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“I know you were flirting with that guy at the bar,” Jade said, her teeth clenched into an underbite, her criticisms almost fighting their way out of her mouth, through the spaces between her teeth.
“His name is Dee,” I said. “And no, I wasn’t. He’s just a friend.”
Whatever you say, she said. But I know that I’m just an experiment.
We were standing in my kitchen, drunk, fighting. This time, over a boy from Cuba I’d been friends with for two years, whom we’d run into on New Years’ — strangely, at the local lesbian bar, Sass. We’d played a game of pool, had Captain and Cokes. Jade seemed like she liked him, until we got home. When she started in, I’d clutched the handle of the refrigerator in my hand, dug my nails into the palm of the other, closed my eyes. Clenched my own teeth. This had been a recurring theme in my and Jade’s relationship — whether or not I was genuinely attracted to her, whether or not I actually loved her, whether I secretly liked men and was getting a phase out of my system. I was, after all, in college, and isn’t that the joke, that girls messing around with other girls in college is just girls gone wild?
Jade was my first girlfriend girlfriend, the first woman with whom I had a romantic relationship, after…
