“Get out of here,” Sunny says. “Why are you even still here? I’m trying to talk to my aunt.”

At aunt, Minsie’s finger shoots toward Sunny’s face. “Cut it out right now. I know you’re surprised. But take a breath. You need to put your shit aside and support your family member.”

Sunny shrinks, hands rising in protection. He tracks the finger like it will stab his eye. I grab his shoulders and pull him to me. His frame is frail against my stomach. He shivers like he might cry.

“Leave him alone,” I spit. “He’s a child.”

Minsie steps back, guilty finger limp, like a snapped twig. My adrenaline—still shooting through me in circles—feels silly. “I’m sorry,” Minsie says. “I hated him calling you that.”

And Minsie is right: it felt wrong, suddenly wrong, to be “aunt” again. But that’s good, that’s exciting. Everything changing so quickly. “Just leave.” My voice cracks. Sunny burrows into me. Minsie squints, a jewel of moisture caught in their eye, then turns to slink off between tiki torches. As they push farther away, past teenagers and stands of soda, their heavy hips upsetting a bowl of pretzels, I remember their invitation, and panic flutters into my throat—I didn’t get their number. I step forward, Sunny still attached, and I’m about to call out when I realize, of course they won’t give me anything after I’ve snapped at them. We’ll never sit together in some twinkling dive, in a corner of Philadelphia where the fairy lights are always on, the music so soft it cushions the air, their body solid beside mine, their snide comments slicing the fug of beer. As Minsie vanishes into the conference hall, Sunny’s fingers lock around my arm. His crest of hair slumps over his forehead, and I push it back into its cheeky wave. I pick out my car, a charcoal smudge across the lot. Time to go home.

Cheerful Until Next Time

Cheerful Until Next Time

THE QUEER FEMINIST BOOK CLUB CAME TO AN END. Asher sat with the three other members on his rug that looked clean only at night, never under the sharp winter Atlanta sun that pressed down now from the skylight. Brunch debris littered his living room. Dilly, the group’s resident English PhD candidate, confirmed what she’d announced at the last meeting: they’d reached the terminus of queer feminist literature, at least that which was available in English. They wouldn’t consider—since they couldn’t enjoy them together—any unlikely texts penned in Urdu, Hera’s native tongue, nor Mandarin or Russian, which Ivan had learned from his father and mother, respectively.

“Are you sure, though?” Ivan asked, picking at the bottom of his shoe, loosening the gravel lodged in the tread. He built a heap of it beside him, carefully arranged, like a mole had tunneled under the carpet.