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I wasn’t fooling Frank. He pursed his lips and crossed his arms over his chest, leaning back in his chair.
Looking at him, with his big biceps trying to split the sleeves of his uniform, I hated how angry it made me that he was free to love whomever he wanted to. He and Sam didn’t get the disgusted looks Devo and I would if we were seen together. No one talked badly about them behind their backs, even though Frank was nearly twenty years older than Sam. But he was a man and she was a woman.
I loved my friends. I didn’t want them to have to face strife, but at the same time, I wanted to scream at the top of my lungs, “It’s not fair!”
“You can’t beg peoples’ respect, Abey. You gotta earn it. And you know what feels even better than earnin’ respect?”
I shook my head and sighed out a breath. I wasn’t really in the mood for a pep talk or whatever the hell this was.
“When you earn it from someone who really doesn’t wanna give it. So, live your life the way you want and need to. You’re a good person. People do respect you. They will continue to do so no matter who you love, and those who don’t will either learn to or they won’t, but you’ll still deserve it.”
Dammit. Why did he have to be so… right? “You make it sound easy.”
Shrugging, he said, “You do you. There ain’t nothin’ wrong with you, except that you’re a slob”—his perceptive gray eyes flicked to the carefully disorganized piles of papers on my desk—“but as long as the general public’s kept in the dark about that fact, I think you’ll be just fine. No one cares about your life more than you do.” He waited for me to look him in the eye again. When I did, he said, “So fuck ’em.”
I wanted to laugh at his joke about me being a slob, although I wasn’t entirely sure he had been joking, but I couldn’t because everything he’d just said was right. I knew it was, but it didn’t make it any easier. And as far as I knew, no one had published a book about how to be a good lesbian, how to live my life out in the open, and how to deal with assholes.
No one could tell me how to get over my own prejudices. Internalized homophobia. I’d read about it. It was the reason the word “lesbian” grated my nerves.
I was afraid of what people might say because I was scared shitless myself.
The door opened behind us, interrupting my need to scream and rail at general injustice. Frank sat forward, rolling his eyes.
When I turned my chair, Roxanne and Dan stood silently on the other side of my desk, Dan with something pink dripping onto his uniform from his head. His sunglasses were covered in the stuff.
“Sorry,” Roxanne said in a tight voice, trying hard not to laugh out loud, “but it wasn’t me. He tried to tell one of the ladies at the farmers market that she couldn’t park her truck on the sidewalk to load her stuff, and she dumped her smoothie over his head.”
“Sissy Melton?” Frank asked, fluttering his hands around his head. “Long gray hair, big hat?”
Roxanne was ready to burst. “Yep. That’d be her.” She lost the fight and bent over, cackling and sucking in air, trying to catch her breath.
“I’m changin’ my shirt,” Dan said, ignoring Roxanne. “Then I’m gonna go arrest her.”
“No, you’re not,” I said and stood from my chair. “You’re lucky blended fruit all over your head’s all you got for your efforts.”
Dan stomped his foot, and pink smoothie spattered around the station. He yanked his sunglasses from his face, and the frothy liquid slipped down his crooked nose, welling above his lip. “She attacked an officer of the law!”
I flicked a drop off my forearm. “All Sissy did was put you in your place, and it’ll go better for you if you learn where that is. Nobody tells that woman what to do, and she’s earned the right.”
“Seriously?” He was outraged. He pegged Frank with a glare. “Even you?”
Frank stood too. “Even me what?”
Dan looked almost a foot shorter than Frank and probably half his body mass. He shrank back a step, his angry tone faltering under Frank’s glare. “Y-you’re ex-military. I thought you’d have my back. This place is backwards. I feel like I’ve stepped into a fifties sitcom. All anybody cares about around here is gossip.”
I nodded. “That’s the job.”
“You’ve all gone soft.” Dan stomped away. He slammed the locker room door in the hall, and Frank laughed so hard, he snorted.
Roxanne had collected what little decorum she could, hiccupping between giggles. “I knew Sissy wasn’t someone we wanted to piss off. I could tell just by lookin’ at her. I warned him.” She wiped tears from under her eyes as I walked around my former desk.
“I’ll talk to Sissy,” I said, grabbing my hat from the hook by the door. “And Roxanne, that’s your desk now.” I pointed to the little bit of brown wood peeking out from my mess. Okay, so maybe I was a slob. I winced when I remembered the pile of empty chili cups and Ho-Ho wrappers in the back seat of my truck. Maybe if I stopped eating so many of them, I could quit with the fucking burpees every morning. “I’ll clean it off before I head home tonight. Guess I’m movin’ into the big guy’s office.”
“Thanks,” she said, looking toward the hallway. “But what about Pink Hair back there?”
“I was plannin’ on settin’ up a desk for him over there.” I nodded toward the corner of the room, where we kept a round fluffy bed for Frank’s dog, Grum. “But if he doesn’t figure out how to relax around here, he’s gonna find himself out on the street sooner rather than later.”
We had an extra desk back in the conference room, but before I dragged it out to the bullpen, Dan and I needed to have a conversation about a couple things.
