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“I love you,” she said.
He smiled softly. “I love you.”
“I want you to move all the way in, Jake. I want to really behomewith you.”
He was mostly moved in. He’d spent every night with her since her father’s death. His clothes were in her dresser, her closet. His toiletries in her armoire. The drawer of toys had been mostly packed away, because he wasn’t into them, and she was just fine with that.
She had a sort of foggy memory of talking about living together right after the funeral, but that didn’t feel entirely real, and they hadn’t spoken of it again. He’d simply been there, and she’d been glad, and they’d carried on with their days.
But now, on the day she thought was the last time she’d ever be in her childhood home, the day that she realized it was no longer home, Petra needed to clear away the fog and make an actual decision. A commitment.
“I don’t know if you like living in the apartment. I know it’s different from what you’re used to. If you don’t like it, we can move. I just want to live with you. Officially. Make a home together.”
“We don’t have to move, babe. I like your place, and you’ve got enough going on without adding that to the list.”
“But you just called it my place. I want it to beourplace. If it doesn’t feel like that—”
He grabbed her hand. “Hey. I’m at home where you are. Wherever that is, if you’re there, I’m home.” A halfhearted chuckle slipped from his lips. “I feel like a shit for saying this, but I’ve been happier the past month or so than I’ve ever been. I’m sorry. That’s got to sound terrible right now. But ... I don’t know if I can say it right. I mean, I had a great childhood. I have great parents. I got no excuse for not being happy. But I always felt ... I don’t know. Like—well, like I was the B team, I guess. I always thought I didn’t measure up right, but I’m starting to realize that that’s beenmethinking that. I’m the one who’s been measuring myself against my dad, my brother, the other patches, everybody. If people treated me that way, it’s because I was already acting like it was true.”
Still holding her hand, he turned away and studied the house beyond the windshield. Petra kept her eyes on him.
“I don’t know if that makes any sense, but I’m saying it because I don’t feel like that with you. I just feel right. I feel like I’m what you want. What you need. Just as I am. And you’re what I want and need. So we can live in your apartment forever. We can move to the country, or to a house in the city. We can live in a tent down by the river. I don’t care, as long as I can roll over every night and pull you close.”
“Jesus, Jake,” she gasped. “You fill my heart.”
His grin had a shine of triumph. “I love that you call me Jake.”
He had a lot of names—JJ, Jay, Jake, Jacob. ‘Jake’ had felt right to her from the start, but not many people used it. “Why?” she asked.
“Family calls me Jake,” he said and leaned close.
Petra met him in the middle and sealed their future with a kiss.
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~oOo~
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Petra took the tastingspoon from Max and slipped it into her mouth. “Oh, wow. That tastes like ...”
“Caramel apple,” Max supplied.
“Yeah, with a kick. It’s delicious.” She was pretty sure the kick was Fireball. They were going to have to keep on eye on the punch drinkers tonight.
“Of course it is,” Max answered as if she were offended that Petra thought it even bore mentioning. But Petra could see the pleased sparkle in her cranky cook’s eye. “Now get out of my kitchen. If you keep grazing in here you’ll burst out of your costume. Who are you supposed to be, anyway?”
It was Halloween. Gertrude’s had been reopened barely more than a week, and things had been quiet since they’d unlocked the doors, but tonight, the place would be so packed the walls would swell.
Halloween was ‘Gay Christmas’—the best holiday most LGBTQ+ people had from their childhood. For straight kids, Halloween was, to quoteBuffy the Vampire Slayer, ‘come as youaren’tnight.’ For gay kids, especially those in the closet—which, of course, was most of them, at least at some point in their lives—it was a chance to be who they really were, out loud and right out front. As adults, they still cleaved to those good, free feelings of Halloween, even if they lived their lives out loud and right out front every day.
Petra’s personal feelings about the holiday were more in line with the straight kids, actually. It was a fun dress-up holiday, but it had never been a safe haven for her identity. She’d never been in the closet; she’d understood she was bisexual in her senior year of high school, and nothing in her life had made her feel like she couldn’t simply embrace it.
For her, the transition from straight to queer had been gentle. Maybe because her pastimes and interests were dance and theater and art and books, all arenas with diverse populations in every respect. She’d gone to an expensive private school with a mission for inclusion and diversity. There were of course jerks and bullies, there were always jerks and bullies, but at her school they were the outcasts, not the popular kids.
Probably for the same reason—environment—Petra hadn’t experienced any internal struggles with her sexuality, either. She’d thought she was straight, had liked being a ballerina, had liked the pink, girly clothes her mother had dressed her in, had liked the sexier feminine clothes she’d fought her mother to be able to wear as a teenager, had enjoyed the attention of boys, and had started dating one—Kieran—in junior year. They’d broken up the following summer, and she’d been heartbroken in the typical way high-school girls got heartbroken over boys.
And then her senior class had been joined by a Danish exchange student, and Petra had felt just as hot for Ella—tall, fair, and tough, with a savagely sarcastic sense of humor—as she’d felt for Kieran. It hadn’t taken her long to understand what that meant, and she’d been lucky to have the family she had, and the friends she had, that she’d been able to simply sayI’m biand have everyone believe her, take her seriously, and accept her, all at a go.
