Chapter Thirty-Five

Kit

The desert turns to cityscape but I barely notice what's happening outside my car windows as I drive. Fear pings around my rib cage like a pinball. I let my heart pound and my skin slick with sweat. I let my tears fall and my brain play tricks on my body, convincing it that feeling this is the real danger, when it's really the opposite.

This is the most alive I've ever been.

The most in my body, the most in my intuition. As scary as going it alone to tell them is, it also makes me feel powerful. For so much of my life I've played the role I was cast in. It was so easy, the effort it took never really showing through the cracks. I did it because it felt safe, because it was expected, because it looked really great on paper.

Not doing that anymore is my compass finally pointing North.

I don't know what will happen with that video—how it will affect my online persona, what repercussions it might have for my hopes to reach higher-end clientele. I can only hope that once the dust settles, I'll find a way to reclaim this moment for myself.

I don't let myself think about what happens with Julia when this is all over, because I don't know yet how long it will take for me to be ready for real . The not knowing can't negate the rest. I meant what I said to her before I left. I don't regret her, and I'm not running away.

I'm taking my own path to get to her.

To us.

I wipe my eyes and turn the music up and somehow I make it all the way home.

I beat down on the horn as I pull into the driveway.

Mom swings open the front door, dressed in a nightgown and housecoat combo. Willa's sleek form makes an outline in the front window.

"Katherine?" Mom calls down from the porch. I'm sure she's squinting to make sure that it's me. "Is that you, Kitten?" I see a golf club in her hand, poised as a weapon.

"Yeah, Mom, can you come down here?" I stand with my car door open, blaring the horn a few more times. Mom covers her ears, abandoning her nine iron and stepping off the porch.

"Will you stop"— honk —"with that"— honk —"hideous noise?"

"Where's Dad?" I ask, honking again and drowning out her reply.

"Jesus Christ—stop that!" She's off the porch, a pair of Crocs on her feet, rushing around the front of my car. "He's in the pool house—you know he sleeps like the dead." She places her hand over the horn, blocking me from honking again. I shoot out of the car and down the driveway to where the gate sits open even though it's almost two a.m.

"I told you guys to lock the gate at night," I spit in her direction. "What is the point of having a security gate if you don't use it?"

Mom's shuffling behind me trying to keep up and she gasps for me to slow down.

"Please, my knees—Kitten, are you okay? You're acting very erratic right now—you didn't take drugs, did you? People are always taking drugs in the desert."

"I didn't take drugs," I say as I scale the steps to the pool house front door. I proceed to bang on the door with the force of an eager intruder.

"You haven't answered any calls or texts—is this about the bisexual thing?" Mom asks.

"Bisexual thing?" Stay calm. Stay in your body. Stay in this moment.

"You know…" She points toward the house where I assume her girlfriend is hiding from me and my car horn.

"Yes. It is." I beat on the door again, and finally see the bedroom light flick on. Dad must have had a good writing evening if he fell asleep before three a.m. "Also, it's not."

"That's so confusing," she whines, scrunching her face into a pout.

The door to the pool house bursts open to reveal Dad, glasses askew on his face, dressed in a t-shirt that says "Tom Hanks is my hero" and some plaid pajama pants.

"Cupcake?" His voice is thick with sleep. His eyes slowly travel from me to my mom, who is in a growing state of distress. "Camille, why are you over here? My side—" He walks out to the edge of the porch. "Your side."

Mom's eyebrow fishhooks and she points a long finger at me.

"Your daughter is melting down and likely any minute the cops will arrive. You know that busybody Missy Green has it out for me—"

"Oh please," Dad rebukes. "Like you haven't given her every reason to despise you. Case in point, you called animal control on her for having a pet opossum—"

"Opossums aren't pets and everyone knows tha—"

"Fuck me with a flamethrower, will you both please shut up?!"

That does it. Both of their mouths seal closed in shock.

"Please sit down," I say, lowering my voice. I motion to the rocking chairs sitting nearby. There are three. One for each of us. Will Dad take his in the divorce? I blink back the tears that immediately well in my eyes. "I have to tell you something."

They creep down into the two rockers farthest from each other. That never would have happened before. Before, they would have sat side by side, holding hands across the expanse between them.

I cannot fixate on this or I'm going to burst into tears.

The only solace I have is that Mom doesn't seem to have seen the video yet. It's a surprise that she hasn't, but she's never held anything in this long, so I'm guessing I'm in the clear. At least where coming out to my mom and dad are concerned.

"What's up?" Dad asks, rubbing his eye with the tip of his pointer finger underneath his glasses.

I clear my throat and wish I'd gotten a little bit drunk before I woke them both up to tell them I'm queer.

"I—well, here's the thing," I stammer, eloquence and resolve dissolving beneath their gaze. I close my eyes for a split second, seeing Julia's face first, and then the compass in my own soul.

Spinning, spinning, spinning.

It's not just about the gay. It's about so much more and that's why this is so hard.

"I can't even make a decision without touching a tarot deck." I spit out the words like they're a spicy hot pepper my sweet little tongue can't take. When I open my eyes, it's to see the two bewildered faces of my two exhausted parents. "You smothered me with expectation—"

"I'm pretty sure we've been extremely supportive despite the fact that we do not understand how tarot reader is a real job," Mom says, batting her lashes and tensing up her face.

"No, you're right. No matter what job I had or what I studied in college, no matter how many guys I dated or lived with, you were always supportive." I direct this more to Mom, and I can feel Dad edging over, trying to get in my line of sight.

Dad was the one I was terrified to disappoint.

"You sold me on a life that was impossible to achieve. One you both knew wasn't even really the life you were leading." I look between them now and can feel the well of emotion ready to erupt within me.

Deep hurt and all this need, years of never feeling like enough.

"We didn't think it was important to tell you about your mother's history," Dad says with a sigh. "How was it relevant to you?"

"These things, no one gives you a guidebook to follow," Mom says, dropping all pretense in her voice for the first time in such a long time, I forgot what she sounds like without it. "I didn't think it mattered that I was bisexual, since I was married to a man."

The erasure of her own identity helped me be more afraid of mine.

"But you still tried to give me a guide with a really important chapter missing," I say, throttling my voice to try to control the waver. I swallow a lump in my throat but it bursts out, making my lips wobble.

"We were just trying to be aspirational," Dad replies, but his face shows the signs of breaking down. Tears threaten behind his thick glasses, big in the magnification.

"Aspirational, Dad, come on—the Ideal Rom-Com Life Path," I say, almost choking on the words before they come out.

"Oh, Kitten, no, that wasn't prescriptive—" Mom tries.

"Mom." It's all I say. It's all I need to. The look I give her lets her know the rest.

"You're right," she whispers. "She's right."

Every smile came with a story. Every moment of my life was a narrative he wanted to play out in a specific way. My life wasn't the messy, complicated existence of a young woman finding herself. It was a script with a specific, preplotted ending and any scenes that didn't fit were scrapped. Unimportant. Ignored on the cutting room floor.

"Dad." I crouch in front of him, gripping his hands in mine. "I shouldn't have listened to you." His brows are like caterpillars finding each other on his face. "I should've been listening to me."

"I never said I had all the answers—"

"Clint." Mom's voice is a low warning. "Life with you is a pressure cooker and you're the only one who can turn it off."

Mom and I meet eyes. She gets it, just like I thought she would. She hurts, probably more than I can even understand.

Dad's face creases, tears threatening to fall. "I'm sorry I made you feel that way—I didn't mean to." He grips my hands, worrying them between his own. "I didn't see it that way, I didn't—" His voice cracks.

"I know you didn't." I clutch his hands and now his tears make good on their threat. "I know you're not a villain." He was doing his best, even if it wasn't the best. "It was a lot easier to be what you expected, and Mom expected, and then what YouTube expected, and TikTok, and Instagram, and boyfriends, and friends, and—to make all that work I had to shove down my own truth."

I don't think I can look him in the face for this part. I rise from in front of him, dropping into the chair between him and Mom. I take a few measured breaths while they watch, but I can feel Mom revving up to fill the silence. I'm about to lose my window.

Now or never, Kit.

"I like women, too."

My voice is small but I'm proud there's no wobble in it. I close my eyes to shut out the world, to let them have their reaction and not feel like they have to hide it on their faces.

"You what?" Dad exclaims the question.

"She's bi, Clint," Mom says, like she's trying to shush him. "Or pan or queer or—"

"I don't need you to list every label in the sexual identity flag, Camille," Dad snips back.

My eyes still pinned closed, I snap, "I don't know how I'm labeling myself yet, so can we just stop ?"

Silence stretches after my words. I feel them beside me, fumbling through this with me. I know they're looking at me and each other. I know they aren't sure what to say now. But in the quiet, my own thoughts whirl. The relief is bigger than I expected, like a bubble popped in my chest and now there's all this space to breathe. But there's also rawness. A sensitivity that makes me afraid to open my eyes, like I'm a person who's been in a dark room for too long emerging to blink into afternoon sun.

"Cupcake." Dad's voice. One of his hands grips one of mine.

"Kitten," Mom adds. Taking the other.

"We're not going anywhere." They say it together.

I blink my eyes open and turn to look at them. Dad's gazing at me with tears in his eyes, Mom's face is wet. My eyes fill up at the sight of both of my parents crying, with me, for me. Dad reaches over, brushing my cheek with his thumb.

"Well done."

"What do you mean?" I exhale, tears dripping into my mouth.

"For telling us." He tugs off his glasses to wipe at his eyes.

"You're not upset with me?" I ask, and I feel so small and scared. So much like a kid looking for their approval. "Disappointed?"

"No, never—"

"But Dad, you've been freaking out over Mom being bi. You've been heartbroken."

"I was heartbroken that she cheated on me," Dad says, with a small grunt of disdain.

"Cheating is an awfully strong word," Mom inserts.

"Not that she likes women, too," Dad adds before she can say more. "I don't fault her for that part."

Mom grips my other hand, patting emphatically. I whip my head around to look at her.

"He's surprised." She bends toward me, kissing my cheek. "I always knew deep down."

Our eyes connect. There are so many things I want to talk to her about now that all of this is out in the open.

"But the Ideal Rom-Com Life Path—"

"My Screenwriters of South Pasadena Reddit has a whole thread about the need for queer rom-coms in a largely cis-het space," Dad adds, a spark of humor in his voice. "Be the change, I suppose."

My life is still his favorite movie, but I guess as long as he is okay with whatever ending I want, that's good enough progress for now.

"You're not the one to write that movie, Clint," Mom chimes in.

"I'm not saying I am," Dad replies. "It's just interesting and I thought Kit might like to read it."

Mom winks at me. "I suppose you could share that Reddit thing to the Larson fam group chat."

"Oh, you suppose?" Dad replies with another grunt.

"Wait, so the group chat isn't going dormant?" I ask, and I don't know why my lip wobbles and fresh tears prick at the corners of my eyes.

A look passes between them. It's the kind that comes with years together. A badge of being truly known, something you can never lose once you have it.

"Of course it isn't, silly," Mom says, nudging my shoulder with hers.

"Stuck with both of us forever, I'm afraid," Dad adds.

They both come in for cheek kisses and I scream like a kid trying to escape.

"I have to ask, why are you telling us now? At three a.m. instead of over coffee at a reasonable hour?" Mom feigns a yawn. "Not that I mind."

"I'm going viral," I say.

Mom blinks in surprise, going for her phone in the pocket of her robe. I press her hand away.

"It's a really long story, but I kind of fell in love with someone at the wedding I was working." I cringe, bracing for how the last part will hit them both. "You know her. Julia Kelley, from high school."

Mom screeches, gripping me by the shoulders and forcing a hug.

I'll have to tell them the whole story—or, like, the PG version of the story. But for now I settle on, "I may need to stay here for a while. I need to figure some stuff out."

Mom looks to Dad. "I'll get the air mattress from the garage."

Dad shuffles off toward the garage, Mom calling out orders to him to watch out for black widows and while you're in there could you get my old aerobics videos down from the top shelf?

I drop back into the rocker, leaning my head against the wood.

This is what it feels like to trust your gut and follow it. Feel the fear and do it anyway.

Being with Julia this weekend reminded me that I am a person capable of doing that. I need more of that in my life. I need more following my compass. I need more faith in myself.

Then I need to find my way back to her.