"Hi, Miles." Barbara-Ann said sweetly. Did her plaid shirt give too much away? Probably. She looked him up and down, admiring his broad shoulders and curled hair, but then her eyes caught a shine on his nails and she nodded to herself. "Thanks for coming out with me." She blushed. "I mean, going out with me. Haha."

Miles also went red and they quickly found a table and sat down. Barbara-Ann had chosen a small bar she liked, and they chatted about Maths and school whilst he ordered a salad and she a quiche.

"So have you, uh, had lots of girlfriends?" Barbara-Ann asked. Was that something straight people asked each other? She had no clue. Nothing was so complicated between girls - you just understood each other better. This boy in front of her was a complete alien. She didn't understand his body or his feeling or his speech.

"Yeah, lots." Miles replied, but he looked just as uncertain as poor Ann did. "So many."

"That's cool." Barbara-Ann told him, giggling lightly and somewhat flirtatiously.

"Have you had lots of boyfriends?"

"Too many to count!" Barbara-Ann waved her hand like it was nothing.

"Really?" Miles looked suddenly interested. "Where do you find all those boys?"

"Oh, you know... Here and there." said Barbara-Ann, trying to be as vague as humanly possible, then sent a prayer to the heavenly father that Miles wouldn't spread the rumor that she was a whore. Everyone knows the only thing that'll damage a girl's reputation more than having no sex in high school is having a lot of sex.

Miles laughed. "Ok!" he said, looking impressed and not a bit put off. "That's cool!"

"Yeah.." Barbara-Ann grinned sheepishly, breathing a sigh of relief.

"I wish..." Miles began, but then broke off suddenly, flushing deeply and kneading his hands in his lap in an embarrassed way.

"What?" asked Ann, grinning at him in what she hoped was a teasing yet encouraging way. She genuinely wanted to know what he'd said.

"Oh, yeah, I was just going to say that I'm sure you haven't had as many boys as I've had girls!" Miles suddenly sat up, and out of the corner of her eye Barbara-Ann saw someone from school had come in.

"Ok!" said Barbara-Ann cheerfully, biting into her quiche. "So, do you have any siblings?"

⁂

"How was your quiche? Was it as good as my salad?!" asked Miles, when they'd finished eating "My salad was so good! I should really come here more often!"

"Yeah, not many people know about this place," said Ann, putting her hands in her pockets casually and grinning at him. "And yeah, it was cool. I'm glad you liked it! But I think I should probably go now- my English homework won't do itself!"

Miles, nodded, then looked like he was contemplating something.

"How should we say goodbye to each other? Should we like..kiss?" Miles asked suddenly, his eyes as wide as a tarsier's as he contemplated the idea with feigned interest. Barbara-Ann didn't even bother hiding her disgust. Miles bit his lip nervously, then moved somewhat closer.

"Bitch, no." Barbara-Ann stood up suddenly, her chair scraping loudly against the tiled floor. "Sorry, Miles. I can't do this. I just needed to keep up appearances. I thought you'd get it..."

"Of course I get it!" Miles exclaimed, rolling his eyes. "Don't you?"

"What do you mean, don't I? Then why are you trying to kiss me?"

"Because I don't want people to know! And if someone sees us kissing.. no one can ever know!" Miles sighed, looking suddenly panicked. Barbara-Ann sighed, then moved closer to put a hand on his shoulder.

"No one will give you shit if you're yourself, okay?" Barbara-Ann said with a weak smile. "Well, they will, cause our school is a shithole filled with ignorant bigots, but if they do, remember that they're the imbeciles." She laughed. "Thanks for the date, anyway. You're a nice guy."

"Yeah, it was nice."

"I'm, uh, going to go. I just realised there's a really important phone call I need to make."

Miles smiled, his lips just forming a weak smile. "Good luck."He murmured, "Do you need me to walk you anywhere?" but Barbara-Ann flung ten dollars down on the table before flying out, her phone already in hand, fumbling to find JAKE *butt emoji* in her contact list. As soon as she located him, she stopped running abruptly, causing an elderly man to almost crash into her.

"Watch yourself, girly!" he snapped.

"Sorry, sorry!" she panted, sitting down on a bench and looking at Jeikeh's contact name.

Before she even realised, she was calling him and he'd picked up.

"Hi, Jeikeh, are you alone?" She panted. This was partially because of her nervousness, but also because she'd just run for over thirty seconds and her body simply couldn't handle that much physical strain (she'd once thrown up after running for three minutes straight).

"No."

"Can you get alone, please?"

There was silence until Jeikeh confirmed he was alone.

"Oh, God, thanks so much for picking up. Where are you?"

"What's wrong? I'm having dinner with Mexico."

"I needed to tell you something, sorry for interrupting you. So you're with Mexico, how is it?"

"Yeah, I'm with Mexico. It's nice, it's pretty nice."

Barbara-Ann couldn't help but huff in a mixture of annoyance and envy.

"What do you want? Because my girl is waiting on me." Jeikeh said after a while of silence, but Barbara-Ann was quiet, jealousy penetrating her bones the same way Jeikeh's many spray tans had penetrated his brain and made him permanently dumb.

"Um, there's something I need to tell you." Barbara-Ann says. "I was just also on a date and well - I just ditched him. Because I've been on lots of dates before and honestly, I couldn't handle a date with a guy for any longer."

She sighed, secretly hoping he would have understood by now but knowing full-well he would have no clue what she was going on about.

Jeikeh coughed a bit, then simply uttered - "What?"

"I'm gay, Jeikeh." Barbara-Ann announced and waited for his reaction. As there was none, she cursed his stupidity and slow reactions for the eleventh time during their conversation. "Jeikeh?" She asked eventually.

"Wait, but you're a girl!" He exclaimed, and she screamed in frustration into the phone.

"I know I'm a girl! That doesn't mean I can't be gay!" She took a deep soothing breath to calm herself. "The term is technically lesbian."

"So who do you like?"

"It means I like girls! Like you!"

"I'm not a girl!" Jeikeh exclaimed with the tone of a 12 year old preteen who thinks liking the colour pink inevitably makes you a female.

"UGH!" Barbara-Ann shrieked. She was nervous and annoyed, and right now, impressed at Jeikeh's sheer stupidity. "No, that's not what I'm saying! I mean I like girls, the same way you like girls!"

"Wait, am I a lesbian?" Jeikeh asked suddenly in a panicked tone, and Barbara burst into histerical laughter at the total hilarity of the situation. The first of her friends she was coming out to... and he asked her if he was a lesbian.

"No, hun." Barbara-Ann sighed. "I'm just saying I like girls, and as a girl, that makes me a lesbian, but you're a boy, so liking girls as a boy makes you heterosexual, or straight. Yeah?"

"Oh, yeah, I like girls!" Jeikeh said contentedly, smiling to himself. "Mexico isn't bad..."

"Oh my god, can you just listen to me for a second?" Barbara-Ann exclaimed, jumping up from the bench and "I needed to tell you... Did you know that all this is a challenge? Between Mexico and I, to see who could get a boy first? I felt bad about people bullying her so I thought it would be good if she went out with someone... And I forced myself to go out with a boy but he was gay too and I've just left the restaurant... Oh my god."

Jeikeh was the first person beyond family members and some online friends that Barbara-Ann had ever come out to, but he didn't seem to give a flying fuck. Well, he was somewhere between there and truly not understanding the situation. Barbara-Ann was beginning to regret telling him first of all.

"Does that mean you like Mexico?"

"That's not even what I'm saying, Jeikeh!" She resisted the temptation to call him Jeykey, like Bluebell-Rose did sometimes, just to annoy him, but decided not to stoop quite that low.

"Well, that's good for you I guess. It's a bit weird but whatever... I don't care."

"Okay, thanks." Barbara-Ann replied, deciding to quickly forget about the "weird" comment and take the "I don't care" to heart. Hopefully everyone else, including Mexico, would feel the same way.

There was a long silence again between the both of them, during which Barbara-Ann desperately searched for something to add but couldn't think of anything, so she picked at her nails instead, hoping Jeikeh would say something.

"Uh, I'll say hi to Mexico for you, then." he said.

"No!" yelled Barbara-Ann, causing a little girl with a unicorn backpack walking past her to jump in fright. "Don't tell her I called, Jeikeh and especially don't tell her what I told you!"

"What am I going to say then??" asked Jeikeh in a slightly irritated tone. Now he had to think too! He just wanted to get back to his girl.

"Just tell her- I don't know, just think of something to say that isn't Barbara-Ann called, she's a lesbian now."

"Ok." said Jeikeh, surprisingly agreeably. "I still don't understand why you're being like this, but ok."

"Thanks Jeikeh" said Barbara-Ann in relief. "You made things a lot easier."

There was an awkward pause.

"Should I hang up now?" Jeikeh asked cluelessly a moment later and Barbara rolled her eyes.

"Yeah, go ahead." She replied, and Jeikeh hung up.

She sighed, thinking nothing but well that was anticlimactic! Jeikeh, meanwhile, was beginning to realise Barbara-Ann was a lesbian like the ones he'd seen in porn, and he found that a nice concept. He wondered if Barbara-Ann's fate was to become a pornstar - it couldn't actually be possible lesbians existed outside of porn.

He shrugged and went back over to Mexico, whilst Barbara-Ann nervously paced back and forth on the sidewalk, before darting into the nearest shop - coincidentally, a Starbucks!

She bought a drink and only realised when she was sitting with it in front of her that she wasn't some white 14 year old Uggs-wearing and iPhone loving girl but rather a lesbian black girl who had been doing her best to boycott brands such as these.

Well, whatever. And her over-sweet, expensive Caramel Frapp gave her brain freeze, which numbed her mind. All the better. At least it meant she could forget this evening. She couldn't believe she'd just come out to Jeikeh. If she had asked herself yesterday who the next person she'd come out would be, she'd have guessed Mexico. But, as her religious ex girlfriend Mariah had often stated "The Lord works in mysterious ways". This was her answer to many things, including why God created gay people if he hated them.

Oh Gosh, Mariah. Barbara-Ann had broken up with her about three months into their relationship because she was a bisexual homophobe. One of her favorite statements was "I'm not gay, nor straight, nor anything else! I love souls, not bodies!" She thought that this must make her a pure angel™.

When Barbara-Ann broke up with her, Mariah told her she was going to hell. Barbara had only replied "Maybe. Maybe you'll burn there instead. The Lord works in mysterious ways." Then she had shown her the finger and left.

But back to tonight. Barbara was exhausted and confused, and her Caramel Frappuccino was only helping the exhaustion part. She sat, listening to the calming Starbucks music and wondering what on Earth to do. This had been quite the night indeed.

In a bout of desperation, she scrolled through her contact list until she found Emily on the list, and grinned, texting her. Emily was always a safe hook-up and an awesome friend, too, so Barbara would not only get relief but also be able to cry about her romantic misfortunes for a few hours.

Sounded like a perfect lesbian ending for a shit night. 

a/n: Sorry for the break in posting! We're back now :)