Page 37

I’d grown up in Beggs, Alabama, thinking there were only two sides.

Either you blended in with the small-town charm or you were an outcast if you couldn’t fit everyone else’s definition of perfect.

But I’d been wrong. There was another side of this town.

I’d just never seen it hiding in plain sight until now.

It was the people who’d helped us pull off the speakeasies.

Their support was evidence of allies in town.

They were like the twinkling stars I’d seen in the sky while riding last night: always here but not able to be seen until darkness.

They were easy to spot if you really looked.

Driving through town now, I could see each shining light—the “all are welcome” stickers on storefront windows, pride flags, pink donkey signs—that made up a constellation of safe spaces.

This was the Beggs we had created for ourselves.

I sped past each emblem of support, toward Estrella Books.

Today, we were preparing for the last speakeasy.

One last chance to make sure Carmen’s rally shined on Saturday.

I knew Mom was right and that I would still be me regardless of the outcome.

Even though I was still figuring that out, I knew one thing for certain—I was welcomed no matter who I was.

The proof was in the bookstore’s parking lot.

The QSA parade float took up the middle row of spaces, and campaign volunteers were already decorating it.

Flashes of rainbow glinted in the sunlight like armor as they prepared for battle.

I turned into the drive, pulled beside Cohen’s silver Camry, and killed the dirt bike’s engine.

At one time I would’ve felt like an imposter in comparison to all these political advocates.

Instead, I kept both my head held high and those feelings of inferiority from causing doubt.

You belong here, I asserted once more before dismounting.

My hair was already soaked from the helmet, and I ran my hands through the tangled waves.

The midday sun bore down with the brutal heat of July.

But there was something more amid the climbing temperature.

A promise of tomorrow in the air, in the sweltering humidity pressing down on Beggs, in the excited buzz of conversation around me.

Wiping sweat from my brow, I made my way over to the crowd.

Everyone who had come together for that first speakeasy was here.

There were so many faces that had become familiar since that night in the bookstore’s basement.

Owen climbed down from the float, his beard covered in sawdust. Bronwen and Kennedy spray-painted a Pride mural on the side banner.

Jess helped Sawyer hang streamers from the back.

Carmen smiled as she addressed new volunteers. And then there was Cohen.

He intently studied a clipboard while my heartbeats sped up.

While I fought the urge to run over and grab him by the shirt and kiss him again.

As though he could hear my thoughts, he glanced up.

A shy smile lifted the corner of his mouth when his eyes found mine.

A radio signal from their brown depths promised we’d talk later.

The equation of him and me required BEDMAS rules to solve, but I was finally figuring it out.

A sudden thud tore my attention away from his adorable splotchiness. Owen had crossed over to his nature preserve truck and let the tailgate down. The cargo bed was loaded down with a massive podium. It looked newly made, fresh wood stain glistening, and way too heavy for him to unload alone.

“Hey,” I called out, crossing over to him. “Need some help?”

“I wouldn’t say no,” he replied with a gruff laugh.

The detailed craftsmanship was evident as I drew near. Its smooth edges and rounded corners, even a wood-burned inscription of Carmen’s name, showed just how much work had gone into its construction. I came to a stop beside Owen, gazing up at it. “Did you make this?” I asked.

“Sure did, with a downed tree from the preserve,” he replied with a smile. “A congratulatory gift for our future Madame Mayor.”

“Wow…” I could appreciate how he’d used his own hands to make something. It was similar to what I’d been doing at the mechanic shop. “But wait,” I started, the conversation about a plan B still ringing in my mind, “what if she loses?”

“That doesn’t matter,” he said simply with a shrug. “It’ll still be a podium, still be a gift regardless.”

Still be rattled inside my head as we slid it out of the truck. We’d still be here too. I’ll still be here. But I didn’t know what my plan B was yet. The idea of the future caused me to struggle both with what Mom had said about being myself and the weight of the gift.

“This is heavy as fu—heck,” I grunted over the echo of his words. My biceps were on fire as we carried it. The muscles I’d had from baseball weren’t as strong as they used to be. “Seriously think my arms are gonna turn against me and rip themselves off.”

Owen’s laugh came out in a rough chuckle. “Not too much farther,” he said reassuringly. “You’re doing great, Zeke.”

“Trying as hard as I can,” I mumbled. The rally had to be perfect. I’d messed up too much already, and I didn’t want to prove my father right. For everything that had happened this summer to be a waste.

“Did anyone ever tell you that you don’t have to try so hard?” I glanced over at him, and he gave me an all-knowing look. “It’s like what I tell my child, you just have to try your best.”

“Easier said than done.”

It came out as another mumble as I glanced around the parking lot.

Past the crowd and the bookstore, even farther past the library, I could see the billboard.

It was as though younger me was watching the square where Buchanan had said he wasn’t welcome in Beggs.

The memory sent a ripple of panic through me, and my jaw clenched with doubt.

Will this rally be enough to make a difference—

“Thank you, by the way,” Owen said over my thoughts.

He gave me an encouraging smile as we eased the podium onto the float.

“Your speakeasies taught me how I can be a more supportive parent. Addi has a rough time at school with their pronouns, and I’m doing everything I can so they don’t have to grow up in fear. ”

The way he said it was so earnest, and I looked away so he wouldn’t see my eyes welling up.

All the years I’d spent living inside that shoebox made me fear the what-ifs: what if I came out and everyone turned on me, what if I wasn’t welcome in town, what if I was targeted and became the moral of someone’s story.

I’d stayed hidden because of those fears, kept them so long they’d become my truths.

“You don’t, um, you don’t have to thank me,” I managed to say around the rush of emotions.

“Sure I do,” he said, wiping his hands off on his Carhartt work pants. “You’re trying your best, and it’s making a difference.”

“I hope…so.” My voice broke, and I needed to change the subject before I outright cried in front of everyone. “Um, do you need help with anything else?” I asked, then cleared my throat.

“I could use another set of hands to assemble the platform for this monster.” He knocked on the podium for emphasis, and I nodded my head in agreement. “See,” he said, clapping me on the back. “We’re already building a better Beggs.”

He climbed onto the float and held out a hand. My mind darted back to the statue in the square as he helped me up. Just like David Beggs and his faithful donkey, we really were building our own community. I guess we just needed the right people—the right parts—to do it.

For so long, I’d been disassembling engines and putting them back together.

It made sense in my head, how everything had its place for the vehicle to run.

Now I was beginning to understand that wasn’t real life.

You couldn’t keep trying to put your life back together with the same parts.

Some didn’t belong anymore, and some needed to change.

All you could do was build yourself into something new.

And I had become something new this summer: bold.

A lock of my hair danced in the evening breeze. It felt good on my sunburned face as I lay on the new platform. Most of the volunteers had called it a day, and I was exhausted. My hands were the best kind of sore—the tightness of my knuckles a reminder that I’d built something.

“Are you…” Sawyer was saying, but I kept zoning out.

My mind wandered as I watched the Timmy’s Shaved Ice truck.

Cohen and Kennedy had gone to get sno-cones while we waited.

Every few minutes he’d glance back. Lock eyes with me.

Smile. We were on the precipice of something again, but this time I knew it was different.

“Spill your guts,” Sawyer ordered, snapping me back. She had shifted to face me with an intense stare down. “Right now.”

“Huh?” I asked.

The setting sun glinted off her glasses as she leveled her gaze. “Why are you and Cohen acting sus AF?” she demanded with a smirk.

“Uhhh.” My uncertainty hung in the air between us.

The sticky honey of her eyes was trapping me yet again.

I sat there, listening to the rustle of the float streamers, and searched for the right thing to say.

She still didn’t know what had happened.

Not that I was deliberately keeping it from her, but I wasn’t sure what everything all meant. “I mean, we aren’t—”

She cut me off. “You’re cute and all, but he’s been intently staring at you like you’re a Weeping Angel all day.”

“Well…” I trailed off, unable to stop my grin.

“I knew you liked him!” she gasped. “The tea is scalding, and you better spill it.”

“Okay, okay,” I said, sitting up. “When we were hanging up posters in the square, he and I…we might’ve kissed.”

“It’s about damn time,” she said too excitedly, too loudly. “Y’all have had this back-and-forth verbal foreplay—”

“It was only kissing!” I hissed. But was it?

“Suuure.” She scoffed and rushed to ask, “How was it? Tongue? No tongue? Did it give you tingles, or did it give your, you know, the tingle?”

“Ohmygod.” She made suggestive gestures with her hands, and I glanced over at Cohen again.

He tapped his phone to pay for the sno-cones.

Any minute now they’d be back, and I had to shut Sawyer up.

“It was great, no notes. Tongue. Both of the tingles. And before you grill me, he’s a good kisser.

His lips are soft…And okay. Fine. Maybe my crush on him never really went away. Is that what you want to hear?”

“What I want to hear,” she started as they began making their way over, “is that you’re not gonna Z-step.”

Over the last month, I’d let my guard down with bedmas_22—with Cohen. He knew me and didn’t run. Knew me and still kissed me back. “I’m not Z-stepping,” I said under my breath.

She shot me a look that said she’d hold me to it as they neared. “Then ask him to come with us to the outdoor movie night tomorrow,” she suggested.

“I don’t know—”

“Got your favorite,” Kennedy cut me off, offering Sawyer a bright-red sno-cone, with a disgusted tilt to her lips. “Tiger’s blood.”

“Don’t judge me,” Sawyer said, and gave me a wink. “The flavor combo hits different.”

“And blue raspberry for you,” Cohen added as he held one up to me.

He’d remembered my favorite from back in the day. I couldn’t help but smile when I took it from him. “Thanks, Coco,” I said, our fingers brushing. Still weird not to be fighting with him, but I could get used to this. Wanted to get used to whatever this was.

“Sooo,” Sawyer said, jumping off the float. She shot me a mischievous grin and turned toward Kennedy. “Didn’t you say you wanted to see if Carmen had that sapphic book you wanted in stock?”

“I did?” Kennedy asked, scrunching her face in confusion. Sawyer widened her eyes and jerked her head to me and Cohen. “Oh. Yes. That book. With the lesbians. That I want to read.”

“There’s obviously no book,” I deadpanned as Cohen climbed up beside me.

“Why are y’all being weird?” he asked, sitting beside me.

“Nooo reeeason,” Sawyer singsonged, and steered Kennedy toward the store entrance.

For a brief moment, panic spiked as they held each other’s hands. As I glanced around the parking lot in case anyone could see them. But I forced myself to take a deep breath of the humid air and exhale slowly. I wasn’t suffocating anymore.

“Y’all are totally gonna make out,” Cohen called after them.

Kennedy spun around with an evil grin on her face. “Funny,” she retorted, the hazel of her eyes catching what little sunlight remained. “I could say the same to you.”

“Not funny,” he muttered.

The insinuation meant only one thing. He had told her about our kiss. I waited until they disappeared inside before asking, “So she knows that I, uh, that we—”

“Yeah, that,” he finished with bashfulness.

He shoveled a bite of purple shaved ice into his mouth and looked over at me.

His brown eyes went wide with nerves as he waited for my reaction.

I could see a question in his gaze, the same one I’d been wondering: What does this mean?

The bubble we’d built around ourselves was back.

We were here together, atop the platform, like we’d been in the square and on Instagram. And I didn’t want to be anywhere else.

“Don’t be sorry,” I said with a smile. “I legit just told Sawyer.”

His face went as red as the tiger’s blood sno-cone. “So, uh.” He blinked several times as he tried to form words. “Now they both know. That we did that.”

“You can say it, you know.” I laughed, nudging him with my elbow. “We kissed, and now…I don’t know what this is, Coco.”

“I don’t either,” he admitted with a shaky breath.

“I screwed up in freshman year before we had the chance to find out,” I began, offering him my hand, “but how about we figure it out now?”

He blinked a few times before slowly reaching out. His palm was warm and sweaty against mine. Our fingers laced together as I held on to him. After taking apart what’d happened between us over and over again for the last three years, it was time to build something new.

“So, um.” I licked my lips, suddenly nervous, and paid way too much attention to the wood grain of the platform.

“Saw and I have this tradition. We always go to the library’s outdoor movie night.

They play a book adaptation with a projector, and it’s tomorrow.

And if you don’t have plans and wanna hang… ”

A beat of silence passed before I forced myself to look up at him. Red splotches had bloomed underneath his sunburn, but he was smiling. “Sure,” he finally replied in a soft whisper.

That one word broke the bubble around us. The rest of the world came rushing in with the calliope music of the shaved ice truck. With a gust of wind and rattle of streamers. With a reminder that we were here together.

And it felt right.