Chapter 76: Emergency Gay Therapy Consultation
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I probably got about three hours of sleep last night. Four, if I was being really generous with the term, but honestly, tossing and turning in the dark while replaying the last twenty-four hours in my head isn’t exactly restful, especially when my heart’s racing like it’s in a marathon.
The tricky part wasn’t actually falling asleep, I could do that just fine. It was when I’d get close to drifting off, my brain would flip back on like a light switch and dive right back into the evening’s events: the hockey game, the limo ride that was both cozy and nerve-wracking, the souvenir stand, and that little keychain now sitting on my nightstand like some kind of evidence.
And let’s not forget the kiss cam. Particularly the kiss cam.
Yeah...that was... that was something.
More specifically, what happened after the kiss cam, Damien’s hand on my jaw, his mouth on mine, and that intense, electrifying feeling of being kissed by someone who genuinely wanted to, without any apologies.
I couldn’t even find an excuse to get mad at him, wasn’t I the one who wrote on rule 69 for him not to kiss me without my consent.
He went ahead to kiss me with consent...once again, I failed to think things through and Damien used that to his advantage.
Why the heck did I even give him permission in the first place?!
Then my alarm went off at six-thirty, cheerful and cruel, unaware of the chaos it was interrupting. I stared at the ceiling, weighed my options, and ultimately groaned into my pillow, accepting my fate with all the grace of someone who’s out of choices.
Ah, Monday.
And to top it off, my identity crisis seemed well-rested and ready to tackle the day, and it was way more prepared than I was.
By the time I made it to Joy’s Café, I had downed enough coffee on the walk over to raise a few eyebrows at a doctor’s office, or maybe even a pharmacy. And it didn’t help.
Sure, the caffeine was in my system, but it wasn’t doing a thing, which felt like betrayal coming from a friend I’d relied on for years.
Maya spotted me the moment I walked in and, without missing a beat, burst out laughing.
Rude. Objectively rude.
"Good morning to you too," I said.
She pointed at my face like a doctor delivering a diagnosis. "Once again you look terrible."
"I know."
"Not just tired terrible. More like emotionally run over terrible. Like someone just drove over your feelings and left no note."
I dropped my bag on the staff counter a little harder than needed. "Noted. Thanks. Super helpful."
Her eyes narrowed, head tilting like she was piecing together a theory in real time. Then her expression shifted—a focused laughter turned sharper, more serious.
"Wait, did you even sleep last night?"
"Probably."
I grabbed an apron, desperate to do literally anything else than continue this conversation. "I’m just tired."
"You don’t look just tired-tired," she pointed out, her tone precise. "You look haunted. Like something found you and you’re still dealing with it."
"College is haunting me. Rent is haunting me. The thought of my GPA is haunting me. Lots of available explanations here."
"Uh-huh. Please try to get some rest after work today, alright? Wouldn’t want you dying on me."
I dashed to the front of the café before she could say more, buying myself a solid forty-five minutes of distraction before slow hours hit and escape wasn’t possible.
At least the morning rush came consistently.
Orders, coffee, pastries, and the external pressure of customers needing things who had zero interest in my internal chaos helped for a bit. I made drinks, smiled at folks, remembered their orders, hustled through tasks, and let everything else sit at a distance for a while.
Then the rush dialed back. The café slipped into its mid-morning calm, and I ended up at the small back table, coffee in front of me, Maya sitting across, nowhere left to hide.
She didn’t push. Just waited, stirring her iced coffee with the patience of someone who knows that waiting better than asking works most of the time.
I stared at my coffee.
And I stared at it for quite a while.
A question had been pressing at my throat since around midnight, growing louder with every hour, pushing against my teeth every time I tried to think around it.
I’d been trying to avoid it, but now it just wouldn’t let up. Questions about myself don’t get quieter when you ignore them, they just get louder until you find yourself facing someone who might hold the answers.
"H...hey. Can I ask you something, Maya?"
Maya’s face changed instantly, light teasing washed away, replaced by something warm and gentle. "Of course."
"Personal question."
"Sure."
"You don’t have to answer."
"Oliver." She set her drink down. "Just ask."
I looked down at the table. Took a breath that was bigger than necessary and didn’t care. Then I looked up.
"How did you know?" I asked. "When did you know you were bi?"
The question hung in the air between us.
Maya blinked once. Then something shifted on her face, not exactly surprise, but more like the look of someone who’s been watching a process unfold and just saw it arrive where they thought it would.
"Oh," she said.
"Yeah."
"Oh."
"Please don’t make that face."
"What face? I’m not making a face."
"You’re totally making a face."
"I honestly don’t know what you mean," she said, sounding both diplomatic and guilty at the same time.
She didn’t tease me right away. When she dove into the question, it was serious. Thoughtful. Like she was reaching into something real.
"Honestly?" she said.
"Please."
"It wasn’t one moment," she leaned back a bit. "I expected some big, like, I don’t know, some kind of revelation or a lightning bolt. The universe pulling back a curtain." She shook her head. "It wasn’t like that."
I found myself leaning forward. "What was it like?"
"A lot of small things," she replied. "Little realizations that kept piling up. I kept brushing each one off, and then one day I had too many of them, and the excuses ran out." She stirred her drink. "For ages, I thought everyone found multiple genders attractive. Like, I thought it was just something everyone experienced and didn’t talk about."
I widened my eyes. "That’s not how it works."
"I know that now, I was kinda dumb growing up."
"So, for years you just assumed everyone—"
"Yes, Oliver. For years."
"That’s pretty incredible."
"It was a very thorough delusion." She said it cheerfully, without any embarrassment, and I started to think about how long it must have taken to get there...to talk about your own confusion with that kind of ease. "Eventually, I noticed most people around me weren’t experiencing attraction the same way I was. After realizing that, it was just about figuring out the language for what I already knew."
I looked down at my coffee. "What was that like, you know...figuring it out?"
The question came out softer than the others, more careful. It didn’t feel hypothetical anymore, and I wasn’t sure it was meant to be.
Maya caught the change in my tone. Of course she did. She had the knack for picking up on what was beneath the words, a gift or a weapon depending on the day.
"Confusing at first," she said honestly. "Like picking up a piece of furniture and discovering a whole bunch of stuff that had been hiding underneath for ages." A beat. "And then kind of freeing."
"Freeing," I echoed.
"Because I stopped working so hard on what I was supposed to feel," she explained, "and just paid attention to what I actually felt. That was—"
she tilted her head slightly, searching for the right word, "—simpler, somehow. Even if it didn’t feel simple at the time."
The weight of her words settled between us, and I let them linger because they needed some time.
What I actually felt. Just doing that, without the constant analyzing or self-doubt...felt both obvious and monumental, like truths that had been arguing against themselves for too long.
Maya stayed quiet for a sec, watching me process everything with the patience of someone who’s gone through their own version of this and knows it takes as long as it takes.
Then she gently asked, "Why are you asking?"