I thought about Ashley quite a bit in the next few weeks. Every time I saw her in the halls or at softball practice it would make me think about the locker room incident. I still couldn’t figure out what it meant. It was puzzling to me that a popular straight senior would come on to me, but I couldn’t find any other explanation for what she said and did. It was quite the conundrum.

          Meanwhile, softball was going quite well, and I was getting to know all the upperclassmen on varsity really well since both teams practiced together. I learned that Ashley’s friends were really nice, and I fit in with them just fine which made me feel better about our potential friendship.

Now that we had been practicing for a while and our first games weren’t too far off, coach sat both teams down for a talk. He said things like we need to be committed and behave. He also said we shouldn’t be worried about our boyfriends. Right after that, one of Ashley’s friends said “or girlfriends”. This comment was laughed off but it stayed in the back of my mind, as I thought it was strange that she would say that unless she knew something that the rest of us didn’t.

The next week was our first team dinner, and by the time it was half-way over, the only people left from JV were my best friend Kyla, a sophomore Chelsea, and me. We were left sitting on a big couch in the family room while varsity went off somewhere else in the house. We began talking and somehow got on the topic of the older girls and all of a sudden my best friend’s eyes light up.

“I just remembered something I heard today!” she stated in an excited whisper.

“What?” Chelsea and I asked in unison.

“Nick told me that Aiden, Ashley’s little brother, told him that she was bi!” she said, followed by a giddy giggle.

“Oh my god!” Chelsea exclaimed.

“I know!” Kyla said back.

I just sat there, eyes wide, mouth hanging open, shocked by this new information. ‘Could this be true?’ I asked myself. Did I want it to be? I didn’t know. I was straight, I shouldn’t have cared if she was or wasn’t. But did I?