Despite all this, the morning after, Gemma couldn’t get away from her fast enough. Celeste had tried her best to be calm and relaxed, hoping that would help them get everything sorted out this morning. But maybe it’d been for the best that they didn’t. After all, Celeste doesn’t do relationships. Not anymore. She can’t completely forget that because of one tender moment of nostalgia.

Although they’re exes, Celeste still cares about Gemma. She doesn’t want to hurt her again.

Back when they seriously dated in college, Celeste believed that the happily-ever-afters she grew up reading about were real. When she and Gemma just happened to become roommates at the beginning of junior year, and then they just happened to become so much more than that, Celeste thought that she was finally getting a love story of her own.

But then, of course, real life had taken everything away from her. Just like that.

Her mother had believed in love stories, too. In fact, she’s the reason why Celeste had fallen in love with romantic K-dramas and other love stories to begin with. But after witnessing what her mother went through all those years ago and experiencing her own heartbreak with Gemma, Celeste had realized another probable fact. As entertaining as they are, love stories simply aren’t real. Or at least, for some unknown reason, they aren’t real for people like her and her mother. And there’s no use in believing otherwise.

Celeste only has one more set of interviews with Gemma. After that, they’ll return to their normal, separate lives in LA and SF, respectively. And she’ll finally be able to move on from the past.

Celeste’s alarm goes off, ripping her away from her thoughts. She reaches her arm out to turn off the incessant beeping and gets a whiff of Gemma’s scent, her eyes fluttering closed at the pleasant aroma. Before she can stop herself, she’s scooped up the blanket and gathered it up in her hands, sniffing it like some drug addict. Somehow, Gemma smells even better than she remembers.

Celeste thinks back to a study she discovered online that found that lesbian women and straight men react similarly to women’s pheromones in a way that straight women do not. At a time when everyone around her was denying her existence—or said “there was something wrong” with her—studies like this had made her feel a bit better.

“See?” she’d tell her parents. “There’s a scientific reason why I like girls. I’m just built different!”

Of course, now she knows better, and that no one has to have any reason, scientific or otherwise, to be gay. But it seemed to placate her parents enough, or at least until Celeste reached her twenties and the “you should find a nice husband and have kids” conversations started.

Celeste does want kids. Just not the husband.