Fool for Love (Believe #2) (2 page)

I take the handle of my suitcase as the speaker announces that it's time to go through security.

“Well.” I smile brightly at my friends. “I best get going.”

“Don't forget to text me the minute you land,” Emma reminds me. I give her a mock salute.

“I'd never forget that, honey.”

I inhale deeply and hold my breath for a few seconds before I let it out. I turn away to head in the opposite direction, the hustle and bustle of the other travellers sounding all around me. The anticipation everyone feels while about to go on a trip is palpable; I can almost smell the excitement I see on the faces around me, and it strengthens my own. Finally, I’m about to go on an adventure. At last, I will get some answers. Or at least I hope I will.

I haven't walked far when Emma calls out, “Suzy!”

I stop and turn to look at her.

She blows a kiss at me and yells, “Don't kiss
too
many frogs while you're gone, sweetie. Take your time to find your Prince Charming.”

I giggle and roll my eyes fondly at her.

“But I enjoy kissing frogs!” I shout back.

She snorts and waves at me. Daniel kisses her cheek and I smile at the gesture.

I turn around again to head to a future I can't wait to meet.

New York…here I come. I hope you're ready for me.

Three months later

N
EW YORK CITY. THE
Big Apple. The city that never sleeps.

The metropolis that brought me Carrie Bradshaw and
Sex & The City
, making me fall under the illusion that
that
was what real life here would be like. Such a fantasy.

Call me naïve, but I thought that coming here would lead me to a realisation of what I am supposed to do with my life. New York was meant to be an adventure – a wonderful experience and an opportunity for me to explore the real me. But so far, I have been left with more questions than answers.

When will I know who the real Suzy is?

When will the questions stop?

Our mothers teach us that once we grow up, we will find the answers; that we become tougher, smarter, and wiser by each year. Or that’s what my mum told me, at least. I wonder if she has ever truly believed that, because telling her my secrets – my hopes and fears for the future – didn’t have the desired effect. Far from it, actually. Maybe we didn’t have the kind of relationship like most mothers and daughters have while I grew up, but I thought she would accept me…
all
of me; I never thought that I would hear such awful things coming out of her mouth like I did three months ago. No, instead, I thought that coming out as bi wasn’t something that I should keep from my own parents.

Well, I couldn’t have been more wrong, apparently.

The really hard thing to swallow here is the fact that by going off as she did – calling me
abnormal
– and the subsequent revelation about my whole reason for existing planted small seeds of doubt about myself and my sexuality. I haven’t felt like that in a really long time, and a part of me hates her for having that much power over me even though I’m a grownup.

Life in Denmark wasn’t so bad, really, but I needed to get away. I wanted to go on an adventure. But this adventure hasn’t turned out the way I expected it to so far. Am I meant to keep dithering around, always searching for the lost piece of the puzzle that is…
me
? Forever questioning my hopes and dreams?

If that is the case, I am so disappointed with life – and I fear my dreams will float away, like ashes in the breeze.

How depressing.

I’m usually the upbeat, happy-go-lucky girl. The one who tries to find something positive in every situation, but here’s the thing: I’m a good liar. I can’t remember a time when I wasn’t. In fact, I think I’ve become such a great con artist that I no longer know the truth from the lie.

I need to find a way out. If I don’t, I will be lost forever.

The first time I kissed another girl – a
real
kiss, one that involved lots of tongue and boob grabbing – I was fifteen years old. Her name was Isabelle, and she was very sure of herself. I wasn’t. I’d kissed a couple of boys before, and I knew I fancied them. But then Isabelle came into my life, and I started to have some very sexual thoughts and feelings about her that confused the hell out of me. The way my heart galloped away in my chest when she was near – just like it did when I was crushing on a boy – was familiar, yet so different at the same time. It felt
forbidden
, in a way, but liberating. I tried to not let it show how I felt whenever she noticed me staring at her; or whenever her arm brushed mine when she was my partner in our physics class – or how I would get lost counting the freckles on her nose, daydreaming about kissing every single one of them – because I never thought that she might feel the same as I did. I never dreamed that she was crushing as hard on me as I was on her.

One night, though, changed everything.

It was towards the end of the school year, and I was at a friend’s party. It was very low key, but the guy hosting it had nicked some beers from his parents – or that’s what he said – and my classmates were feeling rebellious. So was I. I’d had a couple of beers even though I knew I wasn’t allowed to drink alcohol yet. I remember feeling less shy and awkward as usual, and the buzz in my head, and the good music sounding around me, made me bold. When I saw Isabelle standing at the CD player, smiling at me in a way that made my belly flip, I got up from my seat on the couch and went to chat with her.

I can’t remember one single thing of that conversation. The only thing I
do
remember is the way her eyes lit up in a way I’d never seen before when I went to her. The alcohol made me brave, and when I reached her side, I stood as close to her as I could get. At some point, she took my hand in hers, interlacing our fingers, and that’s when I felt it – as if a piece of me that I’d unknowingly been searching for suddenly just clicked into place.

When she leaned down to whisper in my ear – she was a lot taller than me – I held my breath, and her words were the sweetest ones I’d ever heard come out of a person’s mouth.

“I want to kiss you, Suzy. Will you let me?”

I nodded, struck mute for once, and my breaths came out hard and fast. She glanced around us, and then led me out of the basement and into a bathroom right next to it. Pulling me inside behind her, she quickly locked the door before turning on the light.

“Have you ever kissed a girl before?” she whispered as she backed me up against the door, and all I could do was shake my head in silence.

“Mmm,” she sighed as she put her arms around my waist, and then leaned down, but stopped when our lips were only inches apart. Her questioning eyes met mine, and I just
knew
, right down to my soul,
that she was silently asking me if I was okay. I put my hand on her cheek, and she smiled softly at me. When her lips met mine, slow at first, then more urgent, a heat unlike any I had felt before surged through me, and I became lost in the sensations her kiss made me feel.

I wasn’t the same after that night. Even when Isabelle never approached me again after our forbidden kiss in that basement, leaving me slightly broken-hearted, did I regret it. I knew that I was different from most of the teens at the posh school I was attending, but you didn’t talk about
‘such things’
, so I couldn’t know for sure. When I realised that I still fancied boys, I spent a lot of time trying to find out if I had any preferences.

Practice makes perfect, after all.

It turns out that while I love having sex with with women, I fancy men the most. There’s just something a little more
special
, I guess, when I’m with the other sex in an intimate way. I love their strength – their hands that can be both soft and rough on my body – and I definitely love that specific part of their anatomy that they have between their legs.

Or so I thought up until a couple of months ago.

A woman's touch is so much different from that of a man's.

She instinctively knows where and when to move softly or quickly; where your body is the most sensitive; and, in general, she knows how important foreplay is. Furthermore, when a woman goes down on you? She doesn't have to search long and hard for where your lady bits are.

Why don't men ask more questions during sex? It must be so much easier to know what you're doing instead of fumbling around all the time?

Unless they think that's sexy, of course.

Oh lord…if that is the case, the male population is in a whole lot of trouble!

I'm lying on my bed, Morgan tucked close to my side, and I take in her gorgeous body while she sleeps. Her shapely bottom, her perky breasts, the curve of her long neck – where strands of her red hair rest – her rosy cheeks, still a bit flushed from our hot and heavy make-out session; and at this very moment, I wish that there could be more between us than the casual fuck we indulge in from time to time.

And yet…I can't. I can't pretend to be in love with her when I know I'm not.

Sighing, I rub my tired eyes and look to my right, out the floor-to-ceiling windows in the loft I'm renting while here in New York. I don’t know what time it is, but the sun is setting, shining softly on the trees and the remaining leaves. Fall has arrived, and while I love the golden and reddish colours, I wish it wouldn't be so cold already. These few, short months in New York have been amazing – an experience like I’d hoped for – but I haven’t found love like I’d hoped I would. While I haven't been kissing as many frogs as Emma feared, I haven’t held back, and I'm becoming more and more impatient. Why is love eluding me?