“I am absolutely here for that. I would love to be in a relationship where it was an equal partnership and not ruled by the definitions of the patriarchy. Especially, I know right now we look like a super straight passing couple. Not a bi girl and a boy who also identifies as a girl sometimes. I don’t want to erase those parts of who we are, even though we pass as what society expects a relationship to look like.”

  The music and bar faded into the background, and it felt like just me and Landon in this space.

  “Cool, so maybe we can keep an open and ongoing conversation about what that looks like? Like things we would love to challenge or change in an intimate partner relationship?”

  “Yes, I would really like that,” I said, trying not to beam at him.

  My last relationship felt like I had to do all the work. It felt unbalanced, and I definitely over functioned to keep him around, something I never wanted to do again. I wanted someone to show up the way I showed up for them. Especially as a queer woman who already felt like sometimes dating a man meant it erased my bi identity. It didn’t, but people didn’t always understand that.

  “Any other hard questions off the top of your head?” He tightened his arm around me.

  “Hmmm, so, in regards to gender norms. What does a relationship look like for Landon and for Ella?”

  I wanted to fully understand and acknowledge all parts of his identity.

  “So, I’ve never been on an Ella date. I would really like to, and I would love to be wined and dined, you know? Would that be something that you would want to do?”

  He sounded nervous.

  “Yes, I would want to do that.”

  “Okay, well, you just let me know when you’re ready for something like that.”

  “I will definitely do that.”

  We dove into some less intense conversations for the rest of the evening. Things like music, travel, and friends. More “regular” second-date things, but things felt natural and normal. Conversations flowed organically, and it was like we had been friends for a long time.

  We had been vibing for several hours, with a few more stolen soft kisses here and there. Nothing major but enough to get my belly simmering and my mind to wander to what it would feel like to do more.

  “I hate to cut this short, but I have filming very early tomorrow. Do you mind if we tab out and head to our cars?” Landon said like he was sad he had to end things.

  “Of course! What time do you have to be up tomorrow?”

  “Six a.m.”

  “WHAT?! Oh my god I can’t believe you even stayed out until this late,” I said, looking at my phone, and 12:07 stared back at me.

  “Well, I wasn’t going to not go on a date with you,” he said playfully.

  “Okay, come on, you. Let’s get you home.”

  We tabbed out and headed to a parking lot across the street.

  “I would really like to see you again,” I said as we stood close to my car.

  “Me too,” he said.

  There was silence as cars honked and noisily drove by in the background, and the streetlights cast a gentle glow around us.

  “I think we should kiss again,” I said, stepping in a little closer.

  We were the same height when I was wearing heels.

  “Okay.”

  He smiled, and we both leaned in for a heated, hurried make-out session. Like we were trying to memorize the taste of one another in seconds. His hands slipped around my waist and drew me closer, so our bodies were flush against one another.

  I slipped my hands to his shoulders and drew my fingernails down his back.

  “Are you wearing a bra?” I said, feeling the shape of something underneath his clothes.

  “Yes,” he said, with something unreadable in his eyes.

  Nervousness seemed to settle in his body as he waited for me to respond.

  Gasping, I grabbed onto the straps through the fabric of his shirt and smiled before I pressed my lips against his. I didn’t know how long we stood there feeling each other up like high schoolers, groping and grabbing, but, eventually, we broke apart, breathless.

  “You have to be up so early,” I said, laughing against his neck.

  He smelled sweet again.

  “I know,” he said into my hair. He moved to my ear. “This makes me nervous. Like I am going to disappoint you because you have way more experience than I do.”

  “Don’t be nervous. You always have to learn what new partners like, anyway. We can go as slow or as fast as we both want. We’ll discover what we like in this space together.” I pulled away and planted a final kiss.

  “Now, go before you’re a zombie tomorrow!” I said playfully, pushing him away.

  “Okay, goodnight, Elena.”

  “Goodnight!” I laughed and smiled to the sky, feeling light as air.

  CHAPTER Seventeen

  Mdate with Landon felt so far away from this moment. I was sitting in a church pew, listening to the pastor give a sermon at my grandpa’s funeral that oddly felt like propaganda for those in the audience to fall on their knees for Jesus.

  The church was full of a sea of people in black clothes. Sniffles echoed through the hall as the pastor continued on about how “everything happens for a reason” and “Jesus was ready to call Grandpa home.”

  I hated that.

  I had fallen out of religion a long time ago for many reasons. But I disliked when people acted like bad things happened for a reason or people pulled that god-didn’t-put-you-into-situations-you-couldn’t-handle bullshit. Like, excuse me, you can’t erase someone’s trauma by saying that. You going to say that to someone who faces racism daily or experience sexual assault?

  Fuck. Off.

  But it wasn’t the time for me to go on a tangent about why there were problems in our modern churches operating as businesses or how most religions were basically the same. And to give a hierarchy of one over the other was complete and utter shit. No, it was time for my family to sit behind my dad, my grandma, and my annoying aunt and uncle and offer support by simply being here for my dad.

  My cousins were occupying the other side of the pew, and they kept talking like two-year-olds in church. I mean, I was not enjoying the ceremony in the least bit, but I at least had the decency to not talk while the pastor prattled on about how amazing my grandpa was and how he contributed to the community.

  Too bad he hadn’t contributed to our family.

  My mind wandered to anywhere but here, and it ended up on Landon.

  He felt sort of too good to be true. I was realizing that I had a hard time trusting myself in relationships because my past relationships had been a hot mess. I had lost myself in my past serious relationship because I thought I was compromising by meeting him halfway, but in reality, I was meeting him all the way.

  He took advantage of my being used to doing everything and continued to let me give and give and give until I had nothing left. When I reached my limit, he had said that I didn’t care about him anymore, but, in reality, I couldn’t keep up with being responsible for his happiness and mine. I needed to handle my own happiness, and he needed to handle his. He didn’t know how to do that, and I had given myself away to save a relationship that was never going to allow me to be who I needed to be.

  I felt like I had healed from that. Done my own work by going to therapy, being single, and taking time to figure out what I wanted and date around. But, in reality, I had done as much healing as I could on my own, and there would be new healing I would need to understand and do as I entered another relationship.

  I would need to honor and recognize that shit would come up and that it was hard for me to trust myself because I had thought my relationship before was amazing. Until I woke up and realized I was being used and emotionally manipulated most of the time for the selfishness of my partner. Since, I could recognize the patterned, problematic behaviors of the past, but when I was in it, I couldn’t.

  I was afraid to trust myself to recognize the problems in the moment. Afraid to trust myself to know when something was wrong, which was also weird because I was confident in my choices otherwise. It left me feeling raw, vulnerable, and confused as to how to navigate actually liking someone for the first in forever.

  My sister and brother both squeezed my hands while I was sandwiched between them, with my fingertips tangled in theirs. We rose as the ceremony came to a close, and I hoped no one would want to discuss the specifics of whatever the pastor had said later. We shuffled out, heading to our cars for the grave ceremony.

  It was eerily quiet as we piled into my sister’s vehicle and followed my parents and grandma. I didn’t know what to say in times of death. This was the first death in my family. I hadn’t experienced any random deaths in my life up to this point with friends or other family. No one told you the exact right thing to say, and it didn’t seem like a Hallmark card would actually do a damn thing to ease someone’s pain.

  The drive was short, and at the cemetery, it seemed weird to occupy the space with idle chatter, so I said nothing. My sister and Ren held hands, and people cast small looks toward them. Not quite as bad as the blatant stares or looks of contempt targeted at Sam and Quartney. It made me want to flip out my middle fingers and go to each person individually and tell them they could fuck the fuck off.

  But we had already braced ourselves for this. Unless someone came up and directly engaged with any of us, we had agreed to stay composed without saying much. But damn if the small townspeople of Nebraska weren’t tempting me to open a can of bitchiness on them all and make me want to verbally slap them.

  It didn’t happen, but I felt the nerves in my body getting ready to release the rage I had been keeping in check since we arrived. And the ongoing oddity that was this funeral.

  Fatima had told me that, even though I might not be grieving in the traditional way, I should be prepared that grief would hit me at some point. I was feeling like my quick temper over the past forty-eight hours might have resulted from that grief manifesting. Which also made me angry because I didn’t want to have any reaction. I didn’t want to give any time or emotion to this. They didn’t deserve it.

  It was so unnecessary and complicated.

  I hated it.

  I stared blankly ahead as more words were said and amens were passed out. The black closed casket was lowered into the ground, and my grandma stood over it and continued to cry as my dad tucked her into his side. My uncle hadn’t held my grandma’s hand or hugged her from what I had seen. Which also felt odd. What an asshole.

  We all shuffled back to the cars and drove back to the church for the luncheon afterward. A stickiness and heaviness lingered in the air, and it suffocated me, conjuring more disgust and irritation.

  Sam, Quartney, and I were planning on staying for the luncheon and then heading out afterward because I didn’t want to miss any more work or spend a single second longer here than necessary, and they also didn’t want to stay.

  I didn’t feel like eating, so I picked at the food and waited for what felt like an appropriate enough time before looking at Sam and giving him the let’s-get-the-fuck-outta-here look. He was standing away from our table, talking to some older gentlemen.

  Quartney was sitting next to me, looking dapper as hell in an all-black suit with a dark-gray dress shirt and a satin red tie. He had long braids tied back with a hair tie, and his caramel eyes always seemed to sparkle.

  “Sorry, my extended family sucks,” I said, leaning my head against his shoulder.

  Quartney laughed and laid his head atop mine. “Well, at least we don’t have to do this very much. I know how hard it is for all of you to be here.” He grabbed my hand and squeezed it.

  “I know it’s hard for you, too. The only bi bitch, gay Black man, and trans gay man all sitting at the same table is just almost too much for the old white grannies and grandpas to handle,” I said and winked at a woman walking by, who was blatantly staring.

  She quickly looked away and hurried away from the table.

  “You would think we had leprosy or something,” Quartney said, winking.

  “They probably would accept us more because their white Jesus cured leprosy,” I said dryly.

  Quartney smiled devilishly. “Do you think anyone has told them that Jesus was definitely Brown or Black yet?”

  “I don’t know, but I would love to see the look on their face when someone did.”

  We both laughed, and Sam turned and gave us a quizzical look.

  “Does one of us need to go save him, or do you think it’s fine?”

  “He seems like he is doing okay, but let’s give it no more than ten minutes before we make a run for it,” Quartney replied.

  “Can I ask you something, Q?” I said, thinking of Landon again.

  He kept creeping into my brain, even though I should have focused more on the funeral. No one needed to know I kept thinking about him or what else I wanted to do to him.

  “Of course, E.”

  “I started seeing someone. His name is Landon. But he is also a drag queen, Ella. But it’s more than that. The masculine and femininity overlap, and we talked about not wanting to operate in super gendered roles as we got to know each other and explore dating.

  “It’s not like genderfluid exactly, but he is exploring what that means. There was talk of becoming Ella full time a couple of years ago I suppose, but it didn’t feel right. He likes doing both.” I shrugged and cracked a smile. “Anyway, I guess what I am trying to ask, as my brother’s partner, is how to navigate supporting someone who is trans in an intimate partner relationship through all phases of what that looks like? Does that make sense? I want to make sure all parts of Landon and Ella feel seen, heard, and validated.” I looked at my untouched food.

  Sam and Quartney had met before Sam had undergone any gender-reaffirming surgery. Sam had been taking hormones for about a year, and when he had met Quartney, they instantaneously had a special connection. I couldn’t have picked out a better partner for my brother.

  “You’re already doing it, E. Be open to continuing the conversation and honoring who they are, even if that is fluid or changes from day-to-day. Only they can tell you what is important to them, so continue to ask and know that it won’t be perfect. It will be messy sometimes, and you will get things wrong but be open to the corrections. Society has been programming us for years to think and feel a certain way about gender, sexuality, love, and relationships. So, it will take a while to unpack that and figure out what works for you all. You get to decide what your relationship looks like, and no one else gets a say because it’s what makes you happy and supported in the relationship. But you won’t know what that is unless you ask or tell. So, just keep being honest about what’s going on.”

  I nodded and smiled, wrapping my arms around him. “You’re the coolest, thank you,” I whispered.

  “I know,” he said into my ear.

  “Now, can we get the fuck out of here?” I asked as he gave me a final squeeze.

  Laughing, he said, “Yup, let me go get my fiancé.”

  He stood and sidled up to Sam, and the man seemed to get uncomfortable as Quartney snuggled into my brother. Whether it was because of the gayness or Blackness or the transness or the special combination of all of the above, we will never know, but the man quickly made his goodbye and left.

  I walked up and smiled at both. “Want to make anyone else feel weird for fun, or are you ready to head out?”

  “I kind of want to give one more fuck-you,” Sam said, pulling Quartney in and planting a loud smacking kiss on his mouth.

  I laughed, and people around looked in horror or avoided eye contact. My mom and dad shot us beaming smiles like they couldn’t be prouder, and Ren winked at us while my sister stifled a laugh.

  “Well, if we all are sinners and going to hell, at least we will be there together!” I said as I grabbed Sam’s hand and dragged him and Quartney out, waving to them.

  We made it to our grandma to say our final goodbyes. Thankfully, she was already engaged in conversation with someone else, and I did one of those hate-to-interrupt-but-we-are-headed out quick hug and goodbyes before we all stepped outside of the church into the fresh hair.

  I took a deep breath.

  “Let’s go, bitches!” I said, feeling lighter now that I was out of the church and the vicinity of the conservative town of Hartington, Nebraska.

  Sam rolled his eyes, and Quartney laughed as we headed to the car.

  At least I wouldn’t have to see my extended family for a very, very long time.

  CHAPTER Eighteen

  A few days after the funeral, Landon and I had been flirting over text more. We still weren’t in constant communication, which I was okay with. He was set to head to Chicago that next weekend, and we planned our third date. Both our schedules were exceptionally chaotic because we both were busy doing a bajillion jobs.

  He had a livestream to watch in the evening, but he said it would only be an hour, and he had to make sure it didn’t blow up, so here I was, on my way to his apartment an hour before the livestream so we could get food and then watch it together.

  I was super excited to see his place. Something was telling about seeing someone’s apartment. Not that it was a deal breaker, but things would impress me or disappoint me. I pulled up to his place in the River Market, and it looked very nice from the outside. I parallel parked like a boss and texted him, letting him know I was here.

  He came out of the glass double doors with a huge smile on his face, his blue eyes shining.