By the time we get back to the hotel, after calling an Uber to collect us from the fountain, I feel a hell of a lot more sober. I'm still a little tipsy, sure, but there is too much going on right now for me to be anything but one hundred percent present in the moment.

I love Kitty.

Kitty loves me.

Levi is gay and Kitty loves me and their marriage would have been so much more doomed than I could've imagined.

"The problem with fancy restaurants," Kitty says, "is that their portions are way too small."

It's the first thing she's said since we tumbled out of the Uber and she thanked the driver, and it's not what I'm expecting to hear after we have both poured our hearts out to each other in the middle of the Strip.

"You want to get room service?"

"I'm craving those loaded fries we had the other night," she says, already on her way to the phone. I sit on the edge of the bed, stunned. We have both dropped bombshells on each other tonight and she is calling room service. I have to laugh. Fuck, I love her. I am nauseatingly heart-stoppingly in love with Kitty Cohen and her need for loaded fries after we just spent more on dinner than I spend on a month's worth of groceries.

"Do you want anything else?" she asks, hand over the receiver.

"More fries," I call out. She laughs. Asks for extra fries. Ends the call and throws herself onto her side of the bed. I roll onto my side to face her, taking a moment to drink her in, unashamed to stare because Kitty loves me.

She lies with her elbow under her head. "Can I tell you something?"

"Of course."

"You have to promise not to judge."

"Do I ever?"

Her voice is deadpan when she says, "Yes."

"Fair enough." I laugh. "But I promise I won't judge you for whatever you're about to say."

Even the lighting in this suite is romantic, warm and dim and almost suggestive. My thoughts are ricocheting off each other, scrambling to figure out what Kitty's about to confess that she thinks I'll judge her for – she paid for her followers? She doesn't like coffee? She's never actually read a book? – but I am not prepared for what she says.

"Levi never made me come."

I gasp and almost choke. We've gone from confessions of love to this? "I'm sorry, what?"

She can't look me in the eye, her gaze dropping to the covers. "Uh, yeah. I never had an orgasm with him."

"Oh my god. For two fucking years?"

She grimaces and nods.

"Not a single orgasm?"

"I mean, I got myself off, but he never did."

"Holy shit." I'm slack-jawed, staring at her. "I'm not judging you at all, I promise. I am judging Levi a bit, though," I joke. I'm not really. I can't. Poor guy spent two years with Kitty, trying to come to terms with his queerness.

"It's not his fault," Kitty says, pulling her knees up and moving her hair out of the way before she tucks a pillow under her head. "He was a virgin when we got together and the first time we had sex, it, uh, it didn't last very long and he was pretty embarrassed and I felt bad for the guy so I kind of ... pretended."

"Oh my god." My hand is over my mouth. I can't pick my jaw up off the floor. "Kitty ... you faked it with him? For two whole years?"

She holds up a hand and says, "More like a year and a half. Less, even. We were together for nearly three months before we even slept together and then we didn't do it at all for the last four months of our relationship."

I can't imagine being with a guy and not sleeping with him. After all, the sex is pretty much all I've ever been interested in when it comes to men. Even Ben, the nicest guy I ever dated, didn't have enough going for him for me to want an actual relationship. When I see myself in a long-term situation, it's with a woman. It's taken me a long time to understand my bisexuality and how it works, and I'm still figuring it out.

"I don't know what to say," I say when I've been quiet for a few too many seconds. "Did you want to sleep with him? Like, why the celibacy?"

Kitty rolls her lips together and pulls them between her teeth. "I guess I didn't really care? I can do it better myself anyway."

My head is filled with images of what that looks like and after ten years, I know almost every inch of Kitty's body; I can picture the scene all too well and my face is heating up. This is not remotely the right time to be imagining her touching herself but I can't shake the images.

"Do you..." I have to clear my throat and hope she doesn't notice how flustered I am, how fucking aroused I am thinking of her waiting for Levi to leave before she brings herself to orgasm. "What about other guys, or was it just a Levi thing?"

There's a knock on the door but I don't give a fuck about loaded fries anymore. I need every detail and I need it now. As close as we are and as candid as our friendship is, Kitty has never talked much about sex. Every boyfriend she's had, she's glossed over the details and I've never pushed too hard because it's none of my business. But now she's letting me in. She's making it my business.

Kitty rolls off the bed to open the door, bringing in a tray with two steaming plates of fries. I sit up as she sits down, placing the tray between us, and I guess I do give a little bit of a fuck because I pick at the cheesiest fry, scooping up sour cream and cheese and burning my mouth.

"What was I saying?" Kitty asks as she pulls out the longest fry.

"You've got me on tenterhooks here, Kits," I say. "You were about to reveal if any guy has ever made you come."

She frowns in thought, as though she's flipping through her mental rolodex of every time she's ever had sex. "Actually, yeah, it's not just Levi. None of the guys I've been with have given me an orgasm."

I can't believe what I'm hearing. I can't believe this has never come up in the ten years we've known each other. Except Kitty doesn't do flings or hook-ups. She's a relationship girl; she has only slept with the four boyfriends she's had since she was sixteen.

"You think you're asexual, maybe?" I ask, just in case it's the one question she needs to be asked for her to realize it might fit. But she shakes her head; she has already tried it on for size and put it back on the hanger.

"I thought that for a while. I looked into it a lot."

I hate that she didn't feel she could share with me. I know it's personal and believe me, I know how much identity can shift with time, but I could've helped her. I can help her now, at least.

"You know it's a massive spectrum, right?" I say. "You can want sex and have it and be attracted to people and still be ace."

"I know." She gives me a small smile and I am reassured that I'm not pushing her where she doesn't want to go. "I've thought about it a lot, trust me, but it doesn't feel right. I want sex and I love masturbating and I enjoy porn." Jesus Christ, does she have the faintest clue what she's doing to me? "I want to be able to come with a partner and I do feel attraction towards people. Romantically and sexually. Just ... not any of the people I've been with."

My breath hitches, my brain overloaded by everything she's just said. Her gaze meets mine and there's something in her eyes. Something melancholic. I want to pull her to my chest and hold her there but she isn't finished yet, so I wait. I don't want to jump the gun.

"This is still a judgment-free zone," she says, raising her eyebrows at me.

"Absolutely."

"You're going to think I'm such an idiot."

"I could never," I say, as sincerely as possible. At least, as serious as I can be when I am fighting to eat an overloaded fry without getting salsa all down my front.

"You will," Kitty says, quietly laughing to herself, "because how have I got to the grand old age of twenty-eight and almost got fucking married before realizing I'm a lesbian?"

There's a ringing in my ears. I'm not sure I heard right. My eyebrows are on the ceiling and my jaw is on the carpet and Kitty laughs at me.

"That's a judgmental face!" she cries out.

"No, it's a shocked face!" I say when I manage to get my words back. "After tonight I thought maybe you're bi? But you're a lesbian?"

She nods slowly, tucking her hands under her thighs.

"How long have you known?" I ask, thinking back over the last decade. I think of when she and Levi moved in together and she cried over having to leave me, and she cried harder over having to live with a boy. Like it wasn't even something she wanted.

"I think I had a suspicion when I was in middle school," she says, "and I buried it because it freaked me out."

"You buried it deep," I joke, though on the inside I'm crying for little confused middle school Kitty who didn't know it's okay to be gay. She chuckles and nods, eyes on the fries.

"Yup. Literally ignored it for a good fifteen years. And then Levi came out to me and I was..."

"Relieved?" I offer.

"Yeah, but also jealous."

I frown. "Jealous?"

"This little voice at the back of my head was like that's not fair, how come he gets to be with who he wants to be with." She laughs again, pushing a hand through her hair. "How fucking dumb is that?"

"That's not dumb, Kitty, god, please don't think you're stupid. People go their whole lives not realizing they're queer!" I push the breakfast tray aside and pull her close, holding her tight until she relaxes against my chest and I feel the warmth of her hands on my back.

"Levi knew. When he proposed. He already knew. Or, well, he had a suspicion."

"About you?"

"About himself," she says. "He had a feeling he was gay but he was scared to come out or even analyze it too deeply, 'cause he wasn't sure how his parents would react and he didn't think there was any point because it's not like there was a guy he was interested in. He was really struggling." Her voice is soft and sad and I ache for this version of Levi I never knew existed.

"Why did he date you, then?" I ask. "I mean, I completely understand that he wasn't ready to come out, but why get you involved?"

Kitty purses her lips. "He figured we could be together for show and maybe he'd actually fall in love with me and it'd be okay and he was wrong about being gay." She sits back, resting her head against the headboard. "But he picked up on my clueless lesbianism. Way before I did. He was deeply closeted, and when our parents set us up, he figured I was too and that's why I agreed to go out with him."

"Wow." I can't keep up with each new revelation slapping me in the face.

"Yeah."

"Big conversation."

"Mmm. It was a weird one. We kind of chipped away at it over a few days." She wraps both hands around the water bottle she keeps by the bed and slowly sips it as she ponders her next words. "He told me he'd fallen in love with this guy, and he said it was a get out of jail free card. We could end our engagement, no strings attached, and be with the people we actually love. I told him that's all well and good for him, but there was no-one else for me, and he laughed."

"Bit harsh," I say. I seem to have forgotten how to use more than a couple words at a time. When Kitty's hand falls into the space between us, I take it in both of mine.

She gives me a soft smile and says, "He thought I was joking, he really did. He looked me in the eye and he said, Kitty, you have been in love with your best friend since long before we met."

I get chills. A shiver skitters up and down my spine and turns into heat. I turn her hand over in mine, my thumb tracing over her life line. "Was he right?"

"He was." She closes her fingers over my thumb. "The moment he said those words, it was like he'd taken off a blindfold I didn't know I'd been wearing."

"What did you do?" My words come out barely more than a husky whisper.

"I got on the T and asked you to join me on my honeymoon."

I stare at her. She stares right back. "That was the day?" I ask. "The day you knew?"

"That was the day I realized I'm in love with you," Kitty says. My heart flutters, a frisson of pure joy heating me from the inside out when she says those words again, as though my nerves are sparklers and she's holding the flame. "By that point, I already knew Levi and I were over. I'd known for a few days. But that was the day I knew why it didn't bother me as much as I thought it should have. That's why I was kind of a wreck when I turned up at your apartment."

"I never questioned the wreck part," I say with a laugh. "That was very believably because of the whole, you know, relationship implosion."

"It wasn't an implosion. Barely even a fizzle," she says, covering her mouth as she chews. "It was like the relationship was a contract and it came to the time to renew, and we made a mutual decision not to."

"How romantic."

"Hey, don't tease me when it works out in your favor!" Kitty admonishes, a sparkle in her eyes. "Be thankful that Levi figured out I love you before I did, 'cause we wouldn't be here if he hadn't pointed it out."

She has sour cream on her lip. I want to kiss it off, but she notices and wipes it with the back of her hand.

"Thank you, Levi. And thank you, lesbian gods."

Kitty flushes pink when she laughs and says, "I haven't said it out loud before. God, it feels fucking good." She sits straight and tips her head back and yells, "I am a lesbian! I am in love with my best friend! And she fucking loves me too!"

"I want to kiss you so bad right now," I say. We both have greasy hands and mouths but I don't care.

Kitty looks at me out of the corner of her eye and says, "Why aren't you fucking kissing me then?"

I kiss her again.

Slowly this time. So I don't lose my breath. I caress her cheeks and I remember how to breathe through my nose, and I try not to whimper against her mouth when she parts her lips. Everything about her is soft and smooth and warm. I push the tray away to bring her closer to me, one hand dropping to her waist as I kiss her like there's no tomorrow.

When we pull apart, my lips are swollen and I can feel the heat in my cheeks, and I can see the love in Kitty's huge black pupils.

"I've been so deep in the closet," she says, "that I didn't realize I've been in love with you for years. This is so ridiculous!" she cries. "It's always been you. You've always been the person I want and I got it all tangled up because I couldn't see how fucking gay I am."

"Can I just say, huge fan of how fucking gay it turns out you are."

Kitty rests her back against the headboard and turns her head to the side to look at me. "Please don't tell me you've known you love me all this time. I don't think I can handle it if you've been miserably in love for ten years."

"I haven't," I say. "I mean, I have, but I only put it all together recently." I think back on the timeline of my crush. "Um. Since you kissed me at Seven Magic Mountains."

"Oh my god." Kitty drops her face into her hands. "That's a whole week ago."

"Yeah." I grimace at the thought of how much that kiss fucked me up.

"I couldn't read your signals," she says. "I used to be able to read you like a book but this whole trip, it's been like trying to read hieroglyphics."

"I've been going through a lot of internal turmoil," I say.

"I'm so sorry. I got carried away."

"It's okay. Forced me into a revelation."

"Still. It wasn't fair of me to do that when I knew I liked you and I didn't know how you felt."

"To be fair, neither did I." I laugh and she does too. "Want to hear something funny?"

"Always."

I sit up straighter and pull one leg up under myself to face her better. "When I told Sally about you asking me to come here with you, we kind of had a falling out. Like, the tiniest of fallings out."

"What? With Sally? Why?"

"Because she made a joke about me sabotaging your relationship with Levi so I could be with you, and that I booked my dream trip as your honeymoon so I could go on it with you."

Kitty covers her mouth with both hands, a laugh bursting past. "Oh my god! That's hilarious. Why did you fall out?"

I bite my lip. "Because she skirted too close to a truth I didn't know about. And I may not have sabotaged you and Levi – you guys sure didn't need my help with that – but I think I have spent the past ten years self-sabotaging every relationship I've ever had, or had the chance to have, because they can't give me what I want."

Kitty's voice is a whisper when she asks a question she knows the answer to. "What do you want?"

"You."

She drops her voice even lower. "Why the fuck have we wasted all this time?"

"Because we're a pair of clueless idiots," I say, "but I don't want to waste another second."

We change into our pajamas. This time, when we get under the covers, we don't retreat to our sides of the bed. We meet in the middle. Nothing's going to happen tonight, it's too soon for that considering the roller coaster of emotions we've been on today, but it is glorious to give in to Kitty's skin against mine. I may be bigger than her, but she is the one who wraps herself around me, her stomach pressed to my back and her arm around me, her hand innocently snug between my breasts. Her face is nestled against the back of my neck, and I hear the change in her breathing when she falls asleep.

I don't fall asleep for at least an hour after that but for the first time I don't mind. It's not because I can't. It's because I don't want to. Kitty is spooning me, her body bracketing mine, and it is heaven. I am in no rush to slip into a dream and lose awareness of this feeling.

*

i hope you liked this chapter!