#chatalie

Behind her, she hears Nat’s light laugh while Charlie busies herself with fiddling around for her keys in her purse.

“Everything came together nicely today,” Nat comments. “All of the attendees looked very impressed with the festivities.”

Despite her exhaustion, hearing that makes Charlie’s chest swell with pride. In previous years Charlie limited her participation to assist Tina and the other volunteers to string up rainbow streamers and hand out fliers and take the shift that meant directing traffic and blocking off the main street. None of the logistical work Charlie favored outside of filing necessary paperwork.

This year, though, Mayor Friedman approached her to ask her assistance in planning for the event. Something about making better use of her now that she was Detective; likely to give him more leisure time with his beloved nine holes in the country club. Most of what he assigned to her was still menial — contacting vendors and keeping track of supplies, organizing the volunteers, following up with sponsors — but still knowing and seeing the fruits of her labor being appreciated in person made it feel all the more worth the additional work.

“Yes, everyone did look happy today, didn’t they? Everything looked exactly as was planned with very few hitches in the events. I’m glad I attended this year.” Charlie smiles to herself as her fingers finally wrap around her key ring.

“I’m not sure if Farah would have allowed you to sit this one out.”

Charlie laughs. “Probably not.”

She pushes the door open and both she and Nat step inside into the cooler air of the flat, Charlie sending her shoes clattering towards some odd corner of the living room (she doesn’t miss Nat’s exasperated grimace) and Nat tucking away her boots neatly on the shoe rack at the entrance.

While they unload their bags overflowing with novelty goods and tiny flags and loose buttons and stickers in companionable quiet Charlie feels some of the tiredness slip away and finds herself watching Nat run her fingers through her dark brown hair absentmindedly. Glitter falls, sparkling as it floats down onto the carpet. There’s only a faded smudge of pink, purple, and blue stripes of face paint on Nat’s cheeks that Charlie can clearly make out.

“Hey,” Charlie murmurs and brushes the back of her fingers along Nat’s jaw to make Nat look to her. “Today was the first time I’ve ever been to a pride. Did I tell you that before?”

Nat’s hands pause from unwrapping a handmade planter Charlie purchased from a local artist at the event. “I do believe you mentioned that you’d never attended Wayhaven’s Pride celebration before, yes.”

“That is true. It wasn’t until a few years ago that Wayhaven even had a Pride celebration of their own to begin with. Most people in the area would travel to the big city instead if they wanted to participate — it’s bigger there, obviously, longer too with more events. Sometimes they hire performers or musicians to play there.” Charlie turns back to look at her own spread of goods. Shiny rainbow colored buttons declaring love and buttons with the pink and orange lesbian flag. A sticker of a rainbow grumpy cat that Farah must have snuck in her bag while she wasn’t looking.

“But you didn’t.”

It’s not an accusation or even a question. Merely a statement, albeit a curious one that indicates Nat wants her to continue this train of thought. Sharing personal details of their lives still comes slowly, but steadily. Not for any distrust or distance that lingers between them; if anything, it’s only some lingering after effects of Charlie’s reclusive nature and more so that things unfold between them as they naturally stumble into relevant topics and memories.

Makes sense enough that they can unpack her old feelings about pride while they actually unpack.

“No. I didn’t.” Charlie gathers the buttons in a neat little pile and aimlessly spreads them out again. “There’s a few reasons I never went to one before. Namely that…” She draws in a measured breath to ease her nerves. “I didn’t know I was gay until I was 28, Nat.”

Nat doesn’t prompt her further, letting Charlie sort through her thoughts on how exactly she wants to approach this topic. Her mind feels like a mess of feelings and half formed explanations. None of it fits exactly right together, all jagged, mismatched edges, ideas and memories that lead to nowhere.

A scream, or a cry, might be more apt to sum it all together.

“Let me backtrack. I’d always approached life as a series of expectations and tasks laid out for me to complete. Stay focused in school, bringing home a shiny A-star on my homework and tests, line up possible universities with excellent programs I could attend. Call it a map, or a checklist, whatever — I felt that if I could mark off each tally and each check box, that would be it, I would be happy. That was life.” Charlie stops in the middle of her prattling to clear her throat noisily. Nat steps away from her for a moment and returns with a glass of water that Charlie gratefully accepts and takes a tiny sip of. “Part of that was assuming that at some point a man would fit in between securing my career and purchasing a home.”

Charlie laughs. It sounds painfully strained to her ears and she can see in her periphery Nat’s sympathetic smile. Her fingers run along the cool glass in slow, vertical strokes while she thinks.

“I’d never given myself any other option. I’d never considered that perhaps the reason why I kept delaying going on dates and finding a boyfriend wasn’t because I wanted to focus on my studies or focus on the part time jobs I would pick up — I just assumed that once all else was cleared from my life’s itinerary a respectable man would be there and it would be time to settle.”

She takes a larger gulp of water to dispel the growing lump in her throat. “That’s how I always thought about it too. Settling. Not something to look forward to, not something to dream about: settling. Setting my expectations both high and low: high enough that I wouldn’t accept any man off the street, he’d have to be good looking, he’d have to be successful in his career, he’d have to be a good conversationalist and reasonably funny. Low enough that even if I couldn’t really envision happiness, I could envision security and that could be enough.”

What is left of the quickly fading sunlight casts long, burned umber stripes across the floor from the slight opening in the half closed blinds. The shadows surrounding the light seem deeper, darker, more intense. They’re not scary or uninviting: they feel safe, they feel secure, like if she speaks her secrets to them that they will be kept once the light chases them away and she can clear her mind of the swirling emotions racing to come out of her mouth.

“So I never spent any time thinking about the gay community or questioning myself when I had the best opportunity to do that in the big city. I never really made those connections, I never got involved, and by the time I even knew I wasn’t a bitchy, uptight straight woman, that I was a bitch, uptight lesbian, I was back here.”

The next gulp of water Charlie takes drains the glass of the rest of the water. She slams the glass back down onto the table too hard, not enough to crack it, but hard enough that the sound rings sharply in her ears to make them both wince.

“No career outlooks.”

Charlie braces her hands on the table, spread out wide to make up for the tremble of her knees.

“No friends.”

At some point during her rambling her hands had curled into tight, white knuckled fists, her short fingernails biting sharply into the soft skin of her palm. Before she clench them further and draw blood, Charlie watches Nat’s hand drift over to hers, carefully stroking the back of her tensed hands, her long fingers roaming over her knuckles and squeezing around Charlie’s smaller hand firmly.

Slowly, Charlie forces her hands to relax. Still her voice wobbles as the words pass her lips.

“No community.”

The words taste bitter on her tongue. Acrid and putrid, like an acid that could eat holes into her tongue and in her throat. Saying it all out loud, presenting to Nat one of the shameful and uncertain and confusing times of her life, it feels… Charlie runs her tongue along her front teether and swears she can taste the bite of copper there. Something in her throbs hot and desperate; maybe it’s like a wound bound too tight in bandages, needing to be aired out to let it heal.

“Wayhaven is so small,” Charlie whispers, voice slightly ragged. “I could count on my two hands how many gay people there are here before Verda moved to town. There was Tina. Bobby. A few teenagers that ran the local Gay Straight Alliance. The elderly lesbian couple on the outskirts of town, they sell peaches in the summer — just a handful of people.”

The breath she’d been holding comes out in broken pieces. Then, she repeats herself. “Wayhaven is so, so fucking small, Nat.”

And that’s the totality of it. Less than ten whole people in Wayhaven who knew they were gay, half of them either too old or too young. “Without a Pride here, with just a couple of faded pamphlets to educate parents on having gay children, there wasn’t anywhere I could go to feel welcome or learn more outside of listening to Tina’s endless whirlwind romances. So the idea of going to the big city pride with a bunch of people I didn’t know and a sexuality I had only just acquainted myself with…” Charlie huffs out a dry, rattling laugh. “I just didn’t know how to be gay, Nat. I didn’t know how I belonged to a community I didn’t know. So I did what I have always done: I worked, and I worked, and I worked to fill my time.”

There are no tears like she may have expected. Her eyes are burning, but it is a dry burn, like the kind she gets when she’s been staring at her computer screen for too many hours without relief. The lump in her throat, that throbbing something in her chest, they both ease, slowly at first, then faster as she realizes Nat’s arms have wrapped around her. Neither of them speak, choosing instead to lean into each other, Charlie’s cheek on Nat’s shoulder, Nat’s nose against her scalp.

By now almost all of the light has faded, leaving only a subtle glow for her to see the details of the goods spread out on the table. The glint of the buttons and shine of the vinyl stickers. The planter, the print of a woman drawn in simple curved black lines still kept in its tight roll with the rubber band, the stack of folded shirts. A small collection of photos from the day, Farah and Nat’s faces smiling back at her, Morgan glaring and Ava markedly looking away with a small, almost dismissible, smile.

The pictures, the proof of what community she has built now, warms her. Not only Unit Bravo who’ve become a facsimile of a family to her, but Tina and Verda and Eric too. Elidor and Tapeesa, some of the other supernaturals she’s met along the way — a budding family, growing and blossoming faster and more vibrant that she’d ever thought she could have.

Now Charlie is smiling too, warm with love, warm with a spark of private joy.

“That’s all changed though. What a difference finally belonging to the community makes,” Nat’s made a line from her scalp to her temple, her lips curved in a smile against her skin. “I’m happy I was able to spend my first pride with you and the others.”

“I am happy to be a part of it,” Nat hums, tugging her closer to her chest. Her lips find purchase on her jaw and near her ear, pulling breathy little giggles from Charlie until she forces herself around in Nat’s arms so she can redirect the placement of the kisses to her mouth.