A/N: Thank you to everyone who reviewed/followed/etc. Gracevas is apparently canon now, but I'm going to continue this fic as if "Don't Look Back" never happened and instead give my take on how they get together.
Possible trigger warning for mention of sexual assault + the Yates situation in this chapter.
Now that he had properly guessed my girl crush, Miles was in full gloating mode. He flashed the same smug smile he wore during that week or so last year when he really believed he had muscled Zig out of the competition for Maya's heart. I wanted to be annoyed with him as he laughed his head off, crying out "I knew it! I so knew it!" Instead, I simply felt happy to see my friend's cocky smile again instead of the miserable, moping one I had seen so much of during the past semester. I knew that if I admitted he was right, he would lose interest in the gloating and that smile would be lost. Against my usual nature, I wanted to preserve it for just a while longer.
"No you didn't!" I argued, playfully smacking him in the shoulder. "You guessed that I liked Maya before you figured it out!"
"That's because everyone likes Maya," Miles said matter-of-factly. "Everyone likes her, and she hardly likes them back."
I groaned. "You're not still hung up about her, are you?"
"Nah," he said. "I'm not still into her, but it still feels a little shitty knowing that smug asshole, Zig got her."
"He's not that bad," I argued.
"Right, sorry. Wasn't he your boyfriend for a hot minute or something?"
"Or something," I said, not wanting to remember that horrible afternoon when he found me with pills and stopped me from becoming Degrassi's next suicide case. Zig and I weren't exactly friends after everything that I lied to him about last year, but I would always appreciate what he did for me.
"New subject," Miles beamed. "Grace! How did this happen? I want deets!"
I giggled at the way Tristan's teen slang had rubbed off on Miles. "First, you have to tell me how you figured it out!"
Miles paused, stroking his chin in reflection. "Well," he said, "I was trying to think like…what if instead of being an incredibly handsome bisexual guy, I suddenly became a smoking hot bisexual girl. Obviously the only kind of guy I'd wanna date in that hypothetical would be that dashing Miles Hollingsworth character."
"Oh, please," I said with a laugh.
"I had to ask myself, what kind of girl could possibly draw my attention away from a catch like Miles Hollingsworth the third."
"You are so full of yourself," I teased.
He nodded. "Acknowledged. I figured to let a hot guy like that just slip through my fingers, I'd have to at least have hope that the girl I was into was gay, and let's face it. Most of the girls at Degrassi are pretty hopelessly un-gay if you ask me."
"I've noticed," I said, unsure of where that came from.
"I mean, think about it," he said. "You've got Maya who's a constant hetero love-triangle waiting to happen, and aside from her you've either got my sister and her boy-crazy friends, or you can take your chances with Grace. Y'know…the one who never seems to have a boyfriend and never seems to care that she never has a boyfriend?"
My heart fluttered with hope. Although I had been at least passively attracted to Grace since last November or so, she had always been an unrealistic target. I fell for her very suddenly, before I even had a chance to think about whether she was gay or not. Conveniently enough, I was about equally attracted to Zig at that time. He was straight and available, and I assumed she had no interest in girls, especially girls as preppy and unpierced as me.
"You think she's gay?" I asked him, my interest suddenly piquing. "Why? Do you know something?"
"I think it sort of has to do with body language," he said. "With most girls, you'll notice they have a specific way they act around girls, and it's different from how they act around guys. People who are all the way straight or all the way gay usually have like…a specific way they act around guys, and a specific way they act around girls. It's never just the same for both."
I had never really noticed that. "Really? How?"
"You ever notice how when someone like Frankie talks to other girls, she's not really conscious of her body language, and she just kind of chills like she's with her own kind or whatever, but then when a guy shows up, she sorta stands a little farther away from him and acts a little more guarded?"
"I guess," I said. "Yeah, most girls do that."
He nodded. "It even happens around guys she doesn't like," he observed. "There's this subtle difference between how she acts talking to guys versus talking to girls. Then you look at someone like Grace, and she has that super casual, we're all just bros kind of attitude around guys and that 'what do you want, and why are you looking at me?' thing going on whenever she talks to girls. It's obvious who she's more scared to disappoint, and it isn't guys."
I thought about this for a moment. "Sure, but there are also girls like Jack. All her friends are girls."
"It doesn't really matter who your friends are," Miles said. "Next time you're around her, watch how she carries herself around girls, and then compare it to guys. Trust me, you'll see what I mean."
Miles's theory didn't seem fool-proof, but I couldn't entirely dismiss any system that made Grace and me seem vaguely possible. "But what about you, then?" I asked curiously, wondering how Miles's gaydar picked out bisexuals.
"What about me?" he asked. "I act pretty much the same around everybody. You've seen me."
That definitely seemed true. He seemed to have a mixture of both types of behavior with both sexes. "I guess you have a point. Do I do that?"
"Act the same around everybody?" he asked. "I haven't really noticed."
"Come on," I pleaded.
"You're trying to get me to say whether I think you're bi or not," he said. "I'm sure you have enough people in your life trying to tell you who to be. I'm not gonna be one of them."
I nodded, remembering the way everyone automatically tried to pin down Miles's sexuality in France without asking for his input. "That's probably good."
"What you need is people who don't care one way or another, as long as you're happy. That's how I feel." He sighed. "Of course, it would be way easier for me if we were both straight and happily into each other, but I'm not getting the sense that that's where either of us are headed. That's okay."
For a moment, I felt like I could see the super romantic guy that Tristan was always going on about in the snarky sarcasm machine I was casually dating. For all the dry humor and cockiness, there was still something genuine about him.
"Wow," I said. "That's really nice."
"It happens sometimes," Miles said. "So. If you had no idea she might be gay, why did you pick Grace?"
"You don't just pick who you have feelings for," I said.
"True," Miles said.
"After the videos went out about my assault, I felt so completely helpless," I explained. "I mean…in a weird way, I was almost glad the pictures were there because otherwise I would have had no idea what happened." I experienced a sudden flashback to the gruesome sight of blood in my underwear a few mornings after, and the doctor telling me I had vaginal tearing. I was pretty sure that no two words would ever disgust and horrify me as much as those did.
"Are you okay?" he asked.
"Yeah," I said, taking deep breaths and reminding myself that the ordeal was long over. "I'm fine."
"Carry on then."
I nodded. "Every time I saw a pair of guys at Degrassi, I had to wonder 'was it them? Was it them?' God. I remember there was a while when I seriously believed I would never know who assaulted me. Can you imagine that? Can you imagine going to school every day, never knowing who had seen you naked and taken advantage of you?"
Miles bowed his head in shame, perhaps still feeling guilty for leaving me in the pool house that night. "No," he said. "No, I can't."
It was the right answer. "If it hadn't been for Grace, I probably still wouldn't. She got the security footage from your party and made a list of every guy on the basketball team and who he was hanging out with that night. Then, she sent an e-mail to one guy from each pair, claiming his buddy ratted him out."
"I remember that," Miles said, turning red. "That was one of the worst days of my life."
"Poor you," I said, feeling certain I would rather have been accused of it than lived through it.
"Sorry," he acknowledged. "Go on."
"If it wasn't for her, I might still have no idea who it was. She had my back when no one else did, and I never did anything to earn it."
Miles frowned deeply. "I'm never going to feel like I've said 'sorry' enough times for not keeping you safe," he laughed dryly.
It was definitely a point of awkwardness between us, and it was probably the reason why none of our kissing and flirting ever amounted to anything for me. I knew I could trust Zig to stop me from killing myself and Grace to help me catch the bad guys. Miles was the guy I could count on to listen and not judge me. That was great in a friend, but it wasn't enough to make me feel comfortable imagining him naked. Not after what happened.
The air around us was starting to get chilly. "Do you want to maybe go inside?"
"That's probably a good idea."
I followed him into the living room, where he flipped a light switch before I could squint to protect my eyes.
"Ow."
"Sorry," he said, tossing me the beach bag I left by the door. "Why don't you go change?"
I nodded, heading into the bathroom to do that. I was grateful that he brought me back into his living room instead of the pool house. Drying off, I came to the uncomfortable realization that both of my horrible sexual experiences (which were also my only sexual experiences so far) happened in there. It was probably why every time I tried to fantasize about someone, we ended up in that disgusting place. Sometimes, I felt like my mind would never be free until someone made it up to me someplace else.
As I hung up my wet bathing suit and slipped on a pair of real underwear, I started wondering what Grace's bedroom looked like. My mind came up with dark blue walls covered in band posters, sheets with skulls printed on them, and a military-grade laptop on a cluttered desk. Even if it looked nothing like that, it still would look nothing like that damn pool house. Pulling my jeans on and buttoning them, I wondered if it would be unfair to ask someone to be your first fully consensual time. Drew was technically consensual, but I wanted a new first time with someone who wanted it for the same reason I did. Maybe if Grace and I did it, I could finally imagine having sex on something other than that disgusting pink-cushioned recliner.
"You okay in there?" Miles called.
I realized I had been occupying the downstairs bathroom for longer than was necessary, so I hooked my bra, pulled a t-shirt over my head, and came back out. I giggled at the sight of the fuzzy blue bathrobe he was wearing.
"Did Tristan buy you that?" I asked.
He actually blushed. "He saw all my usual bed clothes were just ratty old boxers and took pity on me," he said. "I still wear it because it's comfy. This has nothing to do with him."
"Sure," I said, wondering when I should break the news to Tristan that the ex he was pining for wasn't actually as over him as we both thought.
"Speaking of Tristan," Miles said, picking up his cell phone. "There's actually something I wanted to talk to you about."
I watched him flop onto the leather couch and joined him for what I hoped would be a refreshing change of subject. Talking about my crush was getting a bit exhausting.
"Shoot," I said.
"I've known about this for a few days, but I didn't want to say anything until I was absolutely sure they were going through with it, but…"
"Slow down," I said. "Who's going through with what?"
"Winston's parents pressed charges against Yates a few weeks ago. I've known that for a while, but I just got a text saying that it's going to court," Miles explained. "I think Tristan should know about this, but I don't think I should be the one to tell him."
My eyes widened with shock. "Yates assaulted Winston?"
"It didn't go as far as it did with Tristan, but…there was touching and it wasn't the appropriate kind."
The thought of that perverted teacher made my skin crawl. "Tris mentioned there was someone else, but he didn't say who it was," I said.
"It was Chewie," Miles said matter-of-factly. "I think it's part of why he's been acting so weird lately. Ever since that creep touched him, he's just been trying way too hard to impress people, almost like he thinks he needs to prove to everyone that it's not affecting him or something. Last semester, he had everything going for him, and it was like he couldn't even see it."
"I remember what that's like," I said, a collage of memories from the singing competition and my overzealous Wicked audition surfacing in my mind. "He probably thinks that if he can just do one really amazing thing for himself, he can forget what happened. Take it from me, though. It doesn't work."
He looked relieved to hear that his friend's behavior was at least normal, however frustrating it was for those around him. "I really want this for him," Miles admitted. "He needs justice. I'm just scared because his lawyer thinks he has a better chance if he can get Yates's other victim to come forward."
My stomach dropped, knowing where this was headed. "Tristan," I said flatly.
Miles nodded. "Someone needs to warn Tristan about this before random lawyers just start knocking on his door."
From the pleading expression in Miles's eyes, I knew this was going to have to be me. "Tristan's parents don't know," I told him. "He doesn't want them to. I don't even think Owen's heard about it yet."
Miles half-smiled. "Yates would be beat up in a dumpster by now if Owen knew."
The violent image was vaguely amusing to me. "This is serious, though," I told him. "He's gonna freak."
"I know," Miles said. The thought was obviously killing him. "Part of me feels like I should be the one to tell him, but I think if we're ever going to get back to actually talking to each other, I need to open with something other than 'hey, Tristan! Remember that sex offender you used to date? I need you to testify against him so my friend won't lose his mind!"
"I'll tell him," I said resolutely.
I could see the visible relief on Miles's face. "That's perfect. You've been there. You know what it's like better than I could."
"On one condition," I added.
"A condition," Miles said uncomfortably. "What kind of condition?"
I sighed. "As much fun as we're having, it's obvious you two still have feelings for each other."
He sat up straight in his car. "Did he say something? What did he say?"
I shook my head. "You're still wearing his bath robe, and he's still dating random Teendr guys."
"I thought that was going well," he said.
"As well as desperation ever does," I said. "If I talk to him about this trial, then you have to promise me you'll stop brooding about how much better off he is without you and actually give him a real chance."
"He is better off without me," Miles argued. "Until he says differently, I'm going to assume it's the truth."
"You are so frustrating," I told him.
"I'm serious. If he comes to me and he honestly tells me that he'd be happier with me than he is with that Greco-Roman deity he's seeing, then I'll take him back in a heartbeat. Until that happens, I'm keeping my distance. I don't want to ruin his life again."
"Ruin his life?" I asked. "What will it take to snap you out of this and make you talk to him already?"
I realized that giving Miles bargaining power was the wrong move as soon as I saw him get a big, twisted smile on his face. "I'll let you set me back up with Tristan if you let me hook you up with Grace."
I gasped, feeling both defeated and ironically amused. "You're seriously going to be my lesbian wing-man?"
"Bisexual wing-man," he argued. "I can hardly be considered a lesbian."
"Good point."
By the end of the night, I felt much more satisfied and hopeful about life than I had since I was forced to take the fall for Degrassi Nudes. Miles made everything seem possible, including my ridiculous fantasy about being with Grace. My light, happy mood was only interrupted when I remembered what I needed to do tomorrow.
Tristan was at my house about five minutes before he needed to be, probably because the words "Miles said to tell you…" appeared somewhere in my invite text.
When Tristan came to the door, he looked completely different from the way he had looked at the end of the school year. His hair was dyed black, and the blue t-shirt and crisp white shorts he was wearing looked new.
"Nice hair," I said, trying to ease him into the conversation.
"Thanks!" he said brightly, with a dramatic eye-roll. "Maya's friend, Grace did it. Can you believe I let her touch my hair? I was convinced she was gonna destroy it, but she actually did a killer job."
"Grace?" I could feel my heart beat faster.
"You probably don't know her," Tristan said. "She's one of the Rubber Room kids Maya became friends with after she sang a song about wanting to kill you."
I blushed harder, imagining Maya telling Grace that it was my fault she was stuck there. Hopefully that didn't happen, and there was still hope for Miles to make Grace and me happen.
Tristan gave me an imploring look. "So what's the big news you had me come over here for?"
I motioned for him to actually come inside, not wanting to have this conversation on the front steps.
"I always forget how nice your house is," Tristan remarked. "It's so quiet, too."
We walked into the kitchen, where I politely offered him some lemonade and cookies. This was going to be horrible.
"Thanks!" he said, looking excited about my mother's predictably incredible baking. "These cookies are life."
"I'll pass that along," I said casually. "How should I say this?" I asked. "Do you want bad news first or good news?"
"Good," he said, taking a giant sip of lemonade. "No wait, give me the bad news first. That way, when I'm hopelessly depressed, the good news will make me feel better."
"Good plan," I said, taking a seat across from him at the kitchen table. "It's about Yates."
In place of his usual defensive behavior, Tristan actually recoiled at the sound of our old teacher's name. Maybe he was starting to realize how scary what happened to him really was.
"It's okay," he said, putting on a brave face. "I'm over him."
"This isn't just about your relationship," I said. "It's…about what he did."
I could tell that Tristan wanted to be irritated with me for accusing Yates, but he also seemed to understand me completely. "Did he hurt someone else?" Tristan asked, sounding both concerned and slightly ashamed. "Besides me and Winston?"
"Not that I know of," I said, "but Winston's parents are taking Yates to court. They have a date set now, and it's pretty much definite." I paused, watching my friend's face fall.
"They want me to testify, don't they?" he asked.
I nodded. "Miles wanted to tell you himself, but the two of you haven't exactly been talking."
"Obvi," he said. "He's moved on; why would he bother breaking the news himself?"
Feeling frustrated, I sat down next to my crestfallen friend. "He didn't make me tell you because he doesn't care about you," I said.
"Sure," Tristan said.
"Tristan, he specifically asked me to tell you because he was afraid of how he might mess it up!" I said. "He still likes you, but we can talk about that later."
For a moment, all of Tristan's anxiety vanished. "He does?" Tristan's expression quickly stiffened as reality hit him again. "Zoë, this is bad. My parents don't know yet," Tristan said. "I was kind of hoping they would never have to find out."
I nodded. "I get it. I felt the same way when I found out they were pressing charges against Luke and Neil. I knew my mom would take it okay, but I was afraid of how my dad would react."
"It's not the same, though," Tristan said. "What happened to you was 100% not your fault. What happened to me was completely my fault."
"Tris," I argued. "He manipulated you."
"And I went along with it!" Tristan argued. "Eagerly."
"And I bet he didn't do a thing to pressure you," I snapped. I knew it was harsh, but I needed my friend to see reason and stop blaming himself.
Tristan nodded. "I guess so. The first time we did it, he poured us both a drink. I had never drank anything before, but I didn't want to look like some basic high school kid, so I did it. He didn't start pressuring me until after I had at least two."
I could feel my own nerves twitching at the thought. "Tris, if you were drinking first, you couldn't have consented. Not legally, anyway."
He offered a fake smile, trying to brush off what I said, then lowered his gaze. "It's not like what happened to you, okay? I wanted to hook up with him."
A flashback emerged of the way I was dancing in my short pink dress before Neil and Luke found me drunk. "The night when I got assaulted, I totally wanted to hook up with a guy," I said. "I even said so, but if I was going to hook up with anyone, it should have happened while I was sober."
"Mine was different," Tristan said. "You were completely passed out. I wasn't. I was just…"
"In the kind of mental state where people make bad decisions," I said. "Yates knew what alcohol would do to you. You didn't. That's why it's creepy and horrible and someone needs to stop him."
Tristan nodded. "You just wanted to hook up," he mused. "I just wanted romance. I wanted what Maya had, you know?"
"You got what Maya had," I said, "and you didn't need that creep to make it happen."
"Really?" Tristan asked. "Sometimes I wonder if the only reason Miles got with me was because he felt sorry for me after what happened."
I couldn't help but laugh. "Listen, Tris. Tell Miles I said this and you're dead, but remember that bath robe you got him?"
"Yes," Tristan said. "How do you know about it?"
"Because I saw him wearing it!" I exclaimed. "The boy still has feelings for you. The only reason he's not saying anything is because he thinks you've moved on."
"I have moved on," he said, "but if I ever thought there was a chance with him, I'd make one hell of a U-turn for him."
"Then do it," I said. "Talking to him last night made me realize that I'm actually not as into him as I thought. You go right ahead."
Tristan looked uncomfortably at me. "First I'll need to figure out what I'm going to do about this trial."
I nodded. "Yeah, but you don't have to figure that out alone, okay? I've been through court. I know what it's like."
"Okay," he said with a sigh. "I guess I'd better tell Owen first, just so he doesn't hear it from someone else and pulverize Grant."
"Good plan," I said. "Do you want me to go with you to tell him?"
"Please," he said. "Can we go now? I don't want to put this off. I'll make myself sick."
I agreed, feeling slightly impressed with my friend's fortitude. Of course, just as we were headed out the door, I got a text from Miles.
Miles: Come over! Maya and Zig are here, and they brought Grace! Guess who's feeling like a major third-wheel?
I quickly texted him back.
You, or Grace?
Miles: Both. Are you with Tris?
His timing could not have been worse. Given how quickly the Yates trial was approaching, I knew that our talk with Owen couldn't really wait. At the same time, I wasn't sure how many other opportunities I'd have to end up at the same location as Grace and get Tristan and Miles to actually talk to each other. I had a tough decision to make.
