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“In Charleston’s defense,” Holly said, “it’s a very lovely city, considering its origins, but there’s a certain class of rich person there that’s objectively awful, and everyone Cole knows is part of that circle.”

“What about Atlanta?” Jason asked. “Still the South, gay as hell, tons of killer activism happening.”

“The humidity is still disgusting, so it technically meets your requirements,” Cole pointed out.

Holly watched Tara’s face, trying to read the tiny twitches in her jaw. Atlanta actually would be a good compromise for Tara. The reach of the Chadwick name extended far enough that it would still open doors for her, allow her into spaces that most activists didn’t have access to. She would still be working against the system her relatives had helped build for centuries, from which Tara had so unfairly benefited when she’d gotten into trouble. The problem was, Holly wasn’t sure Tara was ready to hear all the different possibilities that would both fit in with what she felt she needed to do and give her some much-needed distance from her family. And allow them to be together for real, since they obviously never could while Tara was still in Charleston.

When Tara finally spoke, her voice was placating, although if you didn’t know her well, you probably wouldn’t catch it. Putting her arm around Holly’s shoulders, she said, “Well, if I’m going to consider any kind of move, I’ll have to consult Holly, although it clearly won’t be hard for her to find work.”

Tara was looking at Lawrence, so she couldn’t see Cole’s face over her shoulder, but Holly could, and she watched it fall. He knew, like she did, that Tara had no intention of going anywhere.

She was thinking about excusing herself to go back to their room and cry in the bathroom about wanting a woman who would never be right for her when Miriam and Noelle came over to their table and squished an extra chair in. Miriam perched her tiny elven self on Noelle’s knee and clapped.

“How did all my favorite people end up at one table?!” she exclaimed.

Annie smiled enigmatically. “I have very powerful magic that attracts people to me.”

“I believe it.” Noelle laughed. “Are we all ready for tomorrow?”

“Are you ready, is the question,” Lawrence asked.

Elijah answered in Noelle’s place. “This one’s been a wife guy since minute one. I’m shocked it took them a year to get married.”

“Hey!” Noelle protested. “My best friend and Miri’s best friend were having a big melodramatic Shenanigan and then they had to get married. We were just giving them space.”

“Levi does take up a lot of space when he’s got his drama pants on,” Lawrence confirmed.

Sawyer leaned toward the brides. “What made you decide to get married? I think if I had to guess, I’d have put money on you all being the kind of queer liberationists who think marriage is heteronormative assimilation.”

Miriam mirrored his stance. “You ever heard of a pogrom, Sawyer?” she said, sounding like she was ready to give a lecture.

“It’s something that happened in Eastern Europe, right, before World War II? Riots that massacred Jews?”

She nodded. “Our Rosenstein ancestor, the one who came from Ukraine to start the bakery, came from a part of the world where once we weren’t allowed to live or travel outside of certain places, our vote didn’t count for a whole person, and our ability to marry was tightly restricted. I’ll never voluntarily hand back a basic human right that my people were once violently denied.”

Noelle added, “Besides, marriage equality didn’t come from nowhere, as a fight. It came because so many of our own died alone in hospital beds, unable to be with the loves of their lives, who couldn’t gain access.”

Elijah snapped his fingers in agreement. “And then lost the homes they’d spent their lives in, because they had no legal right to inherit.” When everyone looked at him, he shrugged. “I’m an estate lawyer for a reason. And I didn’t marry solely for love, either. My ancestors weren’t allowed to marry. They can pry marriage from my cold, dead hands.”

“Taking the human rights you are due is not assimilation,” Miriam said firmly. “We couldn’t assimilate if we wanted to.”

“And we don’t!” Jason exclaimed.

Miriam nodded in agreement. “We don’t. Queerness is an extraordinary blessing, and we are gifted to be free of heteronormative patriarchy if we choose to be.”

“There was a reason queer people tried to become respectable after the AIDS epidemic,” Elijah said gravely. “Because if we could be like them, maybe they would see we were human and they wouldn’t let us die next time. It came out of grief and desperation. But there’s no amount of normalizing that will make them not hate us. We could be just like them in every way, and they would still let us die. Or kill us.”

“There are a lot of great reasons to opt out of the government institution of marriage!” Cole objected.

Miriam conceded this with a nod. “There are, and a lot of brilliant queer theorists have argued against participating in it. For me, I just think… We don’t have to re-create straight marriages, we can make ours into any damn thing we want, and it’s reasonable to not want a legal marriage, but we’re not giving it back. We never give anything back.”

Holly stared at Miriam, her giant head of curls practically electric with righteous energy. “Was she always this scary?” she whispered to Tara.

Tara shook her head. “She used to be scared. This is better.”

Holly wondered how this new, more radical Miri would have held up to the scrutiny of Charleston high society, or if, in the alternate reality where she’d married Tara, she would have stayed small.

Holly wondered if there was any version of reality where she was with Tara and didn’t make herself small.