I took the mugs through to the living room and put them on the coffee table, then went back out to the cupboard in the hall.
“What are you doing in there?” Mum called.
“School photos.”
I heard her say to Leigh, “I thought he was embarrassed.”
I found the box of photos, took out The Dreaded Album, and returned to the living room. “Not for me,” I said and asked Leigh, “D’you remember that guy at the hustings? The quiet one who was up for publicity officer?”
“Hmm…kind of? Why?”
“I recognised him, but I couldn’t figure out where from.” I flicked through the photos my mum had ‘lovingly’ purchased over the years, to my year eleven class photo and showed it to Leigh, pointing to the person in question. “What d’you think?”
“Oh, yeah. Is he trans?”
“I guess. That is him, isn’t it?”
“I’d say so. Were you friends?”
“Nope. He was horrible to me.” In no way did that make him exceptional.
“Who are you talking about?” Mum asked.
“Becky Fellowes? Or Ben Fellowes.”
“I don’t recall the name.”
I studied the photo. He looked very different now—happier, for sure. His eyes were the same, though, which was what had triggered my recognition. He’d identified himself as ‘a gay guy’ at the hustings—I think we all felt a bit under duress to be open about it after Danny’s dressing down, although I’d have told them anyway, seeing as it was integral to my campaign. I wondered if Ben had recognised me…would he have been surprised to see me there?
“I’m going to talk to him next time I see him, reassure him there’re no hard feelings.” I was lying; I still struggled to deal with what some of my classmates had put me through, but he might be worried I was going to out him. I’d never do that—well, apart from to Leigh and my mum, but I trusted them both immensely.
Wow. I trusted Leigh as much as I trusted my mum. I guess I’d already realised that when I’d told them about the weight management clinic, but I hadn’t consciously acknowledged it before.
I closed the album and moved to go and put it away, but Leigh very obviously coughed into their hand. I didn’t even bother asking why; I just passed over the album. Leigh grinned. The blood vessels in my cheeks had clearly gone on strike—no blush!
The oven timer went off; Mum bustled from the room to deal with it, and I took a deep breath, preparing to ask the question even though I thought I probably already knew the answer.
I tilted my head towards the door and whispered, “What d’you think?”
“I love her,” Leigh whispered back. “I’m really enjoying being here.”
I nodded. “Me, too.” I could tell how much my mum liked Leigh from the way the pair of them were already pretending to gang up on me.
Leigh flipped the pages, and I made it through my primary school photos with nary a grimace, but high school… Urgh. I screwed my eyes shut so I didn’t have to see twelve-year-old me, complete with moon face and that bloody awful haircut. I wouldn’t mind, but I’d chosen to have it like that, because I thought it was ‘Zac Efron cool’ when, in actuality, it looked like a comb-over.
“You were so cute,” Leigh said again.
I opened one eye and squinted. Year nine. Moon face, now with added craters. “Oh, God. Turn over, quick!”
Leigh flipped to the next page, giggling at my reaction.
“Have you got school photos?” I asked.
“Hmm… Aunty Sheri’s got a couple of my primary school photos. I didn’t get them taken in high school, apart from for my leavers’ prom. I’ll show you sometime.”
“Cool. I think my prom photo’s in there.”
All of a sudden, Leigh was in a hurry to get through the album, until there I was in my hired tux, hair gelled back, goatee beard.
“Oh, boy, were you cute.” The smile I got this time was positively sultry. I had to admit, it was a half-decent photo, probably the only one of me that I didn’t hate.
Leigh closed the album but kept hold of it, smoothing the cover with their palm. “After Cornwall…can we…” They bit their lip, turning it white. “I’d like to introduce you to my mum. Please say yes.” The last three words came out in a rush that made them blur into one.
“Yes, of course.” I’d been preparing for an informal introduction to Doctor Powell—Leigh’s Aunty Sheri—but not their mum. I’d assumed they didn’t have any contact.
“It won’t be like this.”
“OK.”
Leigh looked up and tried for a carefree smile. It reached deep inside me and tore something open, and I didn’t know what to say, but there was no doubt in my mind what I needed to do. I hugged them. Shipmates was right; the pain I saw, and felt, was vast and deep as the ocean, and I wanted Leigh to know I understood how important this was to them, and how difficult, even if I didn’t understand why. I heard my mum coming back and said quickly, “We’ll talk about this, OK? If you want to?”
Leigh nodded as we moved away from each other. It took tangible effort for them to switch back to their usual happy self, and I got the feeling my mum saw it, too, because she faltered slightly before suggesting I show Leigh around while the cookies cooled down.
“Can do.” I held out my hand for the album. “I’ll stick that back in the cupboard.”
My mum raised an eyebrow. I just knew what was coming next.
“You’re a good influence on him.”
I pulled a face, which got a half laugh out of Leigh, and my mum pulled one back.
“You’re so alike,” Leigh observed as we left the room.
“I’ll take that as a compliment.” I lowered my voice, not by much. “Only because I’m scared of her.”
“I heard that, cheeky.”
I grinned at Leigh. “I’ll show you where the bathroom is first.” We took another three or four steps, and there we were—our flat was quite small. There was no need for me to point out what was what. Bathrooms were bathrooms.
“Got it,” Leigh said.
“And the kitchen is just over here.” I walked ahead and waited for Leigh to join me.
“Mmm. Those cookies look amazing.”
“Yeah. My mum is an epic cook.” I patted my belly. Leigh’s eyes narrowed. “All I’m saying is it doesn’t help.”
“And all I’m saying is it doesn’t matter to me.”
I raised my hands in surrender. “Point taken.” I gestured and we went back out into the tiny square space that connected all five rooms. “That’s Mum’s room—” I indicated the door as we passed it “—and this is my room.” I held my breath as I opened the door, praying I hadn’t left my dirty underwear on the floor earlier. If I had, my mum had picked them up for me, because my room was spotless.
“Whoa, that’s a lot of pink.”
“I thought it was…oh!” Not little ‘p’ pink. Like my cheeks.
Leigh smirked and moved closer to my giant poster. I stepped up behind and wrapped my arms around them. “She is very attractive,” they said.
“Yeah. She’s got nothing on you.”
Leigh made the quietest sound—something between a laugh and a gasp—but we were so close I heard it loud and clear.
“I can take it down if you like.”
“No, don’t be silly.” Leigh turned and put their arms around my neck, looking up at me. “I was a bit…‘how do I compete with a pop star?’ at first, but that was when I was only wishing for this to happen. Now, I don’t care.” There was that cheeky grin I loved so much.
Knowing the danger of being where we were made no difference. We kissed, and I felt all of my body respond to the sensation of our lips meeting, the touch of our tongues, the breaths we shared. My fingers tangled in Leigh’s hair, their fingers slid under the waistband of my jeans. God, I wanted this so much I could’ve kicked my door shut and pulled Leigh down onto the bed with me. But I did the sensible thing—we both did—and withdrew breathlessly.
Leigh’s head came to a rest against my chest; fast pants of air escaped their mouth and heated my shirt as they said, “We have to talk about…it…soon.”
“Yeah, we do.”
“I want to.”
“So do I.”
“But…you know I’m different, right?”
“You’re you. That’s all I care about.”
“You can’t say that, Jesse. Not until you understand what it means.”
I opened my mouth, closed it again and released the breath I’d taken. My instinct was to argue back, tell Leigh they were wrong. It didn’t matter that this was the first real relationship for both of us; I was absolutely certain we were meant to be together. Sure, it was early days; there were lots of things we had yet to discover about each other, and some of those might be hard to deal with, but if we were meant to be, we’d work it out as we went along. But telling Leigh all of that was pointless; they needed to believe it for themself.
“There’s no rush,” I said.
“I know. I keep thinking…it’s only been two weeks. Is that too soon?”
“God knows.” The way people talked, everyone did it on a first date. I couldn’t even imagine how that was possible, unless it was just about the sex, but that had never appealed to me. The kissing, hugging, skin-to-skin contact, that was what I craved. “I guess we should go with the flow, you know…wait for it to happen naturally.” I sighed, because that was where we were at. “When there isn’t a parent with superhuman hearing just across the hallway.”
“Yeah. You’re right.” Leigh patted my arm and turned to study my Pink poster again. It was time for it to come down. “Badly Drawn Boy.”
“You’re into him?”
“Yeah, kind of? I like acoustic stuff, but a doctor once told my Aunty Sheri I looked like a badly drawn boy. It’s a bit tricky to get past that and enjoy his music.”
“A doctor said that?” The utter bastard. Who did these doctors think they were, that they could violate and insult people to force them to comply? I hope they got sacked, struck off, or whatever it was they did to doctors. I know what I wanted to do to them.
“You’re squishing me,” Leigh squeaked.
“Sorry.” I eased off but didn’t let go. “It makes me mad.”
“I noticed.” They smiled at me over their shoulder. “Do you get what I mean, though?”
I was still fuming. “Yes, and what I said stands. It doesn’t help, does it? Me getting mad on your behalf.”
“Hmm…it does a bit. I’m never taking you to meet my doctor.”
I managed to laugh, even though a part of me wanted to demand Leigh did exactly that, but me yelling at them wasn’t going to change anything—like I’d do that anyway. Reasoning with people, getting them to think about their attitudes—it could take a long time, but surely they had to listen eventually? That was what Pride didn’t do so well: because it started out as the LGBT+ Society, we were still quite insular, which was why Sarah and others were unhappy about accepting allies. We needed to get out there and talk to other groups, challenge attitudes, answer questions…aaaand I needed to update my manifesto.
I also made a secret promise to stop getting so caught up in my own bodily insecurities. They weren’t going to go away, but we could work through them together, because Leigh had them, too. I’d been blind to that before now; all I saw was a beautiful, perfect person.
“We’d better go back to Mum before she feels compelled to come and find us.” Reluctantly, I moved away and straightened my clothes; Leigh smoothed their hair. I’d tousled it good style, and I wasn’t sorry.
They noticed me watching and asked, “Should I dye it pink?” No hiding the teasing there.
“If you like.”
“Or rainbow colours.”
“You should!”
“Really?”
“Sure! Why not?”
Leigh’s mouth tilted upwards on one side, forming a dimple in their cheek. “I might as well dye it yellow.”
I laughed. “Yep. Or blue.”
“I’ve done blue already.”
They took my hand and we left the room. I think they were as relieved as I was that we’d got caught up enough in our kiss to talk a little about what we wanted but not so much that we’d done something we’d regret later.
“Would she really just walk in?” Leigh asked.
“Nah. If the door’s closed, she’ll shout first…and then come in.”
“Oh my god. I’d die of shame.”
“Yep. I’ve done that a few times. Well, not actually…died…obviously.” I’d given myself the giggles, in part because I was pretty sure my mum would know what we’d been up to. OK, we hadn’t really done anything, but it was more than I could honestly answer ‘Nothing!’ to if she asked ‘What have you been up to?’
That was only my paranoia, though, because she didn’t say a word, or not beyond, “Those cookies should be cool by now.” I dutifully went to get them, and the three of us sat watching TV, eating cookies and drinking tea until Adam arrived to pick Leigh up.
“Thank you for having me, Sue,” Leigh said and gave my mum a hug. Mum’s smile was huge.
“Anytime, Leigh,” she said, and then, “See you soon.”
I walked Leigh downstairs, the pair of us pausing inside the door to say goodbye. The way we clung to each other, anyone would think Leigh was going away for months, but we’d be meeting up for lunch on Tuesday, as usual, if we didn’t see each other before then. That depended, in part, on how ‘sick’ Noah was.
“Is it weird how much I miss you?” I asked.
“Definitely not, because I was thinking the same.”
“Or we’re both weird?”
“I’m all for being weird together.” Leigh slowly backed away from me. “Enjoy your Sunday.”
“Yeah. You, too.”
I watched them all the way to the car, where they paused and called back, “Rainbow, yeah?”
I laughed. “Yeah.”
“OK. Night.”
“Night.” I waved and waited until the car disappeared from view before I returned to the flat, where Mum had already changed back into her dressing gown. I said, “You know Leigh would’ve been fine with you wearing that, don’t you?”
She pursed her lips and gave me a look that told me exactly what she thought of that idea.
“I’ll go wash up and get some work done, I think.” I picked up the empty mugs and the plate of cookies—all two that remained—and took them through to the kitchen.
“Have you eaten tonight?” Mum called.
“Yeah.”
“I mean apart from popcorn and cookies.”
“No, but I’m not hungry.”
“You should eat something before you go to bed.”
I clenched my teeth and concentrated on not arguing back. There were so many diets out there, all offering competing advice—listen to your body, only eat if you’re hungry, don’t let your body go into starvation mode, stick to a set number of calories a day, avoid this food, eat plenty of that—I had no way of knowing if I was doing it right. But I was going to make the most of not feeling hungry. Who knew when that food ogre in my belly would start making its demands again?
* * * * *