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The adorable sound made Gabe do it again to get the same reaction, and she was rewarded with an even bigger giggle, which served to relieve her tension a little.

“Sorry,” Lori said. “Please keep going.”

“It wasn’t until I started watching Buffy when I was ten, and things started falling into?—”

“Is it okay to interrupt and say that Amber Benson was amazing?” Lori asked.

“Of course.”

“They made history being the first same-sex couple on TV,” she said, as if Gabe wouldn’t know everything there was to know about the series. “When I realized who I was and I found out about that show, I bought every season on DVD and watched each episode ten times. I went on a total stalky internet search too. I discovered the stuff about how she’d kicked ass when she’d been trolled because Willow chose her instead of the guy, and that was so inspiring to me as a young kid. She said, ‘being a beautiful, heavy, lesbian witch rocks,’ and that made me feel good about my weight and size. I loved that.”

“You didn’t watch them when they first came out?” Gabe asked. Any little lesbian with access to a TV made sure they soaked up every episode as soon as it came out. She took the opportunity to finish the brownie, which did taste pretty damn good.

“I was four. So no.”

Gabe half-choked on the brownie and had to sputter some of it out onto a napkin. “Sorry,” she said when she’d washed down the rest with a mouthful of lemonade. “I didn’t know you were…what does that make you? Thirty?”

Lori nodded. “Thirty-one next month. You thought I was older?”

That was a trick question, and she wasn’t falling for it. “I guess I hadn’t really thought about it.” Which was true. She’d just assumed Lori was in her mid-thirties because of the way she came across, educated and full of life experience from traveling the world.

“Do you have a reverse ageist thing going on? Don’t you want to be my friend now that you know how young I am?”

Gabe shrugged. “Doesn’t matter to me. You’re old enough to go drinking with, and that’s all I have to worry about.” She smiled as she thought about their difference in age; seven years wasn’t that much. Hell, it didn’t even qualify as an official age-gap. And since they weren’t ever going to date, it was really a non-issue.

Lori made a dramatic show of wiping her brow. “Phew. I thought you might use it as a reason to stop telling me your story just as I was getting used to the idea of having a super soldier as a friend.”

Gabe grinned widely. “You think of me as a super soldier?”

She nodded. “I do, actually. I’ve been doing my research. The Medal of Honor and a Purple Heart. You’ve been blazing quite the trail for women in the forces.”

Gabe narrowed her eyes. “You’ve been stalking me?”

Lori fluttered her eyelashes. “No,” she said firmly. “I’ve been googling you. There’s a difference. But one day, I’d like your version of events if you wouldn’t mind telling me.”

“We’re going to have to spend a lot more time together if you want all my war stories.”

Lori smiled. “That wouldn’t be so bad, would it? That’s what friends do.”

“So Shay tells me.”

“Well, we’re together now, so maybe you could finish this story.”

Gabe laughed and shook her head. “I haven’t finished because you keep interrupting me.”

“You’re right. I’m sorry,” Lori said and pretended to zip her lips closed.

“Anyway, it took a couple of years until I realized that I didn’t have to be a guy to kiss a girl.” She gestured to herself once again. “But the way I present is often wrongly judged as wanting to be a guy, and my parents were very traditional and super religious in a very narrow-minded way. They wanted me to wear dresses and little heels, wear pink and play tennis. They wanted me to be everything I wasn’t, and everything I could never be.”

Lori had pressed her lips tightly together and looked fit to burst with either questions or comments.

Gabe laughed and shook her head. “I don’t have photos of any of those things, no.” It seemed strange though because, for the first time, she was able to see how her past might be amusing to someone who only knew her as she was now.

“That’s not what I was going to say,” Lori said then covered her mouth.

“Then what do you want to say?”

Lori dropped her hand. “That I’m sorry. And that I’ve got an unusual anger building inside me at the thought of your parents trying to mold you into their idea of a perfect daughter instead of letting you define and discover yourself. It’s just…it’s incredibly sad, and I’m sorry.”