Late to the Party ✔

19. Just 'cause a chicken has wings don't mean it can fly

Jean's roots were healing. Brittle and rotting, she'd turned a blind eye to them, instead lovingly tending to the young sprouts and leaves shooting up once she'd settled in warmer earth. Can a tree thrive when its roots are decaying? Yes, she'd thought, yes, because she was not a fucking tree. Humans could rip up their feet from the place they were born and leave their miserable origins behind, no problem. A whole new start.

Then, she danced with a woman pressed against her front, hands possessing her hips, and dove between silken legs trustingly spread before her, and was teased by a boy of the type that would've tormented her twenty years ago, and stood in the middle of the street and announced her love to a town that'd once swallowed it in pieces and kept them down, an act of defiance that made her heart pound in her chest. Her roots woke, stretched, tested their feet, tasted the pavement and asphalt concrete, and it turned out she was a tree after all. Fuck.

Pamela. Tiffany. Danny. Anna. Roni. Kara. Reece. Sloane. Michelle. How were you supposed to know which one you belonged to when you were always divided by a past not shared, a decaying part that could not be explained? She remembered Michelle's patient nods, there to humor her, the tentative suggestions to go to therapy. The idea of sitting in a chair to talk about your insides to a stranger with a notebook made her throw up. It wouldn't be like the camp, Michelle had insisted, she wasn't the only queer professional, there were more, she could write a referral. But Jean had still believed she wasn't a tree, so there was no need for anyone to go digging around her mind.

Wrapped around Mary, planting kisses on her shoulder, giggling, smoking, crying, talking, the pain of remembering eased and softened. They had been true. Maybe she hadn't managed to hold onto anyone because she'd still been reaching for the one pulled from her grasp.

Love could be so easy. How about that.

"So, about coming home..." She was fidgety, forgetting to finish breathing out before talking, the cord swinging back and forth as she clutched the receiver tight.

"Oh, honey," Nina said, and wasn't it good luck that she was the one to pick up, "you made love to her, didn't you?"

Only Nina could use that euphemism without an ounce of embarrassment. At first, she wanted to laugh, but it died out before she could do more than curl her lips. "Yeah," she said, because wasn't that exactly what they were doing?

"What was it like?"

What was it like? What was it like.

It was like never having been hurt at all. It was belonging. Claiming, reclaiming. Knowing that she would forever hold all of Mary's firsts in her palm, that no one would be able to rob her of that. It was two girls who were now women carrying the knowledge of what it was to live without, that their coming together was not solely exciting but a protest.

It was taking down the key and crucifix and laying them to rest.

"It was... good," she said instead, as she'd never been able to explain that part of herself.

Nina giggled. "Oh, you're in trouble now, Jean," she said, and it was funny and light, and wouldn't it have been perfect if that was what it would've remained?

The front door creaked and closed, and Jean turned towards the light and pretty footsteps, as apparently, footsteps could be pretty now. The love floated into the kitchen and filled it up.

"Hey, you," Jeanie said, smiling, since the owner of the footsteps was even prettier.

"Hi," Mary said, cheeks blushing like the scent of the roses that clung to her, which in Jeanie's mind were pink, hands clasped together. The adorable breathlessness of her, almost like a child preparing to ask for something they were afraid would be dismissed. "I just got off work, thought I'd stop by to bring you those boxes. I put them in the hallway."