Strange Love

Chapter 1.

      They think I'm insane...

        Listen. Hal is not confused. She is not "going through a phase." She is not greedy. She's bisexual. She loved men and well, obviously, she loved women too. She tried to remember when she found that grey area of sexuality as she laid in the arms of her latest conquest. She wasn't a hoe. She just liked a good time. It occurred to her while she thought though, that sexuality is never black and white. It's fluid; fluid like a river that flows in between love and lust. You do not love gender. You do not lust personality.

     Hal was 15 when she first found herself looking at a girl and thinking about what was under her form fitting blouse. At the time, it was terrifying. Give it three more years and it was just as easy for her to kiss a woman as it was for her to kiss a man. In her 25 years of life, she has had healthy relationships with both men and women. Most recently, she had split from her boyfriend of four months. She cared for him a lot, sure. But she knew she wasn't in love with him the first time they spent a weekend away together. There was just no Nicholas Sparks-eque chemistry there. 

    Today, she woke up tangled somewhere in the middle of pink cotton sheets and a girl's slender arms. Her name was Melanie... maybe. Hal wasn't above admitting she was just a tad drunk when she had made the girl's acquaintance. She was sweet, though... sweet and rather good at kissing. Hal glanced at the Hello Kitty clock on the nightstand. It was 10:45 on Sunday morning. Light rain was hitting the windows of Possibly Melanie's bedroom. Hal couldn't move her arm or she would to rub her eyes. The amount of pink she was drinking in was giving her a headache. Possibly Melanie made a small noise in her sleep and rolled away from Hal. Seizing the moment, Hal grabbed her clothes from the pile on the floor and slipped out of the overwhelmingly girly apartment.

   Hal breathed in the fresh Philadelphia air as she walked down the street. She was still tugging on her boots and trying to keep her scarf around her neck as she stumbled along. She felt a vibration in her back pocket and cursed under her breath. She was almost too afraid to look.

  Sure enough, when she pulled out her phone, she saw her sister's face on the screen.

"Hello?"

"Where the hell did you go last night? I looked everywhere for you."

"Chill, Charlie. I went home with a friend."

"A friend whose name you don't remember?"

Hal couldn't help but smile and feel her cheeks flush in embarrassment. She had stopped walking and was leaning against the brick wall of a building.

"I'm sorry, Charles. Will you ever forgive me?"

Charlie sighed. She could never stay mad at Hal, and Hal knew that. Not even after the countless times that Hal has disappeared during one of their outings. It wasn't that Charlie was boring. It was that going home with Charlie was boring.

"I'll forgive you when you learn to call me after sliding out of bars with strangers."

  Hal laughed. She really isn't a hoe. Leaving bars and clubs with strangers is not her MO. It's just what she does in between relationships. It's also important to know that she never starts relationships with the people she leaves with. She starts relationships with people she meets in bookstores, cafes, museums, and once, a comic book convention.

"Deal. Where are you? Are you home?"

Hal noticed that she heard some background noise on the other end and wondered what her sister might be up too on this dreary Sunday morning.

"I went to get some coffee. Do you want to meet me? Or do you want to go home and clean off the scent of your latest victim?"

"I'll probably head home. She smelled a bit too much like cherries for my liking. My clothes reek of it, my hair reeks of it, even my skin smells like a lollipop."