“Okay, nice answer,” she allowed, eyes crinkling just a little.
I rolled mine but could feel myself glowing.Let her see how he was, how hereallywas, with me.And not just with me, but in front of fuckingPicklesburgh.If that didn’t set her at ease, nothing would.
“She stole a pierogi,” I told Taran.
“They’re communal pierogies.Speaking of which, I saw Jalapeno Hannah and the boys over there.”
“Oh my god, where?!”
“Heading onto the bridge.”He pointed toward the Warhol.
“Dammit, I need a selfie with her.”I pouted.
“It must be hot as fuck in those costumes,” Toni said.“Speaking of, I heard Pride was scorching this year.”
I nodded.“I didn’t even go to the one downtown this year.We weremelting.”
“You didn’t do Pride?”She threw a look at Taran.As if there was some kind of festival attendance requirement to get your Certified Queer ID card.
God, I wanted a cigarette.Ugh.Quitting was misery.
“We went to Lawrenceville’s.And… was it Millvale?”Taran said, apparently unbothered.
“And the drag brunch at The Firebrand.”I turned to look at Toni, though, because I wasn’t feeding into this bullshit.
She was excited about that though.“Oh shit.Was Dee in it?”
“No, he doesn’t do the shows anymore.He got in a knockdown-dragout with Henry, and they still haven’t made up.”And the subject neatly changed tracks right into the local scene and who was doing what, where, and with whom.
As the three of us gossiped, even had a few laughs, the crowd continued to swell around us.The stage was down on the riverbank, so as the crew set up for whoever the next band was, people started filling up the standing tables around us: families with kids toting metallic pickle balloons, groups of teenagers marauding for someone to get them a beer, couples in shorts and tank tops toting water bottles and backpacks.Someone started tuning a guitar on stage as someone else set up a drum kit, and the chatter and noise around us got louder and louder as we ate, drank, and talked shit.
For a second, it was pretty great.Too crowded, annoyingly hot, but overall festival vibes, and my two current favorite humans were being—well, if not friendly, then cordial.
And then Toni asked, “So, you ever talk to your exes, Taran?”
His brow furrowed at the weird question.“Which one?I mean, some of them.”
“I always think it’s interesting if people speak to their exes or not.Shows maturity,” she said with a shrug and a too-casual sip of her lemonade.
“He talks to me,” I said, giving her a pointed look.
“Yeah, but you guys weren’t reallydating.”
I wasn’t sure why, but it felt like a punch to the gut.Like shemeantto hurt me, or him, or one of us with that.
She went on, “So the politics of the relationship were simpler.”
“We were also seventeen,” Taran said with a lopsided smile.“Politicsdidn’t really come into it.”
“All relationships have politics,” she said.
“Yeah, I think Machiavelli said that, right?”He chuckled.
“I don’t mean they’re political in the American-election sense.I mean they’re political in the sense that there’s power and resources involved,” Toni replied, deadpan.
Taran shot me a look, and I opened my mouth to say something, but I was still reeling from the whiplash subject change followed by the gut punch.I failed spectacularly to smooth things over, and so he tried with, “Right.Who gets what, when, and how.”
“Yeah.”She tilted her chin upward.“And some people like to hoard resources.”
