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Sahar first realises that she's bisexual at the age of fifteen.
It isn't a big revelation, it's quiet and slightly mundane, almost like it had slowly been building up for a while and just one tiny thing finally tipped it over the edge. Not like Nick, with his and Charlie's extravagant love story that played the role in him realising he was bisexual. It still has its issues, but the problem of it is actually more rooted in the person that catalysed the realisation, rather than the actual subject of her sexuality.
She's sitting down on her bed, and Imogen is lying down beside her. Sahar doesn't think she's ever seen someone so beautiful. Imogen is wearing a lacy, white summer dress. Her hair is perfectly curled, sitting above her head like a halo. She's gushing, her cheeks are flushed as she rambles on about how good Sahar is at playing the guitar.
"I just think it's so cool!" Imogen exclaims.
Sahar, secretly pleased, tries to play it off calmly, but to no avail, she ends up sliding down the bed to lie beside Imogen. She's staring up at the ceiling now, which gives Sahar a chance to look at her properly. Imogen continues babbling, blissfully unaware. But Sahar notices it all. The way her eyes light up a little when she's talking about something she loves, her tendency to go off on a tangent despite making little sense, and most of all, it's just her confidence. Yes she's loud and perhaps a bit weird, some might say, but it's unabashedly so.
"Sahar!" Sahar suddenly hears Imogen say. She's facing her now.
"What?"
"I think you were daydreaming," Imogen giggles, pulling a slightly embarrassed face, "Sorry for being so annoying." She leans in, long blonde hair falling in front of her eyes messily. She lifts her hand and pushes the strands behind her ears and now her face is fully in view.
She's so close.
Sahar can barely form a coherent sentence when she properly focuses on Imogen's face. The hot summer sun beats down on the, through the window, and she's suddenly overcome with the urge to lean in and break the distance between the two of them. Her eyes flick down for a few seconds, briefly looking at Imogen's lips, before she closes her eyes and turns onto her back. She shakes her head, "You're not annoying. Never."
Imogen gushes at that, "Aww, Sahar!" She grins, leaning up and propping her head on her hand in a way that makes her perfectly aligned with the window behind her. The 5pm sun floods in and she really does look like an angel now.
Sahar let's her eyes trail down slowly to Imogen's lips again. Soft and light pink, so different from any boy's. Maybe better, probably. She's never kissed a boy before, but with Imogen right here in front of her, she doesn't see why she'd ever want to.
Oh fuck, she thinks. These definitely aren’t normal thought to be having about your best friend. Definitely not a very straight thought to have, either. She feels it as the blood drains from her face, stomach gurgling like she’s about to vomit up bile. Her heart races, her head feels cloudy. She thinks she might faint.
"Sahar, are you okay?"
Sahar has to shake herself back into reality. A concerned looking Imogen is staring right back down at her, and despite wanting to melt at the sound of Imogen saying her name so softly, she quickly lies, "I think I'm just a bit tired."
She raises her eyebrows, “Are you sure?”
“Yeah, yeah.”
Imogen raises her eyebrows even further, looking down as if she doesn’t believe her.
“I’m fine,” Sahar snaps, “Seriously.”
Imogen’s face drops, “Okay. I’m sorry.” She then slowly retreats to lying back down next to Sahar and the tense silence could be cut with a knife.
Sahar swallows thickly, wracked with guilt at the knowledge that she’s upset Imogen. She always knows when Imogen is upset because she goes unbearably quiet, but her own mind is currently travelling at around 100 miles per hour and it doesn’t help that the subject of her questioning thoughts is right in front of her looking so perfectly kissable, and completely unattainable.
“I’ve just got a lot on my mind,” Sahar admits after a while, it technically isn’t a lie.
“Yeah?” Imogen says it like it’s a question, prompting Sahar to continue. She doesn’t, because doesn’t really know what to say. She can’t exactly just say, “I actually think I might be ever so slightly, very much, in love with you. But it’s never passed my mind that I’m anything other than straight, which is terrifying for some reason, and I know for a fact that you definitely are straight which makes it about ten million times worse.”
It’s like her revelation broke Imogen’s capability to read her mind like she was once able to. Because she then asks it straight, “Like what?”
Please! Stop talking Imogen, Sahar has to stop herself from saying. She has to answer the question now, no escape route. She hesitates, biting her lip, “It’s just like, personal stuff.”
It’s like something goes off in Imogen’s head at that exact moment because she’s suddenly biting back a smile. She almost squeals with excitement, “Do you like someone?” She leans in a little bit closer.
Sahar’s eyes go wide, her mouth opening a little bit. She was praying that Imogen would finally just drop it after she said that. Some kind of mutual understanding, but for some reason she had to intrude.
Sahar’s silence is enough of an answer for Imogen and she sits up animatedly, “Oh my god! You do.”
Sahar feels as the flush makes its way up her body and she wishes that a black hole would open in her bed and she could be sucked away into a different universe forever just to avoid this conversation. “No-” She tries to protest, but it’s weak. Imogen’s already running with it, and there’s something about her excitement that makes it feel like even more of a gut punch.
“Who is it?”
Sahar freezes, Imogen is watching expectantly. She doesn’t even have the brain space to think of a fake name, there’s way too much going on in her head.
It’s then that Imogen finally seems to understand. She nods patiently, looking a little bit disheartened, but not angry, “It’s fine, you don’t have to tell me.”
“I’m sorry,” Sahar says honestly, “It’s just…” she stops, looking for some kind of excuse, “Complicated.”
Imogen nods then, understandingly, “God! I understand that,” She agrees, mock sighing.
“Eh-” Sahar begins, not really knowing what she actually wants to say. Imogen interrupts her anyway.
“But…” she starts to suggest, and Sahar already knows it’s going to be something life-ruining. It’s like she has the opposite of a Midas touch with her words today, “There’s a boy from Truham, and he’s asked me out on a date. I’m like, super nervous though,” she’s speaking so quickly now and it’s like the building up of an impending anxiety attack, “And I was thinking-”
“What?” It’s like every single thought that had preoccupied Sahar’s mind previously just dissipates into thin air. She just hears the words, ‘boy’ and ‘date’ and she’s on full alert.
Imogen gives Sahar pitiful look, and she slows down, “I wasn’t going to say anything because I didn’t want you to feel left out, or something,” she says slowly, like she doesn’t really believe what she’s saying herself, “But if you like someone, I was going to say that we could make it a double date.”
Oh.
“I really don’t-”
“Please!” Imogen begs, grabbing Sahar’s hands tight and rubbing them softly, “I feel, like, sick with nerves.”
“I don’t think you’re supposed to feel like that before a date, Imogen,” Sahar states, matter of factly. Imogen drops her hands then, and they feel admittedly cold and empty. Sahar is just being honest, but maybe the image in her mind of Imogen with a boy, just someone who isn’t her, also plays a role in her bluntness. It makes her head hurt and she has to close her eyes for a second.
“What?” Sahar doesn’t even have to look at Imogen to tell that she’s shocked. But when she opens her eyes, she can’t help but also notice that there’s something in her expression that suggests that she isn’t entirely surprised to hear it. Like maybe she had been thinking the same thing.
“Aren’t you excited?” Sahar questions, even though she knows that the answer she wants to hear isn’t going to be the one Imogen gives.
“Yeah.” Imogen replies quickly as if it’s an obvious fact. “Yeah,” she repeats it, like she’s trying to convince herself.
“Yeah?” Sahar asks again, playfully.
Imogen ignores it though, she’s in her own world. “Anyway, he’s probably going to ask me to be his girlfriend after our date and I’m sure I’ll feel less nervous after that,” she tries to suggest. Sahar really can’t tell which one of them she’s trying to actually convince now. She’s bored.
“Yeah, I’m sure you will,” Sahar agrees, carelessness dripping from her tone. She just wants out of the conversation now. Imogen is evidently preoccupied and doesn’t want to listen to anything she has to say.
Imogen smiles, but it doesn’t really reach her eyes.
“Look,” Sahar starts, looking for a lie that’ll just get Imogen out of her eyesight and mind, just for the time being, “I have to practice for a band thing so…” Which is quite potentially the worst lie of all time. She doesn’t work well under pressure.
“Oh!” Imogen exclaims. The startled look on her face is telling, it’s like she has just woken up, “Can I stay? I love listening to you play” her voice is so soft and Sahar wants to give in desperately. She wants to scream ‘Yes!’ and stare right into Imogen’s eyes lovingly as she belts out hopelessly romantic lyrics that she had unknowingly written about her, long before she realised that her feelings were on a much deeper level than those of platonic.
But it doesn’t work like that.
“I think I need to practice alone,” Sahar tells her stonily, rehearsed. She can’t trust herself otherwise, she knows she’ll always give in to Imogen. She’s like her weakness. Before, she never understood why. Now she thinks she does. Almost, at least.
“Have I upset you?” Imogen blurts out, she’s tapping her fingers on her legs. She sometimes does it when she’s anxious.
“What?” Sahar questions angrily, seconds later realising her brows are furrowed and her lips pursed. She takes a moment to compose herself, “No. You haven’t upset me.”
“I’m sorry if I have.”
Sahar gives her a half-hearted smile, no proper answer, trying to slowly coax her towards the door. She needs her to leave. Sahar knows that right now, she needs to be alone. She needs to think everything over because otherwise she’ll end up saying something even more stupid than what she already has. Every second feels like a countdown to something explosive.
They make their way down the stairs and Sahar watches as Imogen slips on her sandals.
“Can you text me if you change your mind about the double date?” Imogen asks again as she’s standing at Sahar’s front door, waving her goodbye. She seems desperate, which gives Sahar a peculiar feeling.
Sahar doesn’t know what to say. Because it definitely isn’t that there’d only be three people on said double date, with Imogen being both her date and whoever the stupid Truham boy who had asked her out was. Sahar hadn’t even bothered to ask what his name was, or whether she might know him. She hated him and it was better to not actually associate that hatred with a real person, it wouldn’t be fair. She messily settles on responding to Imogen with an inconclusive, “Maybe” which seems to placate her enough that she gives Sahar an elongated hug before turning around and walking around the corner without even looking back. Sahar watches her until she disappears completely.
That evening, Sahar googles an ‘am I gay quiz’. The answer it provides her with, the word bisexual flashing up on the screen with blues and purples and pinks, is uncomfortable but she knows that she’ll come to accept it. One day, hopefully in the near future.
She’s not sure, however, if she’ll be able to accept the fact that Imogen isn’t gay. It isn’t her fault, but it still hurts.
She didn’t text Imogen again after that.