I had promised myself all afternoon that I would not go. The hours moved through my tiny apartment off Bardstown Road like pale water slipping over stones — six o’clock, seven o’clock, eight. The June light lingered insistently at the windows. Sugar, my little tri-colored mountain feist, watched from the foot of the bed with the alert expression of a creature who understood that something important was being delayed. I closed my book.
Sugar jumped down and ran to the front door. Her stub tail, a little fury finger, didn’t so much wag as it rotated, as though animated by a tiny, but powerful motor. She let out a highpitched yelp.
“You’re no help,” I told her.
I picked up my phone and opened the invitation again. Overcast Coffeehouse Pride Night. Music, spoken word, games. All welcome. All. That was the problem. For twenty-one years I had lived inside certain sentences without examining them. The world arranged itself around assumptions. Girls. Dating. Someday. Then, somehow, quietly, unexpectedly, Ethan had happened. Not happened, exactly. Appeared. Like a light turning on in a room I hadn’t known existed.
Ethan worked part-time at the coffee shop three blocks away. He wore oversized sweaters even in warm weather. He laughed with his head tipped back, honey-threaded hair curled over his ears. Whenever Ethan pushed his sleeves up, I gazed at his smooth forearms, the billows from the steam wand casting a warm, milky halo around him. Last week, Ethan had caught me staring and smiled at the book I pretended to be reading. Only later did I realize that my book had been upside down. When he handed me a cup, our fingers sometimes brushed, and afterward I would savor the contact for days. While Ethan uttered scarcely a word to me, he cooed and fussed over Sugar, reaching for the treat jar whenever I brought her in.
I checked myself in the mirror above the fireplace, running my hands through my hair. I needed a fresh shirt, I decided, the red gauze short-sleeve, my favorite. I tucked it in, then pulled it out again. I would just walk by. Sugar needed a walk anyway. We’d cut through Cherokee Park. I wouldn’t stay. Just walk by. Sugar knew the way, prancing at the end of her leash. The evening air smelled of jasmine, gardenias, and hot pavement. My heart beat too fast.
The Overcast Coffee House glowed at the corner like a lantern. Music drifted out through the open windows. People gathered outside at small tables. They laughed easily. They occupied space without apology. I paused. Then Sugar spotted someone. Her leash snapped taut then sprung out of my hand. Sugar launched herself forward, streaking down the sidewalk like an arcing current, straight toward Ethan.
“Sugar!” I called. “Sugar!”
Ethan looked up from a table stacked with rainbow-frosted cupcakes. In an instant, his face transformed. One moment he looked tired and worn from work. The next he was radiant.
“Hey, Little Bit!” He dropped to one knee. “How’s my sweet girl?” Sugar leapt into his arms. The surrounding crowd erupted in delighted laughter. Ethan buried his face against the dog’s neck. He kissed her forehead again and again.
I approached, trying unsuccessfully not to smile. Sugar gazed adoringly at Ethan. She licked his nose and mouth. “Traitor,” I muttered.
Ethan laughed. The sound seemed to loosen something in the evening, or perhaps in me. All around us conversations flowed. Music pulsed softly from inside. Strings of bistro lights trembled above the patio.
“You came,” Ethan said. His statement was simple. Yet it landed strangely, as if Ethan had been hoping.
“As it turns out,” I said, “my dog forced me.”
“Good dog.” Sugar rolled onto her back for belly rubs. Ethan obliged. Our hands brushed. I felt heat rush through my chest. Ethan withdrew first. Color rose in his cheeks. For a moment, neither of us spoke. The pause shimmered in the twilight air. A grackle crossed the purpling sky, with a loud call like a rusty gate hinge. Someone cheered from inside. The city thrummed around us — a sighing bus, whispering tires, distant music drifting from some unseen window high above.
And I thought: this is what frightens me. The simple fact that my heart knew something before my mind had found words for it. I watched Ethan laughing with Sugar. Watched the gentleness of his delicate hands. Watched the way Ethan seemed always half-ready to disappear if looked at directly, just like me.
“You know,” Ethan said suddenly.
“What?”
“I was hoping you’d come.”
The noise of the party receded, as if sucked into a vacuum. Not literally. People still talked. Glasses clinked. Music pulsed. Yet everything seemed farther away. I swallowed hard. “Really?”
Ethan nodded, while his gaze remained fixed on Sugar. The words hung between us like lights suspended in the evening air. A beginning, not a declaration, not certainty, something smaller, perhaps more miraculous, permission.
I looked around at the crowded patio. Young queer people talked, danced, and existed with an ease I had long imagined belonged only to other people. The sky above Louisville had deepened to amethyst. Windows glowed. Voices rose and mingled. And suddenly I did not feel outside the scene. I was inside it, a thread in a tapestry, a note in the music. Sugar, sensing the shift before either of us did, sprang to her feet. We moved to a bench out front. Sugar wedged herself between Ethan and me. We squeezed even closer, almost shoulder to shoulder, Sugar happily sandwiched tight against us. Another string of lights overhead flickered on, gold against indigo. For one suspended moment I felt the future opening, like a blossom uncurling after dusk. Beside me, Ethan smiled. Sugar sighed contentedly. She wiggled onto her back, kicking, u-shaped, exposing her belly. I laughed and placed a hand there. Ethan rested his hand on mine. And the night, which had seemed so impossible a few hours earlier, welcomed me in.
Mark Hall lives in North Carolina. His essays and stories have appeared in The Timberline Review, Lunch Ticket, Passengers Journal, Sand Hills Literary Magazine, Hippocampus Magazine, The Forth River, Tahoma Literary Review, and elsewhere.
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