Page 62 of The Rebel's Guide to Pride

“God, Z. I’m sorry.”

“Stop apologizing,” I said with a forced laugh. “I’m the one who’s sorry. I let the speakeasies go to my head because…”

“Because why?”

I chewed my bottom lip while everything the JACass had ever said weighed down on me. “My, uh, my father. You know how strict he is?” She nodded. “Well, it was more than that. He wouldn’t let me be out.”

“Hewhat?”

That overwhelming guilt I’d once felt bubbled in my gut as I tried to find the right words to explain it. “He said that if people didn’t know who I was, it’d make life easier for me.”

I could see her connecting the dots. “And then the divorce. That’s why you finally agreed to join the QSA last semester?”

“All I wanted was to be like you.”

“Like me?”

“You know, out and proud. Doing something. Not hiding who you are. And my father, all he ever told me was to stop acting so gay all the time.”

She scooted down the sofa and reached out to grasp ahold of my hand. “Why didn’t you say something?” she asked with a gentle squeeze, and I shrugged. “You didn’t have to deal with that alone.”

I thought back to all the times he’d made me apologize for being myself, for any time I slipped up and did something too overtly queer for his liking. “Do you remember when we played dodgeball at recess, and you’d beat my ass?”

“Thought we agreed not to talk about my bully days,” she said with a weak laugh, crossing her arms over her chest.

“But that’s exactly how it felt living with my father. I kept having to dodge him over and over again. Then it was easier to just sit there and let it happen. I was tired of fighting it, even convinced myself that I needed to be quiet to survive. Then you were out there, being loud and not giving a damn.”

“I might’ve given a little bit of a damn,” she admitted. “People started treating me differently. The dude bros fetishized me, and the other girls in our class came at me with microaggressions in the locker room.”

“It didn’t stop you from speaking up,” I reminded her. “I wish I didn’t just stay quiet and let it happen.”

“Youhaven’tbeen quiet this month,” she pointed out. “I really meant it when I said I was proud of you for stepping up.You have nothing to apologize for. The speakeasies brought everyone in Beggs together to celebrate.”

“Look where that led,” I countered. “It only gave Buchanan even more of an advantage—”

“But it also made Carmen Bedolla want to challenge him.” She cut me off. “Having the speakeasies might’ve done something bad, but that doesn’t outweigh the good they brought to this town.”

I nodded as her words sank in. My hands ached to grab a tool, to take apart an engine and put it back together. “I just wish, I dunno, that I could fix everything.”

“You can’t,” she said, not unkindly. “None of us can.”

Silence filled the basement, the hum of her PS5 droning in the background. I didn’t want to believe none of us could make it right. After the shit I’d been through, I thought I was finally in control of my life. But it turned out that I’d been letting my fear influence me. Fear of being like my father, of not being worthy, of disappointing anyone who got to know me.

“I’m glad Cohen swooped in to save your ass,” she added, her voice cutting the tension with a small laugh. “It could have been so much worse.”

The mirror ball shimmered behind my eyelids with every blink. A flash of its emerald reflection, the bass thumping in my chest, Cohen rushing in. Then its glisten became moonlight. Cohen and me outside the nature preserve and the revelation that he was bedmas_22. The embarrassment jabbed at my rib cage like a dull blade.

“I’m high-key impressed he did it,” she continued. I shot her a silent question. She tilted her head to the side, eyes narrowed in thought. “I mean, it’s a known fact that he’s terrifiedof getting into trouble. But he agreed to help with the speakeasy and risked being caught in a raid to warn you—” She gasped, her eyes lighting up. “Kennedy and Iknewhe still liked you.”

“Uh…” I didn’t even know how to begin to tell her about bedmas_22.

“And you like him too!” she added with a giddy squeal.

“No, I don’t!” My voice spiked with anger, my face growing hot. The annoying heat spread to my chest, then to my back where he’d sat against me with his arms around my waist.

“I beg your most finest pardon, but consensus says that you’ve liked him since mathletes, Z.” She shook her head with a smile. “Oh my god, I love this for you.”

“Abso-fuckin-lutely not,” I said quickly. “We’re not bringing up Extremely Shit-tacular Freshman Fall right now.”

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