The Students for Social Justice table was set up in the Student Center. Bright posters. Free cookies. Nisha stopped because she was procrastinating on a math problem set and also because the activism felt like permission—a way to be weird and complicated and right about it, all at once.
Alexis was sitting behind the table, paperwork in front, energy like a coiled spring. Dark hair shaved on one side. Flannel shirt.
"Hey. You new?"
"Freshman. I'm interested in, um." Nisha gestured vaguely at the posters. "Everything."
Alexis smiled—not kind exactly, but real, with edges. "Everything is a lot. You can start with getting the email list."
There was no lightning. No moment where the universe clicked into place. It was slower than that.
They worked the table together over the next three weeks. Climate action planning. Conversations about intersectionality and campus policy. Alexis had read everything. She'd read deeply, thought rigorously, and still got angry—not performatively, but from a place of having seen things.
One night, after an organizational meeting, they were cleaning up the room. Chairs, scattered papers. Alexis was talking about voter registration and systemic barriers, then stopped mid-sentence.
"I talk too much. Do I talk too much?"
"No. I like—" Nisha stopped.
"Like?"
"The way you think. About things. How serious you are about it."
Alexis sat on one of the overturned chairs. "Come here."
It wasn't dramatic. There were no candles, no orchestral swell. Nisha sat on the chair next to her. Their knees almost touched.
"Can I ask you something? And you don't have to answer. No pressure."
"Okay."
"Are you attracted to me?"
Nisha's throat closed. "I don't—I don't know how to—"
"It's okay if you don't know. I'm attracted to you. I'm drawn to you specifically, if that matters. But I get that it might be complicated."
Nisha looked at Alexis—really looked. The shaved hair, the flannel, the way Alexis held space without apology. None of it mattered except the person in front of her.
"It's not about categories," she said. "It's about you. Just… you."
Alexis nodded. Reached out and tucked Nisha's hair behind her ear—a gesture so simple it was almost chaste.
"Then we can figure it out. Together."
That was how it started. Not with certainty. Not with a label that felt like truth. With a person who saw her and said okay, you can be complicated with me.
It took three months of kissing in Alexis's apartment, of talking until 3 AM about gender and desire and what attracted her and who Alexis was and why, before Nisha said the words out loud: "I'm bisexual." And even then, saying it didn't mean understanding it. It meant choosing a language because the silence had become heavier than any word.
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