Mae wanted to know more about Nova, about her and Liv’s love affair, but she wasn’t sure how much Liv would divulge. And she was still feeling vulnerable, even if the French toast had helped. So she went with the selfish ask, the pathetic cry for help.
“And you and Nova…living here, being married here, you didn’t feel…”
Mae trailed off, letting the silence fill in the words she assumed Liv understood.Lonely. Unsafe. Angry.
Finally, Liv looked at her.
“Look. It’s not always easy, no, but I venture it’s not always easy anywhere. Some folks are plain ugly people, like the Millers. You have to learn to just live with that, or the mad will eat you right up. A majority of folks here, though…they might disagree with you on what feel like pretty important things, but they’ve just been surrounded by different viewpoints from you their whole lives, and that’s a hard thing to change. They’re decent underneath. Something connects you when you know your grandaddies went fishing together. They’d come rescue me if I needed help, as I would them. I try to remember that. At least…”
Liv frowned, squinting into the distance.
“It used to matter, anyway, your grandaddies fishing together. Things have been different with some folks since Trump. Bein’ mean takes precedence, now. It’s more popular, powerful, to show your ugliness on the outside.” She swirled her coffee, staring into its depths. “But it still matters to some folks. And you’ve got your spatterings of Olive Youngs. And then…then you find your people. And thereareyour people.”
Mae was trying to take Liv’s words to heart. Trying to adjust her mind so the mad wouldn’t eat her up. Adjust to a life, a future, where she had to survive here.
But the thought came to her immediately, unbidden, at Liv’s last sentence.
Ididfind my people.
And then I left them.
After a few seconds went by, Liv must have taken Mae’s silence for doubt, because she went on.
“You got me, obviously, and I’m important. And then there’s Freya, who owns Greyfin Winery, just up those hills a bit”—Liv gestured out the window—“who’s almost as old and almost as much of a dyke as me. Down the road, there’s a bartender at a brewery outside Lincoln City who’s as flamboyant as Fred Astaire.”
A smile cracked across Mae’s face, easing the ache of her fading group chat.
“So you’re saying the queers have the alcohol industry of the central coast locked down.”
“Not quite,” Liv said. “But we do have a bit of a history there, as a community.”
“For better or worse,” Mae agreed. When the queer bar was the only place in town you could be yourself for a good century or two, it had an effect on things.
Now that Mae thought about it, even Liv’s IGA—through a door to a separate little room at the back—was the only place in town you could buy hard liquor.
“For better or worse,” Liv agreed.
“Hey.” Mae brightened. “At least I’m adding books to the mix!”
Liv cracked her own grin. “And thank Christ for that. If we were at the brewery right now instead of Shelly’s, I’d cheers the hell out of that.”
Mae smiled down at the table.
“But you know,” Liv said after a moment, voice serious again, “truth is, I know it’s easier for me, living here, because my roots arehere. My family’s here, and they’ve always supported me. I mean”—she tilted her head again, raised a shoulder— “my siblings have spread out a bit, but enough of my kin are still here. To ground me, make me feel safe, you know? I imagine what you’re doing—and doing it as loudly as you are with those flags, and bless you for that—has to be a lot lonelier, and a lot braver. Whereas for me…”
Liv leaned back, casting her eyes toward the window, drumming her fingers on the table.
“I have the keys to my parents’ place, the house where I grew up. It’s sitting empty at the moment, but I own it. And so I always know that, even if the Millers took over the entire town council—hell, even if a civil war breaks out across this whole country—I could go bunker down in my mama’s kitchen if they came for me.” Another one-shouldered shrug. “I think I’d be all right, if it came down to it, dying there.”
“Jesus.” Mae blinked. “That got dark fast.”
“Well,” Liv said. “We’re living in dark times. There are a lot more angry men with guns in this county than there are me. I have to make my peace with that reality somehow.”
Mae stared over Liv’s shoulder, where a pastry case sat by the front counter.
“I think,” she said slowly, “if I get my store to the place I want it to be…I think I’d be good dying there, too.”
A sad smile tilted Liv’s mouth.
