Graceless (Grace Notes #2)

“When you were a kid?” Cassidy looked at them. She didn’t sound pitying, just curious.

“From when I was in my early teens,” they told her. “It’s changed a bit recently, though.”

“How so?”

“Since I had top surgery and started T. Testosterone,” they added when she looked blank. “When I was younger I used to get read as, like, a really masculine girl. You know…a baby butch lesbian, for the most part. Now I get read as a guy a lot of the time, but one that’s not quite big or masculine enough. I used to get bashed as a dyke and now I get bashed as a fag.”

“I literally have no idea why that’s making you smile.” Cassidy stared at them in the dark.

“Just that people are fucking ridiculous,” Lane said wryly. “Honestly.”

They were quiet for a little while.

“Coral says people hate in others what they’re afraid of in themselves,” Cassidy volunteered after a while. “And that they hate the parts of themselves they were taught to hate.”

“When do you hang out with Coral?” Lane blinked.

“At the studio,” she said. “And in bars and on shopping trips and day spas and salons.”

“Right,” Lane said, suddenly realizing who to blame for Cassidy’s distracting metamorphosis. “Coral’s cool.”

“She’s the best,” breathed Cassidy. “I want to be her when I grow up, so badly.”

“Why?” Lane was curious.

“She’s so…confident. And talented, glamorous and cool. She holds her own space in the world without being an asshole about it. I wish I had a fraction of that. You have it too, you know.” She glanced sideways at them.

“Not tonight, I didn’t.” Lane stared down at the ground.

“Seriously?” Cassidy gazed at them. “You didn’t try to fight four huge men in a bar and that’s threatening your sense of self?” Lane looked up at that. “You’re right. You should definitely have taken them all on at once like some kind of action movie hero; that would have been the cool thing to do.”

Lane snorted.

“Is your dad really some kind of fighter?”

“No.” She shrugged. “He’s just some loser. But guys like that are never going to respect someone like you or me. They only give a shit if a tougher, stronger guy makes them. So I invent my own.”

As Lane looked at her in surprise, headlights suddenly lit up the alleyway. Cassidy sank back against the wall, but Lane grabbed her forearm and tugged her along with them to the safety of Savannah’s driver.

Once inside the car, Lane felt the tension melt off their shoulders. No one had gotten beaten up, Cassidy was safe, they were on their way home. Almost equally sharp was the sense of regret. The night they could have had flashed in their mind. Cassidy laughing at their side, slightly tipsy from a good drink, the two of them dancing to a live band, those blue eyes taking in a whole world that Lane could show her. Instead, they were going home to their same old lives.

“I’m sorry that happened to your night,” Burt spoke up from the front seat after Cassidy had told them briefly what had happened. “Don’t let it color your idea of Nashville,” he told her. “No town is at its best when the footballers are in charge.”

“It’s okay,” she said evenly, but Lane could still hear the disappointment in her tone.

A moment later, Burt spoke up again, glancing at Lane in the rearview mirror.

“You know, Nashville’s changed a lot, for better and for worse. When I was young, it wasn’t all that safe for us either.” Lane’s ears pricked up. They’d chatted to Burt hundreds of times, but he’d never used the word us in quite that way. His next words confirmed their dawning realization. “I was pretty good at flying under the radar, but some of the guys I dated weren’t. We got good at finding our own scene.”

“Like actual gay bars?” Lane said curiously.

“Yeah, sometimes,” he agreed. “But also, just carving out our own spaces, making our own kinds of nights. In fact-” He glanced at the road outside as they turned away from the city and the world opened up into dark countryside around them. “There’s a nice little spot around here you ought to check out, since your night got cut short. Want to take a look?”

Lane looked at Cassidy. Her eyes were bright and curious, so Lane shrugged.

“Sure.”

After a mile or two, Burt turned down a small country lane, then pulled up in an alcove surrounded in trees. He stopped the car, then rummaged under the passenger seat, chucking a neatly folded picnic rug toward Lane.