‘Thank you.’ I took a glass down from the overhead rack. ‘Can I offer you Tsundoku’s inaugural glass of wine? On the house?’
‘You don’t have to do that!’
‘I want to.’ I took a bottle of Bibliophile pinot gris out of the fridge and poured her a glass. ‘You’ve made my day. And it’s also a naked ploy to tempt you back for another one.’
She laughed again. There were five freckles on the left side of her nose, a perfect constellation. ‘No temptation necessary, trust me. My husband and I are a bit pretentious about wine, and I’ve been dying for a good bar to open up in Bellerive.’
‘Then we’re going to get along great, because I’mextremelypretentious about wine.’ I offered her my hand. ‘Satoshi.’
She took it. ‘Fiona.’
I didn’t fall in love with her that day. But when she left – after that first glass of pinot gris, and a second of chardonnay that she’d insisted on paying for – I’d breathed a long sigh of relief. My beloved dream bar might actually make it.
The thirty-fourth time I didn’t fall in love with Fiona
‘Can I ask you a question?’
‘Of course.’ I gestured at Fiona’s empty glass – I’d just poured her a splash of the new release Bibliophile rosé to try – and filled it when she nodded. ‘Is it why Isamu made a rosé out of blaufränkisch when everyone else in Tasmania uses pinot noir? Because I have questions about that too.’
‘Ha! No. I like this a lot, actually. It’s got personality. It brought a gun to a knife fight.’
I hated to admit it – Isamu and I had argued a lot about this particular wine – but Fiona was right. The past nine months had proved that she had astonishingly good wine opinions for someone with no formal training, as well as a knack for articulating them. We’d come to an arrangement where, if I poached some of her phrasing for my tasting notes on Tsundoku’s website, I’d give her a glass for free. I’d definitely be includingbrings a gun to a knife fighton this one.
‘I wanted to ask you about those.’ Fiona gestured to the pins I habitually wore, dotted on my dove-grey work waistcoat.
‘Which ones?’ There were a lot of them: wine qual pins, flags, books, wineglasses. Kieran had told me once that I looked like a cross between an army veteran and a Christmas tree whenever I got dressed for work.
‘These ones.’ She reached across the bar and touched her finger to my progress pride pin, and then the pansexual flag. ‘Where did you get them?’
She looked down into her glass. ‘Lex finally told us they’re non-binary. And Matt… well, let’s just say I wish he’d reacted a bit more sensitively.’
Lex was the eldest of Fiona’s three kids. They were a real bookworm, and Fiona regularly brought them into Tsundoku during our afternoon cafe hours to browse the shelves. (Bless youfor giving me all three things I need within walking distance of my house,she’d told me once,a bar, a bookshopandsomewhere to get coffee that’s open at school pick-up time.) It had been clear to me fairly quickly that Lex was in a questioning period, and while Fiona and I hadn’t discussed it explicitly, she’d been quietly passing me request lists of queer middle-grade books to plant in my otherwise adult-centric bookshelves for months.
Fiona sighed. ‘I know Matt doesn’t want Lex’s life to be harder, but I can’t seem to get across to him that he’smakingit harder every time he says something like, “I love you, kiddo, but you never know, you might grow out of this once you hit puberty.”?’
I had to restrain myself from making a face. As much as I liked Fiona, I’d never particularly warmed to her husband.
‘I don’t want to make Lex’s life harder either by being too performatively supportive, but it feels like I have to dosomething,’ she said. ‘So, I thought… they’ve always liked your pins. What if I got them some of their – Oh, no, Satoshi, you don’t need to do that.’
I’d already unpinned the pride flag from my waistcoat. ‘I’ve got a million of these. I can spare one for Lex. I don’t have a non-binary flag, but I can get one.’
‘Thank you. I’ll pay, obviously – just let me know how much.’
I shook my head. ‘They’re cheap as chips. And I feel like it’s my duty to pay it forward, you know? Coming out is exhausting. You have to do it over and over again. These—’ I tapped the pin ‘—have been a very handy short cut for me. It’s the least I can do.’
There was a look in Fiona’s eyes which told me she’d find a way to pay me anyway – I was probably going to end up with an extravagant tip – but she nodded. ‘Is there any advice you can give me? On supporting them? I don’t want to pry or make you go over painful ground, but…’
‘It’s not that painful.’ I shrugged. ‘I came out to my family when I was fourteen. Not as pan – I didn’t have the language forthat yet – but I told them that I was attracted to everyone, not just girls. Nobody was surprised – I was in a bit of a femme fashion era, I was really into jewellery and dramatic eyeliner, and I was completely heartbroken over one of the boys at school, it must have beenveryobvious – but it wasn’t a big deal. Isamu patted me on the shoulder and said, “All right, Sato.” My mother hugged me. So did Noriko. My father grunted and went back to what he was doing.’
‘So the opposite of performatively supportive, then.’
‘I didn’t expect anything else. I was braced for worse, honestly – I’d heard some horror stories – so I appreciated them being pretty low-key about it.’ I shrugged. ‘Anyway, we’re not a very demonstrative family, so having them make some big declaration of support would have been weird. Our love language has always been acts of service – doing, not saying.’
‘That’s my love language too.’ Fiona wrinkled her nose fondly at me.
‘I worked that out the first time you handed me one of those book lists for Lex.’ I wrinkled my nose back at her. ‘But while they did all the right things, it still would have been nice to have some words of affirmation too – or something like this.’ I tapped the pin on the bar again. ‘Not justokay, makes no difference to me,butI see you.’
She nodded contemplatively. ‘Thank you. That’s very helpful.’
