One Voice 02 - Here Without You by Mia Kerick Page A

and very sporty looking—immediately and alarmingly bringing to mind Marcy Lewis from high school, a girl who had been one of my major tormentors. I couldn’t stifle a shudder when I remembered Marcy swatting my butt with her high tops on the soccer field freshman year. The other girl was small, pixie-like, black, and just about as cute as a button. Like Liz Trainer, the ringleader of the high school bullies. The cute ones always spelled the most danger. My chest constricted uncomfortably.
    “You guys know my boyfriend, Casey, from One Voice. Casey, this is Anna”—he indicated the Marcy look-alike—“and Claire.” The too-adorable-to-be-kind one.
    They slid into the booth across from where I sat, and Zander rejoined me, immediately placing his hand on my knee.
    Anna extended her hand across the table, and I feebly reached out to take it in mine. “Oh, Casey, it is so great to have a chance to get to know you on a more personal basis than we can at One Voice.”
    Her green eyes sparkled with what appeared to be genuine warmth. But for me, it was hard to trust.
    I took a controlled breath and blew it out. “Thank you. Glad to get to know you too.” I wondered if it was obvious that I was lying.
    Claire had to sit on her feet in order to reach my hand. “I’m super thrilled to meet you, Casey. I just wish your other partner, Nate, could be here too. It feels like somebody’s missing.”
    What she said demonstrated her open-mindedness to our throuple. The muscles binding my chest loosened up slightly.
    “Casey, Anna and Claire were high school sweethearts, just like me and you and Nate.” Zander squeezed my knee. He knew how hard this was for me, but he also knew I needed to be able to interact socially with people besides Nate and him, especially if I wanted a future in medicine.
    “High school bit the big one,” Anna pronounced bluntly. “We had to hide our relationship for three years.”
    Claire looked at her girlfriend with unmistakable warmth. “We promised each other that there would be no more hiding in college, so now we don’t hide at all. That’s why we were so happy to see the signs for One Voice in the student center. It’s extremely necessary.”
    For a moment, it was almost as if Zander and I weren’t there with them. Anna reached her arms around Claire. “I wish we had had a gay-straight alliance like One Voice in high school. Everything would have been different.”
    “Things would have been better.” The two young women were momentarily lost in each other’s eyes. Seeing that, my dry mouth moistened a little bit.
    We went on to discuss our majors—Anna and Claire were both enrolled in the School of Social Work at BCC—and our personal goals as members of One Voice. By the end of the dinner, I had confessed to these two girls that I’d had a very difficult time in high school. I didn’t go into great detail about the bullying I suffered. I avoided opening that can of worms, but I think they got the general picture. And Claire had shared how both of them had hidden deep in the closet, occasionally even dating boys to keep up the charade, terrified right up until their graduation day that their peers would discover their love. They had attended a Christian high school, where they knew their relationship would have been frowned upon, to put it mildly.
    “So your partner, Nate, is coming down for the weekend?” Anna smiled. “Maybe we could all have dinner together at the student caf’ before the meeting?”
    Zander returned the smile. “That sounds great.” He winked at me. “If I decide to let the two of them out of bed.”
    Knowing our intimate plans for this weekend, I felt a furious blush climb up my neck and make itself at home on my cheeks. I giggled.
    “Well, I can’t say that I blame you one bit.” Claire also winked at me. “You three haven’t been together in a couple of weeks, right? You’ll need plenty of time to get reacquainted.”
    I think I blushed even