That night Freddie picks Ruth and me up in Agnes’s Cadillac to take us over to Adam’s house for the Star Wars deflowering.
Adam’s house is still as breathtaking as I remember it being.
“Adam’s parents know we’re coming over, right?” asks Ruth.
“This place is so big they might not even notice we’re there,” I tell her.
It blows my mind that the person who lives in this house isn’t an asshole. I know not all rich people are jerks, but you would look at this house and think that the most popular kid in school lives here.
Adam swings the front door open as the three of us file up the steps. He hands us each a plastic toy lightsaber upon entrance.
“Did you go out and buy these just for tonight?” asks Ruth.
“Oh, no,” a woman’s voice says from the neighboring room. “That’s from his personal collection.”
We all peer around the corner to see a woman with bouncing chestnut curls and a perfectly round face sorting through piles of receipts as she sits behind a polished, commanding desk. When I imagined Adam’s mom barking orders at the car wash, this is not the woman I had in mind. The wall behind her is a floor-to-ceiling bookshelf, with a set of French doors leading into the foyer and another into the kitchen. On the other wall is a large picture window that fills the room with natural light from the setting sun.
Something about this house makes me feel like I can breathe. It’s different from the McMansion where Viv’s birthday party was. I’m not intimidated by this house. I just never want to leave it.
“Way to rat me out, Mom,” says Adam.
Ruth side-eyes me from where she stands on the other side of Freddie. Ruth and Saul’s parents are southern and formal. Well, I guess you could call them stiff. I can see she doesn’t quite know how to react.
The French doors leading into what I’m guessing is the kitchen open and a petite woman with glossy black hair swept into a loose ponytail enters with a beer in each hand. “For my queen,” she says, and hands Adam’s mother one.
She takes it but eyes her suspiciously. “Don’t think this makes up for the mess of receipts you threw on my desk this afternoon.”
She holds one arm up innocently. “I am but a simple woman who needs her wise and patient wife to sort through the graveyard of her finances every quarter.”
I gasp. Audibly. I don’t mean to. But oh my God. Adam has two moms and never told us. I look to Ruth and find that her eyes are just as wide as mine. Freddie grins, and I can’t tell if he knew too or if he’s just making an effort to be polite, unlike Ruth and I. But of course he knew. He must have.
Ms. Garza, the first one, with chestnut curls, turns to Ruth and me. “Children, a lesson to you: never marry down.”
Ms. Garza, the second one, assaults her wife’s cheek with kisses. “Or,” she says, “marry your accountant. Especially if she’s pretty. Looks and brains, I tell ya.”
“By the way,” the first Ms. Garza says, “you can call me Pam, and my wife here goes by Cindy. Having two Ms. Garzas under one roof can be a little confusing.”
Cindy laughs. “Or when Adam would call for Mommy when he was scared to go to the bathroom by himself in the middle of the night.”
“When was that?” asks Freddie. “Last week?”
Pam and Cindy both laugh, their heads knocking together.
Adam rolls his eyes, but I feel so taken aback. I look to Ruth again, the shock on her face finally dissolving. The Garzas really do keep to themselves, and they live on the outskirts of town, so I guess this isn’t so huge of a surprise, but I feel weirdly cheated to just now find out that two women married to each other live right here in my tiny town and I never even knew.
I glance at Adam again and back to his moms, who are whispering to each other, and then back to Adam. Adam—perfectly good, nice, respectful Adam—has no idea how good he has it. Sure, having gay parents in Mississippi isn’t a total breeze, but his parents love each other and they’ve built this whole incredible life for him and his sister.
“Adam, son,” Pam finally says, “are you going to introduce us to your friends?”
“Oh, yeah.” He nods to Freddie. “Y’all know Freddie from the car wash.” He turns to Pam. “Mom, he spent the night after Julia’s party, remember?”
His little sister’s birthday party. The night we snuck into that pool. I cringe at the memory.
“Ah,” Pam says, “yes, but he was in too much of a hurry to stick around for my French toast.”
Freddie laughs nervously. “Yes, ma’am. My gram needed me home early that day. Not only will I make it up to you in the future, but I’ll make you the egg dish of your choosing.”
I ignore the way my body sings with affection for him.
Pam smiles, and I see that it’s her smile that Cindy probably fell in love with. She has the kind of smile that’s wide and dazzling and defines her entire face when she aims it in your direction.
“And this is Ramona,” Adam continues, “and Ruth.”
Cindy’s eyebrows pop up. “Well, this is the first time Adam’s ever brought ladies home.”
Adam’s cheeks turn beet red. “We’re watching Star Wars,” he says.
“Well, you’d better leave the door open to that movie room, mister,” Pam tells him.
A movie room? An entire room dedicated to watching movies?
“Mom,” he says, “they’re lesbians. And not even with each other.”
Cindy’s lips twitch for a moment, like there’s something she wants to say to us. For a moment, I wonder if she has some weird yet wonderful bit of middle-aged-lesbian advice to impart to us. But instead she just treats us like we’re totally normal, which is somehow even better. “Leave the door open like your mother asked.”
Beside me, Ruth smiles.
Freddie steps forward in his usual charming way. “Thank you,” he says, “for having us over on a school night.”
“Manners, eggs, and girls who don’t even want to sleep with our son,” says Cindy. “Y’all are welcome here anytime.”
“Anytime,” Pam echoes, her smile warm and genuine.
I nod. Some part of me feels tender and exposed, but not in a bad way. It’s a small gesture, but it has big meaning.
The three of us follow Adam up the stairs as he and Freddie take turns swatting each other with lightsabers.
The movie room is a dark, windowless space with three deep-brown leather love seats. Ruth and Adam each claim their own love seat, so Freddie and I are left to share the one in the middle.
Before sitting, I hesitate for a moment as I realize how close together we’ll be. But it doesn’t matter, because we’re friends. Just friends. And besides! We’re in a room with Adam and Ruth. How much more unromantic could it get?
“Hey,” says Ruth in a voice that’s a cross between a whisper and a shout. “When exactly were you going to tell us that you have two moms?”
Adam shrugs. “They’re my parents. When were you going to tell me you have a mom and a dad?”
Ruth shakes her head. “No, that is not the same thing.”
I swallow back a laugh. “I mean, Adam, we’re lesbians. You having two moms would’ve given you major gay street cred with us.”
He throws up his arms. “I don’t know! They’re my moms. I didn’t really know how to be like, hey, P.S. my moms are super gay for each other. It’s not like I’m ashamed of them. But they’re my parents. I don’t know.”
“And you didn’t tell us either!” Ruth says to Freddie.
Freddie shrugs. “It’s not a big deal.”
Except that it is. But maybe Adam is protective of his moms or maybe he felt awkward just throwing it out there. I don’t know, but knowing they’re here . . . well, it’s a nice feeling.
Adam doubles back to the door and cracks it open before starting the movie, which plays from a projector overhead. The room is so dark that it’s easy to believe we’ve been transported to a long time ago, in a galaxy far, far away.
I’ve sat, curled up with my dad in our little trailer, watching every Star Wars movie in almost every order imaginable. Dad prefers to start with Episode I. He says that trilogy is the worst, so it’s best to get it out of the way anyhow, but Adam starts with Episode IV: A New Hope, the first movie ever released in the series.
Freddie quietly hums along to the music, and when he catches me smiling at him, he whispers, “What? It’s not like I’ve never heard the theme song.”
On one side of us, Adam mouths every single line, and on our other side Ruth is asleep before Luke accidentally plays R2-D2’s message meant for Obi-Wan Kenobi.
“Why do Leia’s buns make me so hungry?” asks Freddie. “Like, they just make me want cinnamon rolls.”
“Oh my God, shut up,” says Adam.
“And there are literally zero black people in this movie.”
“Bro,” says Adam, “the whiteness is blinding, I get it, but this movie is super old. And at least you end up getting Lando Calrissian.”
“Lando who?” asks Freddie while R2-D2 dukes it out with a gang of Jawas.
“Lando Calrissian,” I say. “And he ends up being a traitor.”
“Who ends up being a good guy,” argues Adam.
“Who still starts out as a traitor,” I say.
“It’s not perfect, okay? Can we just watch the movie?”
Freddie cracks a few jokes about how old everything looks. But still, it doesn’t take long before he is simultaneously riveted by Luke and Leia and laughing at Han Solo’s cockiness.
Because I’ve seen this movie so many times, it’s easy to get caught up in watching Freddie.
He sits with his hand between us, palm facing up. I tell myself it’s just the way he’s sitting, but it feels too much like an invitation to ignore.
I rest my hand next to his so that all that’s touching is our pinkies. I think I do it to prove to myself that we can be friends. We can touch and it can mean nothing—or well, as much as it means when my hand brushes up against Ruth’s or Adam’s or Saul’s.
But instead what I find is that my heart, my whole heart, has made its way to my pinkie along with all the blood that runs through my veins. My heart pounds in that one little finger as it barely brushes against his.
The light from the screen cascades over Freddie, creating a silhouette, and I watch his Adam’s apple bob as he swallows, and his pinkie crosses over mine, like we’re making some kind of promise. A silent pinkie-swear in this great big house as we watch a movie about a fatherless boy who’s searching for his one true home in a great big galaxy.
We sit like that until Adam turns the lights back on as the credits roll. Then the two of us quickly pull our hands away. Ruth slowly wakes up, yawning and stretching. Freddie and I sit with our arms crossed over our chests, trying to put as much distance between us as possible. As my eyes adjust, I realize that Freddie and I are much braver in the dark than in the light.