Ocean Blue ✓

chapter twenty-five

elliot

So. I guess I'm fucking gay or something.

Alyssa keeps giving me this Look. I don't understand the Look, but it looks confused and curious and concerned, and very scared. But not in a bad way? It makes no sense. The Look is very much a mystery. A mystery that I seriously need to stop staring at because I am driving.

"And then I just waited for her to walk away," I tell Alyssa. "Which was super weird, I guess, but yeah, she walked."

"Wow, oof."

"Yeah. That was the first time I ever spoke to her like that, so it was an oof for sure."

I watch from the corner of my eye as she drums her fingers over her thighs, like she's playing imaginary piano scales or something. Does she know that her nose wrinkles when she smiles? Or that she pouts whenever she raises her eyebrows? I can't stop noticing it, and all her little quirks. I love them, though.

"You okay?" she asks.

"Kinda. I ... I just don't really know how to feel about them. Like, um, Taffy asked me if I was queer the other day, but she was a dick about it, and just ... I hate it."

We're pulling into the driveway of the Hargreaves's, and Alyssa's expression has scrunched up. "Oh?"

"Yeah. Um, yeah. It was weird. I didn't like it. It just ... made me really uncomfortable."

"What did you say?"

I kill the engine and look over at her. "Well, I told her that I wasn't. Neema and Duncan are adamant about me coming out in my own time, which is weird because I don't think I care, but I felt uncomfortable in the moment and figured I would take their advice."

"It's good advice. What happened then?"

"She seemed ... disappointed? Which makes it like, did you want me to be? And if so, why?" I feel my throat catching. "Did you want to make fun of me and ridicule me and ostracise me, or was it something else?"

"Well, I mean, what else would it be though?"

"Exactly." I sigh.

Alyssa frowns. She has a very strong frown. "Dang, I'm sorry," she says.

"It's okay," I tell her, even though I feel suddenly hollow. It feels like a knife razing through my sternum. Gutted. I feel gutted. I never thought Taffy and the girls were these people.

Well, no, no, I knew. I just didn't want to admit it. Now, hearing how they acted at the party and on Instagram, and how Taffy tried to brush it all away today at work, makes my stomach twist and my skin prickle.

I step out of the car, and Alyssa watches me, stepping out as well and shutting the door firmly behind her. "Hey, are you okay? You look a little ... frazzled."

Really, "frazzled" is probably a nice understatement. I kinda want to cry, and I have absolutely no idea why. "I'm okay. Really. It wasn't a big thing." Looking back at it, it feels like more, though. Alyssa doesn't need to know that.

"Okay," she says, the skepticism in her voice obvious.

"It's just"—I can't figure out if I even want to say it or not—"after that, she told me that she told the girls I wasn't gay. So I can come back to the team. And it's like, for a year, that's all I wanted. I threw myself into my schoolwork because there was nothing else to do. I'm literally salutatorian-ranked right now, all because they shoved me out of the swim team. And all I wanted was back in their good graces, back in their fucking group chats, back in that stifling locker room. And it's like, Elliot, why?"