“I should go!” I shout abruptly, stepping around them to make my escape. Their hand comes up again and reaches for my sleeve.

“Wait. What about the book?” They flash me Fun Home again.

“I said you can have it.”

Two fingers are hooked on my sleeve, and they stare at me intensely. In this lighting, their dark eyes are almost incendiary, like they could burn right through me. They’re still staring, and I squirm under their gaze. I want to look away. I unexpectedly want to ask this stranger what they see when they look at me.

“I was thinking a shared custody arrangement might be in order. You know.” Their smile widens. “An every-other-weekend kind of deal. You could have the book for Christmas, then we’d meet up for an exchange so I could have her for New Year’s.”

“I’m not sure it would be healthy for the book to be carted back and forth like that.”

“Hmmm…” they murmur. Even their murmur doesn’t have an inside-volume. “You’re probably right. Maybe we should stick together. For the book’s sake.”

“If we’re going to be co-parenting,” I say slowly and cautiously, still worried this person is going to flee, “I should at least know your name.”

They release my sleeve and reach for my hand. “I’m Jack.”

“Jack?” I repeat as their cool hand slides into mine. Something flips in my lower stomach, and I’m not sure if it’s the way Jack’s calluses slid against my palm, or if it’s my nerves at screwing this whole thing up. This is Portland, not Ohio, and I’m probably going to do this wrong, but—“I’m Ellie,” I mutter clumsily, “and my pronouns are she/her. What… um… what are your pronouns?”

Jack’s entire face breaks into a genuine grin. “She/her,” she confirms, and I think maybe I didn’t fuck that up, after all. “Ellie.” She repeats my name, saying it like it means something. “Shall we?”

I hesitate. “Shall we… what?”

Jack straightens, steady as an oak tree, and takes a confident step up the aisle. “I figured I could start by buying my co-parent a coffee.”

I turn to the window behind us, to the snow piling up on the sidewalks, turning the grimy Portland streets pristine white. And I think about freedom and joy and magic. “I—I shouldn’t get coffee,” I hear myself say. “I have a lot of work to do this weekend, and—”

“Do you celebrate Christmas?”

“I do, but—”

“So, you can’t work on Christmas Eve.” When I look back at her, she has her arms folded tightly across her chest, a playful smile lighting up her face. “I cannot allow it.”

“Do you celebrate Christmas?”

She nods.

“Then don’t you have somewhere better to be on Christmas Eve?”