The Edge of Something

She kissed me.

She kissed me, and I just stood there. I didn't understand what was happening until it was already over. Did I lean in? I don't know. She did — I know that much — because I would never have been the one to close the distance. I had only been thinking that I was having a nice time with a girl I met in class. A nice time. That's all.

Was I stupid? Did she think this was a date? Is it even a date if one person doesn't know? Can it be called a kiss if only one person meant it?

I'm walking home. I need the cold air. I need it to reach all the way inside me and clear out whatever has just taken root there. The city is ordinary around me — headlights, a dog barking, someone's television blue behind a curtain — and I can't understand how everything can look exactly the same.

Do I like girls? I've never let myself finish that question before. It always dissolved before I could get to the end of it, like a word you say too many times until it stops meaning anything. But it's sitting in front of me now, solid and patient. And trailing behind it, all the other questions: If I do, what does that mean for me? For everything I've been told about who I'm supposed to be?

I was raised Catholic. Church three times a week. My parents are deacons. My grandmother was the one who found the congregation we still belong to — the building, the community, the certainty of it. Growing up, stepping out of line felt less like rebellion and more like falling off the edge of the world. There was no soft place below. Just the absence of everything familiar.

I went on dates with boys. Held their hands. There were moments I felt something — I won't pretend otherwise — but I let those moments pass like weather. Urges, I told myself. Urges aren't the same as choices. And choices are what God sees.

But Sarah. When I met Sarah in class I just felt — easy. Like I could breathe at a normal pace. I always wanted to sit beside her. I always made sure she knew about upcoming exams, asked if she wanted to study together. I told myself it was friendship. I believed it, mostly. Friendship can look like a lot of things when you need it to.

And now the ice cream we shared is sitting in my stomach and I'm not sure I even liked it and I'm not sure that matters and I don't know if I should text her when I get home or drop the class or both or neither. I don't know how to look at her on Tuesday. I don't know what my face is doing right now. My parents can't see my face when I get home — I'm a terrible liar and my body always gives me away before my mouth can catch up.

I reach my front door. The key is in my hand.

I think: once I step inside, will I be different? Or will I have just carried all of this in with me, and the house will be different now because I'm in it?

I turn the key. The door opens into warmth and the smell of something my mother cooked for dinner, and I close it behind me as quietly as I can. I put my back against it. Above me the hallway light buzzes faintly, and I look up at it — really look, trying to let it fill my eyes, trying to make my mind go white and still.

What exactly am I feeling?

There's something like excitement. There's something that wants to crawl out of my skin. There's nausea, low and steady. There's a word I haven't said yet, not even inside my own head, and I can feel its shape the way you feel a bruise without pressing it.

I slide down the door until I'm sitting on the floor. My legs just stopped holding me. I'm not sure I'm built for what comes after a moment like this — the actual living of it, day after day, the weight of becoming someone my family might not recognize. I've spent my whole life being legible to the people who love me. I don't know who I am when I'm not.

From somewhere deeper in the house, I hear my mother's footsteps.

They're moving in my direction.