He was staring.

It wasn’t the first time. Well, it was the first time he gazed at her in such a… libidinous manner (maybe), but semantics were the last thing on Lianna’s mind at the moment.

She was all too familiar with men ogling and salivating over her 34DDs. And she was all too familiar with her inner feminist shooing the more perverted ones away. (I am a temple, her heart always declared. You do not have the right to claim patriarchal, chauvinistic objectification as a legitimate rite.)

But Collin wasn’t an anonymous face – he was one of Lianna’s good friends, and that made things infinitely more complicated. Especially since, if Lianna were to be completely honest, pulling the Mulvey card on him would be hypocritical at best.

The two had waded through oceans of (mutual) sexual tension for as long as they knew each other; emerged from tides of awkwardness slightly wetter than she cared to admit. Contrary to popular discourse indecent thoughts were far from foreign to her - hell, she probably had dirtier thoughts than he did, if Lianna was fully honest with herself.

So was it really that bad, that she derived a perverse pride from the fact that Collin was staring and (seemingly) reciprocating her desires?

Or was she just trying to rationalize her complicitness in the perpetuation of patriarchal discourses, conveniently avoiding the more disturbing motives behind Collin’s piercing stare?

Mind racing, heart pounding, how the hell do I react?

They could both go on and pretend that his gaze belied a melancholy reminder of the connection they failed to seize upon due to nerves and cluelessness. But living a lie would bring them both down.

They deserved concrete answers, not just unspoken “maybes” immediately recanted and re-recanted, or offhand disclosures masked as jokes claiming that the only reason they weren’t together was ambivalence towards commitment. They deserved a connection beyond the superficial, beyond sexual attraction. They deserved to exist in a world where all gazes - male, female, or otherwise - didn’t require the “other” to be objectified and suppressed for the sake of pleasure. They deserved to partake in a society where delineations between harassment and flirting and foreplay were not only clear, but respected and obeyed without question.

But the world refused to change, and they were drowning, drowning, drowning because of it.

“Uh, Lianna? You okay?”

Collin looked up, seemingly oblivious that his earlier glances could be interpreted as less-than-friendly. Lianna met his gaze head-on. A challenge, an admission, an acknowledgment that their relationship had irrevocably changed with a single glance, and not in the way she’d hoped.

Yes. I’ve seen the truth, figured things out. It will hurt for a little while, but I am alright.

Collin backed off sheepishly; no words needed to be exchanged.

Liberation and yearning washed over Lianna in equal measure, and she nursed the latter with a sip of sweet tea before offering a shrug.

“Just a word of advice, dude: it never hurts to lift your head and make eye contact every once in a while.”