Making My Choice

"I want it," I tell her, speaking before I was ready and so making things up along the way, "I do. I want it and I'm glad of you helping me even if I don't know why because frankly I'm still trying to wrap my head around why someone as awesome as you is my frie- is helping me in the first place. But I'm just a little intimidated, that's all. I'm... unfamiliar with all of this."

"That's why I'm here," she reassures me, squeezing my shoulder and then running her hand down until her fingers interlaced with mine, "And you can call me your friend, Emily. I consider you my friend and I'd be really glad if you called me yours."

"Friends then," I smiled, a pang somewhere just above my tummy pinging momentarily as I realized that, in spite of what the old me always though I wanted, that was all I was going to get.

But it was what I wanted too, and I knew it. Just like with Blake, with Jake, with Lucas, or even Eddie, I knew that she didn't hold appeal for a long-term thing. The old me would have killed to have Rachel as his girlfriend, or thought he would have anyway, but the new me wasn't into her that way.

I liked her. I thought she was fucking hot and she turned me on. But there was no lightning strike when I kissed her and unlike with the guys, I knew that wasn't because of her personality. Rachel was someone I could love, had all the capacity to love. Except she just didn't have the right parts to fill the space in my heart meant for a one and only.

What I'm saying is that I realized that I was bisexual, but definitely heteroromantic. Into guys and girls to get off but into guys only for love.

And maybe shockingly, I was okay with that.

"Come on," she smiles, knowing nothing of the enormity of the thoughts that run through my head, "We don't have all day."

Sex shops are weird, I'm just going to go out on a limb and say that. I haven't been in a lot of them, but I've been in enough to know that somehow they are all shockingly the same. And I've been in enough to know that the buttoned up culture too many of us are born into makes it so that enough of the people who walk through the front doors to buy something from them have this air about themselves that lends to an atmosphere that I can only describe as furtive.

Quick glances. Keeping track of where the other people in the store are at nearly all times. Never quite making eye contact or, if you do, never lingering for long enough that it lasts beyond a flash.

Even the people who aren't ashamed can't quite bring themselves to be pleased about being in there. Well most of them at least.

There are exceptions to every rule, and I was quickly coming to terms with the fact that Rachel is nearly always among those exceptions. While other people were either silent or speaking quietly, she was bubbly and bright and fucking loud. While they moved slowly, almost cautiously thorugh the place taking in everything while keeping their distance from everyone she darted about the place at top speed, keeping up a running patter not because she was nervous but because she was excited.

I'd never known anyone who so thoroughly embraced their sexuality. It was intensely comforting to know that someone like her existed.

"Look at that one," Rachel cries out with a giggle as she points to a display of something large and dark and decidedly bumpy, "Can you imagine using that? Oh and this! I always wanted a pir of these."

I flushed a little as she dragged me over to a collection of dangly metal bits, pointing in particular at a pair that were charmingly labelled nipple clamps.

"I love nipple play," she says, "Have I told you that yet? It makes me absolutely melt. And these are a steal at this- Oh fuck, we gotta check this out."

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