"My whole childhood has been one of loving horses and of heartbreak."

[vaalski]

My junior year I was single for the first time in years. I'm good with girls. They like me - the way I move, the way I don't apologize, or perhaps the way I look something like a boy, all long and lean and laughing. God knows I've had more than my fair share of supposedly straight girls eying me in what they probably thought was a surreptitious manner, the same way they looked at the football boys stretched out in full run during practice. Don't ask me why. I never went with any of them past the first one - it's the hardest way to get your heart broken, to be left simply because it turns out you are a woman and not a man. Still. 

It's not that I minded being single. I'm not a girl who needs a lover all the time - I know how to be alone and how to be happy that way, and I have enough friends to make anyone happy. I don't even miss physical contact, because Jane still makes a thin line between friend and lover, and it's not uncommon for me to wake with her curled up beside me, dreaming like a young dog, eyes flickering beneath her lids and small sounds coming from her throat. I rarely have the heart to wake her, and instead slide out of bed carefully, body lithe and cautious, placing my feet oh-so-carefully on the bare wood floor, the cold traveling like a shock --

But I am not in love with Jane.