She said it in my kitchen, which is a stupid place for a life to change and also, it turned out, the correct one. The kettle was on. The window was open to a Brisbane evening that couldn't decide on rain. I am Brooke. I am twenty-eight. Harper is twenty-seven, and she had been sleeping in my bed for three weeks with a care that I had mistaken for shyness, when it was actually a woman holding a sentence in her mouth until the sentence was ready.

"I'm gay," she said. "I've never said that out loud to someone I wanted. I've said versions. I've said not straight, I've said I don't know, I've said it to a ceiling. I'm saying it to you because if I have sex with you again without saying it, I'll be hiding inside a thing that feels like the truth. I needed you to…