Friends of Dorothy? What the hell is she talking about?

“Yes, we do!” Priam followed. “They’re some of our favorite people!”

Suddenly Vicki was back on her feet. “You know what? This calls for a capital C Celebration!” She disappeared into the living room, leaving Shanti and me speechless and Priam grinning from ear to ear at us, as though he knew exactly what Vicki was about to do, which I couldn’t imagine he actually did.

And then music started playing from the living room—“Seasons of Love” from Rent. A minute later Vicki swept back into the kitchen with two small rainbow flags on sticks—because, obviously, she had a secret stash of tiny rainbow flags somewhere. She poked these into the middle of the avocado toasts sitting untouched on Shanti’s and my plates. Then she joined Priam on the other side of the table, and they began to sing along with the song. They were serenading us. Celebrating our gayness.

This was way worse than having to dress up and perform a roller-skating routine in front of strangers. Shanti would never want to come back here. I never wanted to come back here.

But then I heard a fit of giggles from beside me and looked over. Shanti had picked up her flag and was waving it in time to the song, her face glowing with actual amazement and delight.

A hint of amusement passed through me, even as disbelief overtook my face. The encouragement from Shanti caused Priam to stand and invite Vicki into a waltz around the kitchen as they continued to sing. I tried to catch Shanti’s eye to communicate my very real torment, but she just sat back in her chair, trained her eyes on the dancing duo, and kept waving the damn flag. Giving up on any hopes of making an early departure from this “celebration,” I slumped back in my chair, folded my arms, and glared as hard as I could at Priam and Vicki, who were somehow incorporating at least four or five different dance styles into a number that—as far as I knew from the musical—was normally performed standing perfectly still.

But then, there was nothing normal about this. As I watched them flounce around the kitchen with Shanti’s rainbow flag flicking every so often into my sight line, the past twelve hours seeped into my brain—the thorny situation with Kat, an amazing-but-still-mystifying night with Shanti, and now this. The only thing I’d set out to do—kill it on the track—had so far been complicated by confusing dynamics. And the kind of stuff I avoided like the plague—intimacy, my aunt and uncle, musicals—seemed to be invading me from all sides.