Page 73 of Slay the Gay Away, Daddy

Mal blushes. “Me too.”

Bee looks up at Miles and reaches into her pocket. “I’m Phillip’s literary agent. We’re working on his memoir, and your ex-wife was telling me about you and your new book. Give me a call next week, once I’m back in the office. I’d love to hear more about it.”

Miles’ eyes bulge, and I’m pretty sure mine do too.

Mal stares at us, the way Miles is holding me in his arms, then she turns and looks at Meadows holding Pet. I can see the thought forming in her mind when she turns to look at Bee. Mal gives herself a nod, then, without warning, picks Bee up and places her on her hip.

“There. That’s better,” she says.

The look Bee gives her is equal parts adoring and absolutely unhinged. “Mallory,” she says, her voice coated in a new tone that could put a phone-sex operator to shame. It’s whiny and full of need. “Please?”

Jesus Christ, did she just roll her hips?

Mal pats her ass and whispers, “Good girl.” They share a quick kiss, and seeing Mal this way fills my heart with joy. She deserves to be cherished, just like Miles.

Twenty minutes later, the city square is packed with Tallulahns. Mayor Rivera is supposed to make a speech soon, and as we wait for him to take the stage, I look around, spotting a sea of familiar faces. Miles’ former-sexologist, current-therapist, Nate St. James, is standing in front of the stage set up on the courthouse lawn. I know his boyfriends are at work because he’s been harping on to Miles about how nervous they are in crowds, and that they were scared of attending. How do I know what was said in Miles’ therapy session? I stitched a hidden mic into his coat, obvi. Don’t worry, Miles knows. It was his idea. He wantsme to hear all the parts he’s kept hidden, but he can’t bring himself to say them to my face. That’s okay. I know trauma is a relentless uphill battle, and I’ll give him however much time and space as he needs.

In the gazebo, just off to the side of the courthouse, Gray and Kent are cuddled close, holding an adorable dachshund. They share a gentle kiss, and it makes me realize how much I want this with Miles. A gentle life. A normal life. Just two men in love, going about their everyday lives.

Tatum and Scotty are here with their husbands, and there’s an elderly lady with jet-black hair, whipped up into a bouffant. It doesn’t match her denim jacket or sequined pants in the slightest, but that’s fine. She seems a bit eccentric, what with her half-arm of jangling bracelets she keeps shaking in front of Tatum’s face for reasons I don’t understand.

It’s not all sunshine and rainbows, however. Through the alleyways leading away from the square, voices can be heard echoing through, their hate speech amplified by some sort of sound system. The voice on the speaker hurls out the f-slur, and Miles’ entire body goes stiff.

“You’re okay,” I remind him. “We knew there would be bigots trying to silence us. We talked about this.”

“I know.”

“There are police everywhere. We’re safe,” I say. He wants to believe me. I know he does. He’s just scared, is all. “Do you want to go? We can.”

He quickly shakes his head.

“Do you need to put me down? I know I have to be heavy.”

He shakes his head again. “Need you here. Right against me.” His voice is small and scared, and we can’t have that, so I place my finger beneath his chin and tug until we’re eye to eye.

“Forever,” I promise.

“Tallulah, Texas,” Mayor Rivera says, pulling my attention away from Miles. “It’s so good to see everyone here today.” His sound system is loud, but it isn’t loud enough to drown out the haters. “They told us to call Pride off this year. I’ve gotten hundreds of calls telling me it would be the end of my political career if I didn’t. Well, I say, ‘to hell with that’.” He points at an alleyway, and when I glance through the gap, I can see protestors standing on the other side, holding signs and banners. They’re far off, so I can’t see what any of them say, but there’s one with a stick figure bent over, being fucked in the ass by another stick figure. The person holding the sign is a child, and his father—I’m assuming—is standing right at his side, holding a rainbow flag that looks to have been cut in half.

And they call us the groomers.

“When this is over,” I warn Miles. “I’m going snooping.”

Miles’ eyes widen as Mayor Rivera continues his speech. “Absolutely not. The last time you stalked a man, Brother McCutcheon wound up in the ICU.”

I shake my head. “He wound up in an ICE detention center.”

He closes his eyes and sighs. “Dang-it, Dare.”

“Don’t you dare judge me,” I bite back. “He’s a seventy-year-old cishet white guy. It’s about time they feel some of the fucking heat too.”

Did I have Meadows abduct him, give him the worst spray tan this side of Dallas, inject him with a tongue paralyzer, and set him loose in front of a border checkpoint? Why, yes. Yes, I did. Don’t worry, he totally deserved it. Fucky McFuckface made the grave mistake of calling Miles a faggot on his way out of church a few weeks ago. He went on to say President Flump ought to deport queer people alongside our brothers and sisters from the south. He even threatened to report Mayor Rivera and have both him and his child deported. I’ll admit, when I heard his slander, I temporarily lost control and began stalking the man. For threenights, I tracked his movements. I followed him everywhere. To a gas station where he bought three unnecessarily large bottles of vodka, cracking one open in the parking lot and guzzling it like water. Next, I followed him to a sex store where he purchased a four-inch dildo, a giant tub of Anal-Ese, and, to my horror, a DVD copy ofChesty Malone is. . .The Stepfucker. Was I disgusted? Yes, but not for the reason you might expect. I don’t mind stepcest, just don’t understand who still purchases pornography on DVD. Regardless, I pushed past my discomfort and followed him home. Once I had his routine down, I contacted Meadows, and he took care of things from there.

Luckily, once Meadows made America great again at the bonfire, Scotty’s husband, Brody, killed the man in charge of their little detention center in El Salvador, freeing all the people inside. Now, it houses Brother McCutcheon, who can fucking rot for all I care. Like Tatum always says; hope he cries, hope he dies.

“I can have them all abducted. Ship them off to El Salvador.”

Miles spanks my ass, making me whine. “No! Bad boy. Bad, bad boy, Dare-bear. Honestly, I don’t know what’s gotten into you. Your thirst for vengeance is starting to worry me.” I shrug, because I don’t know what to tell him. If someone hurts Miles, they’re going down, and they’re going down hard.

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