An Exploration Of Sexuality

Hey guys, this is just a little recount of a confusing relationship I've developed with this girl. I'm quite unsure about where we stand and I'd really love for you guys to give it a read through and tell me your take on the situation.

Thanks.

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All characters participating in sexual activities are over 18.

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So, here's the thing, I've always identified as straight. It's not because I'm super into guys and I just know. It's just that I appreciate men and hot men especially, and I've never really considered myself to be anything other than straight or even really given it much thought, I just assumed you know it was 'straight until proven otherwise' sort of like the legal system I suppose. I have nothing against the LGBTQ community, although when I was younger, and I saw girls kissing, I did feel a little bit squirmy.

Then I thought it was just because it grossed me out - and not just because they were girls, all PDA's made me feel a little bit awkward because I was just young and immature.

Anyway, now when I see girls making out it sort of just turns me on and I'm now beginning to wonder if that's why I was so uncomfortable with it when I was younger. The memories are quite foggy now though as it was many years ago and so I can't be sure.

Now that you have this to think about, I should probably tell you a little bit about why I'm writing this. I am only just eighteen and I've recently acquired feelings for a girl, which I never have before. It's a crush I guess, I have a crush on a girl.

Now one of the main reasons that I am writing this is because of my own inexperience and I require some outside input. The girl I have a crush on is about a bit over a year older than me and also my manager at work. As far as I know, she is straight, although we did have a brief conversation about our sexualities which I will detail to the best of my very poor memory, later.

My feelings for her were completely out of the blue though not entirely unprovoked. I had known her through work for over a year when it suddenly hit me. She'd always been my senior at work and somewhat condescending, initially, I didn't even like her at all because of this.

However, as I became more competent in my role and made less mistakes, essentially becoming self-sufficient, we became friends, as she no longer found the need to be condescending or annoyed by mistakes.

After a while, I genuinely like her back, and she was one of the only people I actually like hugging - I am not an overly touchy feely person, though I did go through a somewhat 'huggy' stage when I was about fourteen, it's definitely not something I go out of my way to do as genuinely do not enjoy it.

This was the first thing that I noticed about her, that I actually like hugging her, the way our bodies fit together, her short enough that I could just wrap my arms around her neck and rest my head on top of hers. It's not like I'm SUPER tall either, I'm about 5'8 maybe 5'9, so just tall. Anyway, none of this was in a romantic way, at this point, I still just considered her a friend, lots of my friends in the past had been similarly huggy and so I honestly didn't see anything different about it except that it was actually comfortable.

We stayed in this 'friend zone' for quite some time, months I guess, and she regularly hugged me, nothing weird at all. I should also probably mention, that to this day we don't hang out outside of work, sometimes one of us will come into the shop when we're not working, and we'll talk or whatever, but it's not like we chat on social media or hang out with each other outside of work.

And as for the hugging, it's not like I'm the only one she hugs, but she doesn't hug everyone either - I should also mention that I've never seen her hug a guy.

Now, to move onto the more interesting part, and this is where our story begins.

It was a busy weekend, we'd both been pretty flat out the whole day and I suppose we were just done. She'd been sitting in the manager's office and I'd been out on the floor, she came out, walked right up to me and said 'I love you'.

It wasn't the first time she'd said it, but it seemed different, like it was just a fond 'I love ya' in response to some action, joke or story on my part, it was a direct statement with no reason whatsoever, she just walked up to me and said it.

If I remember correctly, I was confused but still not suspicious. I just responded with "Aw I love you too."

And then after a moment of thought I asked,

"Why'd you say that?"

"Because you're a star." She replied to me.

I can't remember what I said after that, but it hardly matters anyway. She started helping me prepare orders and I recall a few light brushes, most memorably she brushed my ass lightly with her hand as she walked around me.

Not intentionally but not unintentionally either. She could have easily avoided brushing my ass with her hand, but maybe because we're friends she thought it'd be fine and nothing meant by it - after all we were both girls and what's weird about a little girl on girl contact between friends anyway? Girls are naturally a bit touchy feely anyway.

Either way, neither of us acknowledged it because it didn't seem weird, in fact, in the moment (for me anyway) it felt more flirtatious than anything.

And I suppose, that was the moment everything changed. It wasn't even that I found her attractive when I met her, I didn't even think she was very pretty, maybe cute but I only really noticed that after I started to like her. She touched me at least one other time in that 10 minutes of helping, I can't remember where, but I do remember noticing each time she touched me - even if I can't remember the actual touching. By the end of my shift I was thoroughly confused, thoughts of

"Does she like me? What the fuck.", "Do I like her all of a sudden now?", "Could I be into a girl?" "Does she have a thing for me?"

I was really, very confused. I thought about it for a while when I got home but then mostly forgot. Now, this is the clearest part of the story aside from the end which happened only days ago, so it may be hard to follow or even incorrect at points for the next section.

The next time I came into work, I think she hugged me and told me "I missed you." She did this quite often actually, even though we saw each other at work every few days and at least once a week. What actually happened over the next week and the order it happened in, I cannot remember for the life of me, so I will make a list of what I do clearly remember.

1. She was sitting in the manager's office - which for future reference can I just tell you, is very small, about 3 metres long and maybe 2 metres wide, a big electronics cabinet and a bench running along the length of one wall, taking the actual standing space down to maybe 2 metres squared.

Anyway, I was early for my shift and so we were talking. She asked me if I'd had any boyfriends before and I told her - awkwardly - yes, I had. She asked me 'just one?' and I said, 'no a few' which wasn't entirely true.

I'd had a couple of sort of boyfriends and only one actual one which even then only lasted like two weeks way back at the beginning of high school. Now days I get sick of people too quickly to be into dating, plus if I'm honest, I'm pretty awkward and most of the guys I like aren't into me.

Can I also mention at this point that I use the term 'like' loosely here, perhaps a better phrase would be 'guys I would consider dating if they made a move on me', I hadn't had a proper crush on a guy for like 2 years and even then, that was the biggest boy crush of my life and couldn't even compare to the crush I have on her.

Guys had asked me out and been into me but it had always seemed to much effort to be worth it and I wasn't really that into any of them.

Anyways, at some point when she'd been asking me about boyfriends she'd asked if I had any girlfriends, I think it was something like

"Have you had any boyfriends *brief pause* or girlfriends?"

I'd been asked if I'd had 'a boyfriend... or a girlfriend' already that week and so I asked her

"Why does everyone keep asking me that? And no, I haven't?"

As you can see I can't really remember the order these questions were asked in or exactly how it shaked out, but I do remember the order of the conversation that followed.

"Wait, are you straight or...?" she asked.

I hesitated, I had been confused about feelings for her lately after all. Plus, I was just an awkward person when it came to these conversations.

"Yeah I guess... I mean I don't know." Then I shrugged and said, "It's 2018, anything's possible right?"

By the way the ... is a hesitation during which I was thinking, and I wanted to say "I don't know I've never tried being with a girl" but I decided not to, for the best I think.

Without much of a pause I then asked her,

"Why? Are you gay?"

She just smiled and shrugged and said, "It's 2018, anything's possible."

Now, let's talk about what this felt like afterward. The thing that most stuck out to me was why she was asking about my sexuality, and to be honest, it seemed a little out of place in the conversation. I mean, it sort of came up but mostly it felt like she just brought it up.

I started wondering why she would feel the need to ask, rather than just assume I was straight like everyone else did, save for when it genuinely came up - as it had seemed to a couple of times that week already, but much less forced than when she asked me (I think - it's kind of hard to tell what of my interpretation of our conversations is genuine and what's been played up in my bias hope that she does actually like me.)

2. Later that week, there was some sort of security technician in the store fixing up cameras or whatever. I arrived as he was finishing up, he was just an average looking guy maybe early twenties. After he left I walked into the office where she was scrolling through Facebook on her phone and another of my managers was talking to her.

"As if you're going to find him." The other manager was saying.

"I can try" she told her.

"What are you guys talking about?" I asked.

"She's trying to find the security guy on Facebook when she only knows his first name and where he works." The other manager told me.

"Knowing my luck, he's probably got a girlfriend anyway." She said.

I can't remember exactly what I said but I was thinking 'why couldn't she just go for some guy who she already had on Facebook or actually knew, I mean what's she going to do just message him on Facebook like

'Hey, you just came into the store to fix our security system, and I thought you were really cute?'

I mean, that seemed a little forward, I mean it's just like having the plumber or electrician come to fix something in your house and then looking them up on the internet to hit on them if you're that into them just hit on them while they're there.

Although, I will admit, I did notice her being slightly flirtatious when I came in and he was finishing up, more like just checking where he was up to when she didn't need to, an excuse to talk to him, maybe get him to notice her I suppose.

Anyway, this made me remember that she was still straight and had the ability to be quite forward, she'd also made a complaint that she was 'sick of being single' or something to that effect.

I still had hope however, that maybe she was into me considering the slightly flirtatious nature of our relationship.

I knew that most of that could just be chalked up to being comfortable around me considered we were both girls and she could just be being friendly.

I also thought however, that maybe she could still be into but just not be as forward because I was a girl and she was out of depth with that, I mean I definitely had no idea how to proceed.

3. I had come to work at least 20 minutes early for almost all my shifts that week, mostly because my mum was busy and had to be places so she couldn't drop me off when I actually started. However, I did encourage her to drop me off early because I wanted to talk to her.

I was sitting in the office with her and another manager before the beginning of my shift and I made a comment about how I'm always here, way before my shift.

She said, "because you want to come and talk to us."

She was spot on, but I made a sarcastic joke to cover it up and said, "yeah, I know that you guys are here, so I come early just so I can talk to you."

She might have nodded or something, I can't remember but she acknowledged my response neutrally and said nothing.

She liked talking to me and being around me as much as I liked being around her. I also might note that during one of these 'before shift' encounters I was leaning against the wall (There's a section of wall maybe 30cm wide between the bench and the door) and she was sitting on the stool on the other side of the office which was about a metre away from me, counting cash from the registers.

Because I was leaning my legs were most of the way across the tiny floor space and just resting slightly unnaturally against hers which were turned toward me because she was counting the cash which was spread out across the bench between the two of us.

Neither of us acknowledged that our legs were touching, and neither of us made comment about the slightly awkward nature of how we were positioned, it could be easily passed off as a natural position by passers-by and maybe even she didn't notice but I definitely felt like I was making a conscious effort to be close to her.

Either way, it felt like we were both just enjoying being close to each other.

4. During one of my breaks she told me to come talk to her in the office while I ate, so I did. I asked her if I could sit on the stool and she said yes, so I sat on the stool and faced the door (and more to the point, her), with my arm on the bench.

She was counting cash again and so she stood, facing the bench. There wasn't a lot of room in the office and the far side of the bench was mostly taken up by a computer, so she had to stand pretty close to me. Either way, she ended up standing between my legs, as she counted the cash and my right knee grazing her ass gently, but again, neither of us said anything and I felt as if we were both just enjoying the closeness and didn't want to ruin it.

Maybe it was just my imagination though and really, we were just two friends hanging out, and girls are pretty touchy feely, so it didn't mean anything from her point of view, it would have been more awkward for her to try and count the cash from the side rather than just standing in between my legs where she was right in front of it.

A few other things happened, she invited me to sit on her lap (my friends sometimes do that, does that mean she just sees us as friends or is she trying to be close to me?) either way, I declined.

She hugged a girl she doesn't usually hug then me, it made me wonder if she maybe hugged the other girl just as an excuse to hug me also.

And she hugged another girl but not me and I was pretty jealous.

I was starting to feel like I'd imagined it all, and although I still really like to spend time with her I didn't feel like I was lusting after her as much anymore.

Then this last weekend, things started to come back up again.

She was very quiet and sort of angrier than usual. I thought she might have been upset by something, or just in a bad mood, I asked her how she was and she seemed her usual self so I just left it.

But she was still unusually quiet and overly professional with me, maybe she was just trying to focus on meeting targets and we could be friends when we weren't on shift.

She came over to help me with something and I told her she seemed unusually quiet. I can't remember clearly but I'm fairly certain she just shrugged and said 'yes', a seemingly strange response now that I am thinking about it.

After that though she seemed to be happier and essentially went back to being herself. Now that I write it down I'm wondering if she was jealous because I didn't talk to her before work but rather talked to one of the boys who was waiting around to start, same as me.

But I think she was busy then anyway and I'd be surprised if she'd actually even noticed let alone actually cared. Anyway, the thing that struck me most now that I think about it, is the sudden mood swing after she realised I'd noticed her quietness.

It just reminds me of how I'd been all quiet and annoyed when she'd ignored me and how if she'd have noticed (which she didn't really because she'd been out the back most of the time whilst I was on the floor) I would have also flipped like she did and gone back to my usual happy self.

Did this mean she could be feeling similar to me? Or was I linking the dots up to form the wrong picture?

When I went on break, she asked me what as I was doing as I clocked off for my break.

"I'm on break" I told her.

She was happy and said, "come eat in here with me, you can sit on this crate."

She pulled out a crate that was in the back corner, right next to the stool but on the wall side not the bench.

I got my food and came back, squeezing awkwardly into the corner and facing the stool which she was sitting on, my knees brushing the bottom of the stool and occasionally the underside of her thigh.

We talked a lot, we both have a fair bit in common and we both generally dislike people - except for each other apparently.

I think it's also important to make mention that managers don't really invite crew into the office to each with them, sometimes, but not often.

And I've never seen her invite anyone else into the office with her except for me. But it could just be that she wants to be friends with me.

Anyway, we talked about my school friends and how I don't really like them. She asked me if I was friends with more girls or guys. I told her mostly girls and she was surprised.

"I can't really imagine you being friends with girls." She told me.

Maybe she was jealous, or maybe she saw me as a sort of tom-boy, which though I wasn't a girly girl by any means, I definitely wasn't a tom-boy either.

Either way, it made me wonder if she thought I was gay and that was why I would hang out with guys more.

It also made me wonder, if she couldn't see me being friends with girls, then what were we?

Maybe she meant 'other girls', but if we weren't friends then we were definitely something else, the only problem was, that it seemed much more likely that she just wanted to be friends.

I also told her about how I wanted to move out, but my mum wouldn't let me, mostly because she didn't approve of the people I had proposed to move out with.

She said, "You can move out with me, I'm moving out next year." "But not until a little way through, I have to save some money first."

I can't remember exactly what I said but I told her that it was a good idea.

Although, I'm pretty sure there's nothing more like the friendzone than offering to live together.

I didn't really want to live with her, because that would pretty much take the cards off the table for anything actually happening between us. I mean, who offers to move out with the guy they like? No one.

Does that mean we're definitely just friends or could she have said it in the moment without really thinking about it?

Or maybe it didn't really mean anything, I mean she was pretty forward, even we did move in together, maybe she did like me and that didn't really change anything except that she could see me more?

That was pretty much the last time I saw her, and I'm still just as confused as ever.

So, my question to you readers is, does she actually like me or is she just friendly straight girl and I'm reading these vibes all wrong?