pretending to examine my nails. “Did you ever think about coming to one of our meetings?”
Ruby frowned. “This is the first time I’ve ever heard of a queer club at our school.”
“Are you serious?” I was flabbergasted.
“Dead,” she said. “Did not know that was a thing. Is it still going…?”
“No,” I said. “Because nobody really came. But we had flyers everywhere.”
Ruby smiled sheepishly. “I would remember if I saw your name on something like that.”
I flushed, feeling shy and shocked and defensive and strangely giddy all at once. I reached into the shoebox and pulled out a creased, bright pink Westlake GSA flyer, and handed it to Ruby.
She studied it for a moment, smiling a little. “How long did you have it for?”
“It felt like forever, but I guess it was closer to…two months? Ish?” I blushed. Could that be right? We had so many meetings, I thought. We waited for our community to find us until we couldn’t wait any longer.
“I never knew,” Ruby said again.
“Would you have come if you did?”
“Maybe,” she said. “I might have been too scared of you guys.”
“Me?!” I said incredulously.
“Yeah,” said Ruby. “Well, more Jamie, but yeah.”
“She is scary,” I agreed.
Ruby studied my face. “She means a lot to you.”
I could feel myself redden. “Yeah,” I said. “So do you, though.”
Ruby leaned over and kissed me softly on my jaw, sending goose bumps up my arms.
“Okay!” I said, standing up to grab a pen from my desk. Ruby watched me curiously. I sat down again, and held out my hand.
“No, don’t,” she said. “It’s an antique.”
I picked up the list myself. “It’s a living document,” I said. “Like the Constitution.”
“Okay, Mr. Haggerty.” Ruby grinned. She watched as I drew a line through the word Straight and then another through We Wish Weren’t.
“There,” I said.
Ruby laughed. “?‘Girls.’ Great title.”
“It’s honestly more accurate this way,” I said. “That’s all we were thinking about.”
Ruby leaned forward and kissed me on the corner of my mouth. “Thanks,” she said.
“Of course,” I said. “Just out of curiosity, how do you want me to, like, describe you?”
“Incredibly talented, brilliant, beautiful,” she said, deadpan. I rolled my eyes, and she laughed. “I’m bi,” she said firmly. “It’s not a secret, at all. It’s just that nobody ever asks.”
I nodded. “Cool. ‘This is Ruby, my girlfriend. She’s bi,’?” I said, mock-introducing her.
Ruby winced, just slightly, and my heart dropped into my gut.
“About that,” she said.
“Oh no,” I said, accidentally.
“No, it’s okay,” she said. “We hadn’t talked about it yet, but I would prefer if you don’t call me your girlfriend.”
Oh my god, I thought. I am being dumped for the second time in a calendar year.
“I’m not ending things,” she said, reading my mind. “I just don’t like that word as applied to myself.”
“Okaaay,” I said.
“It’s not about you,” she continued. “I didn’t let Mikey call me that either.”
It was hard to tell how consoled I should feel. I said nothing.
“Other people said it, maybe, but he never did, and neither did I,” she went on.
“But why?” I sputtered. I sounded like a baby. Baby moron.
Ruby puffed up her chest and held up a politician’s fist for emphasis. “I’m a strong, independent woman living in the twenty-first century,” she said in a deep voice that made me laugh. She smiled, and resumed her normal slouch. “Maybe when I’m in college I’ll get it, but right now, at this age, it doesn’t make sense to me to belong to somebody else like that.”
“I get that,” I said, though I didn’t, totally. I loved to be called someone’s girlfriend, and to call someone else mine. I could only imagine how I’d one day feel to say wife. I