Chapter 11: Even Love Unreturned has its Rainbow

Eventually, Rose did send me a text message.

I'm sorry too.

Occasionally, we talked after that, but it wasn't the same. Nothing was the same. I had lunch with Alexander, who knew better than to brag about being right about Rose being gay. We didn't talk about Rose much. Instead, he told me about Dr. Thomas Dutton and other random historical people I had never heard of before. But it was nice to take a step out of my own story for a change.

His friend Elliot joined us some days, which seemed to make Alexander very happy. I'm not sure if they (Elliot likes us to use the pronouns they/them to be gender-neutral. It took me a little getting used to, but I've got it down now) are interested in Alexander in a romantic sense. Maybe they're just trying to make up their mind about him. Alexander definitely likes them though. Maybe this will become a relationship. Maybe another unrequited love sort of thing. For Alex, I hoped the former, because that would make him happy, but secretly I kind of wanted the latter, partly because I didn't want my now closest friend to ditch me to hang out with his new partner, nor did I want to be the third wheel at a cafeteria lunch table. I also wanted to see how Alexander would navigate the unrequited love situation. He was always much better at that sort of thing than I was (although he would protest that I was more knowledgeable, given that I had dated one more person than he had, my grand total of one versus his zero. Although I suspect that this came more from a lack of out homosexuals at his high school, than from any superior skill on my part).

Rose ate with Grace and Ally. I would occasionally glance over in her direction and wave. She would wave back. But that would be our whole interaction for the day.

At some point during the semester, Grayson and Ally broke up, because he never sat with her anymore and her sorority girls kept giving him angry glares whenever they saw him.

On Rose's birthday, I gave her a card that said Happy Birthday and had Charlie Brown characters, the kind of card you would get for your totally platonic friend when you wanted to show affection but also to be very clear that affection was not romantic in any way.

Stella also got her a card, elaborately decorated with roses and pink glitter and lots of nineteens. Rose thanked her politely but kept the card in its envelope.

Rose hated glitter. It got all over everything. All the glitter and flowers and pink, she hated all of it. It wasn't her style. It was far too girly.

Of course, Stella didn't know this, because she didn't know Rose like I did. Like I once did, at least.

Rose absolutely hated when people got her anything super feminine or expected her to act or dress a certain way just because she was a girl. She even hated the idea of things like colors and toys being feminine or masculine. She told me once that her t-shirt and shorts, which her dad called 'boy clothes,' had just as much of a right to be called girl clothes as dresses because she was a girl and those were her clothes.

And of course, this would be a big rant to give to someone who just wanted to give you a birthday card, but a perfectly acceptable rant to tell your best friend when it's late at night and you're reminiscing on your childhood and reliving your frustration with your parents about how it was always so much easier for your brother to get Legos and other fun toys growing up while you were given dolls and clothes 'because that's what girls like' even though you're a girl and what you liked was to play with your brother's racecars.

But Stella never got to experience any of Rose's rants, and that made me glad, because I was still working on getting over Rose and I didn't think I could handle seeing her with someone else.

But every literature class, I watched as Stella fell further, only a little bit ashamed that her misery was bringing me so much joy. Watching Stella kept my mind off Rose.

I'd like to say that I moved on, that I forgot all about Rose and found my true love and lived happily ever after. But the truth is, I'm still just living my life. I go to school, I talk to my friends, I call my moms, I write. I narrate other people's stories. I still haven't quite figured mine out yet.