Luke is a regular guy living in a small town, and bisexuality is way too complicated for him to understand. Or at least, he’s having trouble understanding it. But that’s probably because he’s not bi. He’s only liked one guy before, his boyfriend Ryan. And Luke is currently avoiding his best friend Zach after catching the other guy making out with some dude at a party and being turned on. Anyway.

Anyway, Luke often inadvertently goes to the scariest teacher at his school for advice. Even though she’s super scary, she’s also smart and a lesbian. So this a deleted scene from One Little Lie where he does just that.

~

Luke

Overall, Ryan was probably a good influence in my life. But in this regard, he corrupted me as I completely skipped homeroom. I just didn’t feel like going. That was my story and I was sticking to it. Until I turned down a hallway and saw Zach heading my way and ducked into the nearest classroom before he saw me.

I looked around and found myself in Mrs. Sharp’s classroom. Okay, fine. This was an appropriate punishment; I deserved this. And while I didn’t have Zach to talk to at the moment, I had Ryan. Who I told everything, even though I wasn’t sure if this was the relevant information he wanted or not. And I felt weird talking about it, so I mostly explained through emojis, like two guys, lips, an eggplant, and a bunch of question marks. The important thing was that I tried to communicate. A for effort and all that.

So, I wasn’t being a coward. I was still making steps forward. I wasn’t hiding anymore.

I mean. I was hiding from Zach. Literally. I wasn’t metaphorically hiding.

And Mrs. Sharp had said she was around to talk. I couldn’t tell her the whole thing, but she probably had helpful advice underneath the scariness. She’d been a lesbian and living in this town for a long time. She didn’t have a class and peered at me dubiously after I barged in.

She seemed almost amused by my entrance at first until I just stared at her and she just stared at me and then I got the feeling every moment I wasted her time was a moment she would make me suffer for later, so I had to get right to it.

I meant to ask something helpful and important but instead I went with, “Do you like that drag race show?”

She paused for a moment, not expecting that. At least it was so unexpected she forgot about her wrath. I am such an accidental genius. “What kind of question is that?”

I sighed and hung my head. “Of course you like it.” Everyone gay liked it. And I—

She smiled. “Actually, I don’t.”

“Really?”

“My wife says I should love it.” She smiled just thinking about her wife, then her expression turned wry. “But it’s a bunch of grownups acting catty and immature. I already deal with a bunch of teenagers being catty and immature, why do I need more of that in my life?”

“But you’re—” I fidgeted. “I mean…”

“Luke, there is no one way to be gay.” She sounded way more patient discussing this than she did when trying to explain Gulliver’s Travels to our class. There wasn’t a lot of adults I could talk to about this so that was kinda nice.

“I know that,” I said because I’d heard that before. But maybe that was different than knowing it.

“You can know something in the abstract but the reality is different.” Yeah, what she said.

But I had to make sure that, “We’re still talking about the same thing right and you haven’t started on a lesson about the Lilliputians or Houyhnhnms? Because reading that once was enough.” Those were tiny people and talking horses in reality but in the abstract represented other things. It was satire, I got that, but couldn’t it just be a good story without having to mean something?

She raised an eyebrow. “Did you read the material or find a summary online?”

“Um, can we get back to the subject?” I totally started the reading… then I just found a summary online.

“Which is what?” she asked with a smirk. “Drag Race?”

“I guess.” I put my hands in my pockets and looked down. Oh hell. “I wanted to talk to an adult before my parents,” I admitted. “Someone who will tell me it’s all gonna be alright.”

“I can’t promise you that,” she spoke gently again and didn’t look scary at all. “But you will face whatever happens,” she said like it was a fact.

“How can I tell them when I don’t even know if I fit?”

“There’s nothing to fit.” When she saw I wasn’t sure about that, she thought about it and continued with, “Alright, how about this? Don’t think of it as adding something new to your life and trying to make room for it. It’s already part of you, so it already fits.” Now she might as well be talking about Gulliver’s Travels again.

I shook my head. “But it’s not, I didn’t even, um.” I suddenly remembered that I couldn’t tell her this whole thing took me by surprise. “I don’t know.” It hadn’t been a part of me until I pulled Ryan into my life.

She seemed to get enough of what I meant anyway. “When or how you discovered this part of yourself isn’t relevant. This aspect of your personality was something you haven’t noticed before, I take it, but that doesn’t mean it hadn’t been there all along.”

“Hmm.” That was… I don’t know. I guess that meant that this didn’t have to change who I was. Was that really possible? Or maybe some changes were okay, but they didn’t change who I was because this was who I was all along? That was kinda a nice thought.

I wasn’t disappointing anyone by being this way, I couldn’t do anything to change it. It was just who I was. Things had changed because I realized something about myself, but I hadn’t changed. I guess.

“That’s it?” She asked after a moment. “No denial, bargaining? Insults?”

“I can definitely insult you if you want,” I responded immediately before I remembered I was talking to a teacher about this and not Zach. “Uh, I mean… I don’t know just, yeah. That’s something to think about.”

I had so many thing to think about. Still, that wasn’t the worst conversation in the world. I didn’t know if I quite believed her entirely, but it was a little reassuring. I didn’t have to like drag queens who weren’t really racing. I didn’t have to start wearing feather boas. I could change, but I didn’t have to change.

Still, I felt like a blank canvas or maybe a chalkboard, everything else had been wiped away. What happened next was up to me. I could put the same stuff back on the board. Or do something new or some combination of the two. I could just be me.  The only problem was that I wasn’t totally sure who that was at the moment.