Though her answer made perfect sense, it wasn’t what I wanted to hear. I wanted to hear that I was wrong, that I should not have given up my best friend, that I should go back to him and rejoin the baseball team (if coach would let me) and be his number one guy again.
“I’m not saying you shouldn’t ever see him again or kiss and make up eventually,” she clarified. “You totally should. But maybe try to see this time apart as a blessing rather than something to be in despair over. Every friendship needs an amount of space. That’s why there’s all of that cookie between those chocolate chips. Too much of anything isn’t good and makes for an upset belly. I mean, have you ever scarfed down a whole bag of chocolate chips before? Wouldn’t recommend it. Four whole years of eating my feelings in a college dormitory taught me that lesson the hard way.”
She said a lot of things, but the only words that seemed to stick were some of her first: kiss and make up. She was totally innocent in saying them—being funny, even—yet my mind went in a totally different direction. A literal direction.
A heart-fluttering direction. Kiss and make up.
I imagined myself near Stefan, feeling the warmth of his body as he sat next to me on the bench in the dugout, or as I lay next to him on his bed whenever I slept over, or when we’d squeeze into the same armchair for whatever dumb reason—silly and stupid as we were so often—and watched TV.
My heart skipped and raced and stumbled at the counselor’s innocent words. Suddenly I was picturing my mouth drawing very close to Stefan’s. It did things to me, thinking about that.
Yes, I had thought about it before, but not in this capacity. Not this intensely.
Not this honestly.
I only jokingly thought about how Stefan and I were like a gay couple, even though we dated girls and never kissed each other.
But what if we did kiss? What if, one night when I crashed at his big house, I actually put my lips against his? I could imagine it right then, all those moments when Stefan and I were so close to each other that I could feel his breath on my face as he slept.
Right there in Becky Lemont’s office, I crossed my legs tightly and suppressed the erection I just gave myself.
“Yes,” she said, drawing my attention back to her. “I did just make a corny analogy to your current situation using chocolate chip cookies. If you’d like to leave my office and never see me again, I would completely understand it. Ugh, I know I’m going to be dreaming in cookies for the rest of this month until that dreaded wedding is over with. I’m happy for my sister, don’t get me wrong. But damn her half to Hell and back for getting the skinny genes.”
The cookie broke apart right then, falling into my lap in tiny crumbs. Then I looked up at her, awed by the galloping of blood and chemicals through my body, and I said, “I think I like Stefan.”
“Well, yes. Of course. We established that.”
“I think I … like-like him.”
Strangely, I felt entirely safe revealing that to her. It wasn’t even a speck of a concern of mine that she might react badly, or recite scripture like my Great Aunt Marsha did three Christmases ago in reaction to a certain pop celebrity coming out on TV, or tell me that it’s just a passing phase of “best friend adoration” that everyone has and that I’ll grow out of.
Instead, she tilted her head, her eyes touched by the little smile she now wore. “Is that why your heart hurts so much?”
I was still picturing myself kissing Stefan.
And wondering what his lips felt like.
Wondering even what all of his girlfriends felt when they were trapped in his embrace, kissing him during a school dance, or in the halls between classes, or after a game.
Wondering what Stefan would feel or think.
All the pieces were falling into place. And the more they did, the more I saw.
The more I saw.
Then the tears, waiting patiently as ever in the corners of my eyes, finally began to crawl down my face.
They must have been waiting for that particular moment when the realization would strike me that I was in love with my best friend—the gay sort of love. It was the moment my whole life changed. It was the moment I realized who I was and what had been plaguing me for all of the years since I met Stefan.
I think I’m in love with you, Stefan.
I didn’t even realize it then, but my short yet perfect relationship with Becky Lemont would inspire my choice of what to pursue in college. I would eventually come to discover, after all of my times of healing in that school counselor’s office, what I was meant to do with my life. I wanted to help young people just like she helped me. And hopefully they wouldn’t have to crash into my big bosom I don’t have in the hallway to get that help.