“Pretty much. It depends on who I’m working for. I’ve stayed in cities for as long as six months sometimes if I’m getting interesting stories or acquiring contracts that pay well. But mostly?” I grinned. “I go where the stories are. And the slightly cheesy tourism videos. What about you? Is there anything calling you away from here? Traveling or exploring or taking spontaneous road trips with no destination in mind?”

He shook his head. “Maybe when I was pro, fighting matches in different cities. But I always came home. Always wanted to come home in the end.” We turned down Emily Street. “Don’t you miss Philly?”

Now it was my turn to scoff. “There’s too much to see, too many people to meet. Besides, my job requires it, and that makes me a very lucky lady indeed. It’s only me, my pack, my camera and mic, and the editing software on my laptop. I travel light, but it lets me go pretty far.”

“But do you miss it?” he repeated.

I swept the hair from my neck and contemplated blowing off his question. But I was surrounded with sounds that pulsed with nostalgia—the neighbors to our left laughing on their stoop, the buzz of people passing by, the window units humming, the distant jingle of the same ice cream truck we had as kids. And then there was Dean, surprising me with something like tenderness in his expression.

My throat squeezed shut. “Of course I miss Philly and my family. I love it here.”

It also holds all my very worst and most confusing memories.

I lightly tapped his arm and decided to change the subject. “Do you remember our support group at the Lavender Center? I was thinking about them the other day.”

His shoulders relaxed. “I kept going after you graduated. Rowan came with me a lot. And you know Mom and Midge still talk to some of the other gay parents they met there.”

There was a pinch in my chest. It wasn’t often that Dean spoke up in our group. When he did, he talked about what it was like growing up with two moms. The homophobic things said to him and his parents in school and out in public.

“I remember how scary it was, sharing in that giant chair circle with a whole bunch of people staring at you,” I said. “I always felt so nervous and sweaty afterward.”

“It made my sparring matches seem like a fucking picnic in comparison.”

I laughed softly. “That’s an apt description. I appreciated every time you shared. I didn’t have any queer friends when I started going, and I looked up to your parents so much. Looked up to you. It was like glimpsing a future I wasn’t sure was possible. No matter how awful or challenging things got, your mothers seemed so in love.”