After a night with my girls, I felt better than I had in a week. I wasn’t any closer to a solution to my Collier issue, but at least I knew I wasn’t alone. I had seven women who loved me and wanted me to be happy. With that thought in mind, I’d gotten up and laced my tennis shoes to go out for my morning run. It was the best workout I’d had all week. I was finally back on my game and didn’t ache when I rounded the corner to my house.

The instant my eyes locked with his, I knew my time avoiding the situation had come to an end. I was stuck. There, on my front porch, sat a devastated-looking Collier. The sun had just started to rise, and it was far too early to deal with this, but the time had finally come that I could no longer avoid it. I slowed my approach, stunned that he’d waited for me, unsure of when I’d return. While walking up the driveway, I pulled the buds from my ears, and then sat down next to him on the steps. I forced my thoughts away from the way I looked and probably smelled to focus on him.

I sighed heavily and then said, “Hi.”

He didn’t look over at me when he echoed my sentiment, so I waited for him to speak. When nothing came, I finally asked what he was doing here.

“You didn’t give me much choice. I’ve tried to call, text, and came by your office, but you’re avoiding me. And I need to know what happened last weekend.”

“So you showed up at my house on a Saturday morning to force me to chat?”

“Pretty much.”

I nodded slowly but didn’t give him any answers.

“So?”

The time had come. I was about to lay it all on the line and had no idea what would come of my deception, but I figured one way or another, it would resolve itself by the time he got up.

“I kissed you, and you didn’t respond. What more do you need to know?”

“Why?”

“Why, what? Why did I kiss you?”

He turned his head and stared me straight in the eyes—beyond a surface-level glance. Something flashed in them, but I couldn’t read what it was. His face went blank, void of emotion. When he nodded, I just shrugged. Brilliant, Giselle—way to take the bull by the horns.

“Do you do that to a lot of men?” He was hurt. Disappointed in me.

“Truthfully?”

“Well, yeah. I’m not interested in hearing you lie to me.”

“I’ve been known to kiss a few men in my time.”

“So you’re bisexual?”

I couldn’t bear to face him when I admitted this, and I wasn’t going to beat around the bush anymore. Staring at my knees bent in front of me, I said, “No. I’m not bisexual—”

“So what, you mess with men for fun? Jesus, Giselle. That’s fucked up. I’d never do that shit to you. I’d never lead you on like that.”

“I didn’t lead you on, Collier.” My voice rose in anger, and I lifted my head to stare him straight in the eye. “I’m straight. Always have been.” I hadn’t intended to blurt that out, and certainly not with as much force. I had wanted to ease into it, tell him how I got to the point I was at, but my temper hadn’t allowed that.

“Does my sister know? What about your friends? The girls you’ve dated? How the hell can you say you’re straight?”

“Because I am. I’ve never done anything more than kiss a woman.” My frustration mounted, but I didn’t know how to reel in the anxiety that drove my words. “I like men.”

“How is that possible? All your friends are lesbians. You’ve told me about your dates since we met and how bad they’ve been. And it’s all been with women. So enlighten me as to how you’re suddenly heterosexual.”

I wrapped my hands around the back of my neck and tried to ease the tension by massaging the muscles that had contracted since this conversation started. My head tipped, and I rolled my shoulders with my eyes closed. When I finally opened them, Collier’s wounded heart glistened in his gaze. And I knew…there was no way this would end well.

“I was married…to a man. He cheated on me with the woman I told you about that I ran into at the restaurant.”

“So you lied to me about the ex being a woman?”

“No, you assumed it was a woman, and I didn’t correct you, but I never said it was a man or a woman. I simply said it was my ex.”

“It’s a lie just the same.”

He was right, and I knew it, but this was his chance to get the information he swore he wanted, so he could either shut up and listen, or I would shut down. “Do you want the story or not, Collier? It’s a little early in the morning for this shit.” I didn’t have a right to bite at him, but my emotion and embarrassment drove my irritation.

“Yeah.” He turned to face me and leaned up against the stair railing.

“I swore after the nastiest divorce in history that I was done with commitment. I had great friends and didn’t need a guy to complete my life. So I used men the way he’d used me, but I was honest about it. I told them I wasn’t interested in a relationship—I didn’t want anything more than something physical. I figured men did it all the time, and as long as I was safe about it, there was no reason a woman couldn’t pursue her sexuality the same way. And I did.”

“So what changed?”

“Justin.”

He looked at me quizzically, so I broke it down for him. I told him about the string of horrible dates with men that ended with Justin creating urine art all over my walls and that after that night, I decided I was done with the opposite sex. And I chose to give women a shot since my heterosexual relationships had flopped…crashed and burned…exploded in a blaze of glory.

“You know you can’t just choose to be gay, right?”

I rolled my eyes having heard the same thing a hundred times from the lesbians in my life. “Yes. I get that now, but at the time, it seemed like a logical choice.”

“Chasing women because men hadn’t treated you well seemed logical?”

“Look, that’s what happened. My first date was with your sister. It went really well. We had a great time. Our second date was the night we met at your house, and it did not go the way the previous one had.”

“But you said you never slept with my sister.”

“I didn’t. I never touched your sister, unless you count her holding my hand and kissing me on the cheek when we left the bar as an intimate touch. But I have to tell you, Ronnie has done that a thousand times, and I can assure you there is no sexual tension there.”

I recounted each of my dates with the same sex and how each had fallen short, most of which he already knew from the countless conversations we’d had, but I wanted him to have a timeline of events.

“Look, Collier. I don’t know when it happened or how, but somewhere along the way, you let me in. We got to know each other without anything between us because you thought I wasn’t available, and it was safe. But in the process of growing our friendship, something shifted inside me. Every once in a while, I’d catch you looking at me like you longed for me, and I fought the urge to return the gaze. Or your sister would comment about my being the best thing that had happened to you, as though she knew you were into me, too. And then you took me driving and didn’t bitch at me for having to wait while I got dressed or my house being a mess. You never judged me or told me I was broken. You didn’t care that I was into cars and loved to paint my nails. You were just you. And somewhere along the way, I fell.”

“You fell?”

“Yes. I did. Hard. And Friday night, I’d had too much to drink, and you were there like you always are. When I turned around, I swear I thought I saw the emotion I felt written all over your face. I shouldn’t have done it. I shouldn’t have kissed you. It was impulsive and reckless, and I just hope it didn’t cost me our friendship.”

He totally glossed over my heartfelt confession, even if it wasn’t poetry. “So you’ve lied to me since the day we met? You allowed me to believe things about you that weren’t true? You saw glimpses of how you thought I felt, and it never occurred to you to come talk to me? To tell me the truth? You paraded around in front of my friends half-dressed, and hung out with us like you were one of the guys, and every bit of it was deceptive.”

“Jesus, Collier. Put yourself in my shoes. How was I supposed to do that? Just waltz in your door and lay it on you? Or would it have been better if I’d tried to seduce you when I was in your home? Or maybe I could have spread my legs for your friends so you could see I dig cock. Please, tell me how I could have approached this better. Because I’ve racked my brain for months trying to find an answer.”

“Months? You’ve had feelings for me for months and didn’t tell me?”

“I didn’t tell anyone. What difference does it make, Collier? Clearly, I misread the signs. I’ve gotten more of a response from my grandmother when I kissed her than I did from you at Bar None.”

“Whoa, you can’t blame this on me. Regardless of my feelings, there was no way I would have shared those with you believing you were into women. Get real. That was on you. And my lack of response was out of shock, not how I felt. Then you took off and refused to talk. I’ve spent the better part of the last week chasing you down when, in fact, you should have been chasing me.”

“I don’t chase men, West. I’m not going to. Never again. I’m done with that. Either someone wants to be with me, or they don’t.”

“Hard for a man to make that decision when he doesn’t know who you are, Giselle.”

He stood from the steps, and the air around us was thick with tension. I wanted to plead with him to give me something to go on, to confess his feelings, kiss me—anything other than leave. But I didn’t know what else to say. I’d laid it out there, and once again, he’d pushed me away. He dug his keys from his pocket, and the alarm sounded on the Porsche sitting in my driveway. The beep shattered my heart.

When he started to walk off, I got up to follow. I grabbed his hand to get him to stop. “Where are you going? Is that it? You’re done talking?”

“I need some time to think, Giselle. Everything I thought I knew about you was a lie. I don’t have a clue how to process that.”

“You know exactly who I am. I’m the same person you had Chinese takeout with; I’m the girl who hung out and watched football with you. I’m the girl you talked to after I had a bad date and the one who calmed you down when you fought with your sister. I’m still the same Giselle you took driving and to the car show. You know more about me than just about anyone in my life, and certainly every man because I never had to be anything I wasn’t—there were no barriers. You allowed me to be me without expectation. I’m still the same person, Collier.”

He pulled his hand from mine and snatched his door open in a huff. “I wish I believed that.”

And just like that, he was gone. I stared at the brake lights on the back of his car while he drove away. When the first tear slipped down my cheek, I wiped it off and cursed myself for all the shit I’d pulled in the last few months. I’d do anything to take it back and not have him hurt. But I couldn’t reverse time, and I couldn’t make him understand. And even if I were able to change the past, if I did, I never would have met him to begin with. All that left me with was the hope that he’d come around.