me worried. What's the matter?" Cynthia moved closer to the redhead, putting both her hands on her shoulders to make her sit down in the first row of seats.
Taking a deep breath, Chloe closed her eyes and opened her mouth once or twice before any sound actually came out.
"How did you.." she shook her head, wiping her sweaty palms on her jeans, unable to form the words she had so desperately wanted to say. "How did you... uh... know?"
The other Bella looked at her like she had spoken in Spanish, even though she thought she had a slight idea of what she was talking about. Chloe buried her cherry red face in her hands with an embarassed moan.
"Come on, Chloe, just ask me what you want, I promiser I won't get mad or laugh." She reassured her friend with a warm back rub, smiling softly.
"Okay. I'm sorry, this is not like me at all, but I didn't know who to talk to about this." She stated, resting her head on Cynthia Rose's shoulder with sigh.
The woman smiled again, her first idea now turning into a certitude. She could've almost answered Chloe's question that was coming next right now, but she knew the girl needed to get it out of her system.
"It's okay, I'm glad you decided to come to me. Just tell, everything's gon' be alright."
Chloe straightened her back and took another deep breath, holding it in for just a few seconds before letting it out in a puff. She stared at her shoes and didn't look up before she was done speaking.
"How did you know you liked girls more than boys?"
As soon as the words escaped her mouth, the red on her cheeks spread all the way to her forehead and ears. She whined, muffling her apologies in her hands once again, feeling rather stupid for asking her this. Cynthia Rose smiled reassuringly and took Chloe's hands in hers, waiting for the girl to look at her.
"Chloe, poor baby girl, you were afraid to ask me how I found out I was a lesbian?"
She couldn't help but chuckle lighlty when Chloe pouted at the reformulation of her words.
"When you put it like that, it makes me sound so much more stupid, oh gosh! I am so, so sorry, Cynthia Rose, I should've never asked you this, it's so innapropriate!" Chloe rose quickly to her feet and was about to run away when Cynthia spoke loudly.
"I was fifteen. My neighbor, her name was Kelley, was the most beautiful girl I'd ever seen. I'd never felt this way for a boy, and I had many boyfriends before. She was just so different, and she had struck my mind the first day she moved in."
Chloe stopped in the middle of the auditorium. She wanted to hear the rest of this story, but she was quite nervous that if she did stayed to listen to Cynthia Rose, she'd find out her motives. She wasn't ready for that, not yet at least. Curiosity got the better of her though, and she turned to a smiling Cynthia Rose, patting the seat next to her.
"Maybe we could grab a coffee instead? If you don't mind talking about it in public, that is." Chloe suggested with a weak smile.
"Coffee sounds great." her friend answered before walking to her.
They took Chloe's car and passed about half a dozen of cafés and small restaurants before the ginger found one that was far enough from campus so that nobody would be likely to know them.
"Why so far? You ashamed of being seen with the big black lesbian?" Cynthia Rose joked when they sat down with their orders.
"No, of course not! I just... didn't want to us to be disturbed. Do you want to go some place else?" she asked nervously, already ready to leave.
"No, no, here's fine Chloe, I was kidding." she rolled her eyes playfully at her friend's strange behavior today, which made her smile sheapishly.
"I'm sorry, I know I'm weird and all, I.. I'm just ...uh.. not used to be uh... nervous, I guess?" she offered with a sorry look.
"It's okay, don't worry about it." Cynthia Rose took a sip of her coffee before setting her cup down with a little smile. "Now, where was I with my story."
Chloe put her mug on the table too, joining her hands under her chin to give her full attention to Cynthia Rose's words.
"Her name was Kelley, and she was seventeen. She had just moved in from California, she was all tan and athletic. I had a boyfriend at the time, his name was Tyron. He was really sweet to me, but as soon as I said hello to Kelley, I couldn't get her out of my mind. I didn't know what was happening to me because the day before she walked, or rather stormed, into my life, I had presented Tyron to my parents. That didn't happen often, partly because I didn't keep a boyfriend long enough for it to be necessary, but mostly because I'd never liked the boys enough to deem them worthy of meeting my parents. I have a very strong relationship with them, and when I talked to my mom about how I felt towards Kelley, she told me I was falling in love. I told her I couldn't be in love with a girl, I was straight, I'd always been with boys my whole life. She said 'I know, when you were little, you never wanted to play with dolls. Always outside with the boys, playing basketball or war. I knew this day would come, Rosie'. That's what she called me, Rosie, but don't tell anybody, okay?"
Chloe nodded simply, but couldn't the smile tugging at the corner of her lips at the thought of Cynthia Rose as a kid.
"Okay, so I told her 'What do I do?' and she told me to listen to my heart. And I did. I was starting to become friends with Kelley, and so I asked her if she wanted to hang out with me one night. She looked at me curiously, but said yes, and that's when I realized I had never seen her with a boy, in fact in school almost all the seniors had tried to flirt with her in some way, but she had always pushed them away gently. I think she was very aware of the effect she had on me, and that night, we put a movie on, but as you could imagine, we didn't even get to the first fifteen minutes before something happened. First, it was her hand grazing the side of my leg, then the same hand on my thigh. Before I knew what I was doing, I was in her lap and we were making out. We'd been good friends for the past three months, but I never expected this to happen on the first time we'd be alone just the two of us. God, a woman's kiss is so different from a boy's, it consumed me and I didn't know how to breathe anymore."
Chloe's throat was dry, a lump was forming in it and as much as she tried to swallow it, it just wouldn't go away. She didn't realize she had been holding her breath while listening to Cynthia Rose's story until she let out a sigh of relief. She'd been afraid this would end like one of those sadly true stories of the girl not returning the feelings and rejecting her. As if her friend had read her mind, she smiled with a hint of nostalgia and went on.
"It didn't last very long, though, because Kelley told me she had a girlfriend in California and she loved her. We remained good friends, and when I asked her why she had kissed me that night, she told me she had seen the way I was looking at her, and she had been in my situation just two years ago. She helped me sort out my feelings, and I realized I had really been more physically attracted to her than in love. Sure, she's still my first girl crush ever, but that's it. I still talk to her sometimes, and she's moved back to California to be with her girl as soon as highschool was over. She's majoring in Visual Arts next year."
"Woah, that's such a beautiful story!" Chloe's shoulders had relaxed and she felt more at ease now, slowly easing back into her usual self.
"Now, can I ask you a personal question?" Instantly, Chloe stiffened, and she knew what was coming, but she nodded in spite of wanting to say no, bitting down her botton lip. "Why were you so nervous to ask me about this?"
"I... uh, I don't know. Frankly, I felt a little stupid for asking in the first place, but I'm.. uh... confused, right now." she tried to avoid the question, eluding as best she could, but she didn't fool Cynthia Rose, she knew it.
"Now you're just trying to avoid my question. What's making you so confused?"
She knew she should just tell her, and everything would be better, but this time, Chloe was actually afraid of what she felt. She knew not all stories ended up the way Cynthia Rose's did, and she feared hers would end up leaving her all alone and with no friends anymore.
"I can hear you over thinking this from over here, Chloe, just tell me already, I'm not gon' judge you or anything." Cynthia Rose smiled gently, sipping her coffee before it went cold.
"Okay, okay. I wanted to ask you this because I think...I think that, uh..." She couldn't do it. She simply could not say it out loud.
Admitting it to herself had been hard enough, and she had thought she was ready to talk about it to somebody who could truly understand, but she just wasn't. She couldn't tell if it was for fear of being judged even though Cynthia Rose clearly told her she wouldn't judge or the fear of facing her own emotions. Chloe dropped her head on the table, hitting her forehead on the hard wood and slightly wincing at the pain.
"Come on, baby, what do you think?" her friend pressed softly, approaching her chair to be closer to Chloe, putting an arm around her shoulders.
"That I might be attracted to Beca."
It was nothing more than a whisper, but clearer words had never been spoken and they definetely weren't missed by Cynthia Rose. She knew how that felt, to be attracted to somebody who wasn't openly gay or bisexual, and she squeezed Chloe's shoulders a little tighter.
"Come here, baby girl." she said, pulling a sobing Chloe in a warm embrace. "I'm right here, right here, don't be afraid. I'm right here, Chloe." she soothed softly, stroking the redhead's hair.