402. Chapter 402

He was sweet.

Matt Capraro.

He was sweet and he was smart and he was a decent writer.

He wrote poetry about them, when they weren’t studying.

When they weren’t in the shadowing doctors in the hospital.

He was sweet. Her med school boyfriend.

He was sweet, and he wasn’t like the guys she picked up in clubs. He was gentle with her and he didn’t shove her tongue down her throat the second they started kissing and he asked every time he took her clothes off, went slow every time he fucked her.

“He’s great,” she’d tell Eliza when Eliza would call to check up. Would call to congratulate her for balancing med school and a boyfriend.

“Is he giving you the space you need to focus on your studies, Alex?” her mother would ask, and Alex would say yes, because yes, yes, he was.

Because he was great. Really, he was.

“I didn’t understand why I couldn’t really fall for him,” Alex tells Maggie years later, and Maggie listens, and she doesn’t ask Alex why she dated him anyway. Because Alex will say it, when Alex is ready.

“He was funny, you know? He’d make me laugh. And that was hard to do, then. In med school. I had a rough time, you know? With the pressure, with everything. But he’d make sure I ate and he’d write me poetry.” She chuckles to herself, and Maggie grins while she swipes her thumb over Alex’s open palm, listening. Making a note to herself that Alex would like to have poetry written about them.

But then Alex’s faint smile is cracking her voice, and her tears are flooded, because she’s in love with Maggie, god, that she’s sure about, but it still shocks her.

It still shocks her, every time she realizes – more and more every day – just how much the world assuming she was straight, the world not giving her any other representation, any other options, really hurt her.

Could have killed her.

“And I tried to love him, you know? I really did.” Maggie nods softly, because she knows exactly where this is going. “I thought… I thought if I couldn’t make it work with this great guy, you know, then I didn’t deserve to make it work with anybody. Like there was something wrong with me for not being wild about him. Everyone always told me how lucky I was, you know, to have such a sweet guy, and that’s the thing. He was sweet. He wasn’t like, sweet to everyone else and then crappy to me. He was good to me. But I just couldn’t…”

She wipes her eyes with the back of her index finger and she sighs and breathes out a soft laugh, looking into Maggie’s understanding eyes.

“Now that I’m thinking of it, he reminds me a little of like… what Winn and James’s kid would be like, if they had a kid. Like, a combination of both of them. How sweet they are, how thoughtful, and smart, and loyal, you know? Don’t you dare tell either of them that.”

“Your secret’s safe with me, Danvers.”

They both smile, and Maggie kisses her hand, and Alex continues.

“I just figured, it was me, you know? That something was wrong with me, that I couldn’t be happy with him, couldn’t love him like that. He broke up with me, eventually. I think he knew. Maybe not that I’m a lesbian, but he knew I wasn’t into him like he was into me.”

She chuckles.

“Like I said: he was a good guy. But if he hadn’t… god, Maggie, I can’t imagine… I don’t know how I would have broken up with him. How I would have been brave enough to. Because I figured I had to stay with him, right, how could I hurt him when he was nothing but good to me?”

Maggie tilts her head and strokes Alex’s hair and cheek with the back of her hand, the front of her thumb.

“You would have met me anyway, Danvers. You would have met me and I would have been your friend. I would have told you that you deserve to be happy, and there’s nothing wrong with you for not being in love with him, and that you’re brave and amazing for being able to admit it, and that you deserve a full and happy life, and you’re allowed to pursue that for yourself, even if it means breaking up with someone who everyone else says should be perfect for you.”

Alex’s eyes fill with tears again, a rush of what she’d felt when she first came out to Maggie; that relief, that surge of understanding, of acceptance, of… loving herself.

Maggie smirks, then, and her voice drops just a bit.

“And then you would have broken up with him and I would have swept you off your feet with my charm and good looks.”

Alex laughs, full of love, full of the happiness she hadn’t known how to find before – full of the happiness that she now knows she deserves – as she pulls Maggie in for a kiss.

“Oh, you would have, huh?”

“Every time, Danvers. Every time.”