Kate

“You ready for this?” I asked Faith.

“As I’ll ever be,” Faith replied. 

“My makeup looks okay?” 

“I did it myself, didn’t I?” she said. 

“Good point. Of course it’s perfect,” I said. 

“Heh. Flatterer.”

“Never been called that before,” I said, raking a hand through my hair, noticing some split ends. I should get it cut soon… Or get it done soon, I suppose. I guess it was time for me to figure out the difference. I’d been going to barbers once a year all my life and asking for the bare minimum to be trimmed and promptly didn’t think about my hair after that. Now… Now that seemed like a terrible idea, and one I couldn’t believe I’d been indulging for as long as I had. I should try something new with it- Mom had mentioned her stylist was a miracle worker with something called ‘layering.’ I’d have to look up what that actually meant, but if it could make me look girlier it must’ve been a good thing. And maybe a new color, too; the platinum blonde looked great on Mom, and everyone had always told me I’d taken after her in the looks department, so maybe it’d look good on me too. 

“I’ll admit, that’s not terribly surprising,” Faith said, unbuckling her seatbelt in the shotgun of my truck, checking her own hair for split ends. Lucky girl had perfect hair- it was so unfair, she probably woke up with it looking that good. 

“Hey now,” I said, poking her cheek. 

She playfully swatted my finger away and raised an eyebrow. 

“Okay, fair enough, I walked into that one,” I said. “Also, it’s pretty accurate.”

“Yes,” she said. “Just like ‘flatterer’ is accurate for who you are now.”

“And like how ‘gorgeous supermodel’ is accurate for who you are now?” I said. 

Her jaw dropped, and I couldn’t help but picture her thought process as being a hamster running on its wheel. She broke off eye contact, and I started giggling. “That’s so not fair!” she said, finally giggling back. 

“It’s the truth, is what it is!” I said, poking her in the cheek again. 

“How dare you,” she said. 

“How indeed,” I said, winking at her. “Shall we?”

“We shall,” she said, opening the passenger side door. 

We both walked into Gaines’ Auto Body and Bodybuilding kitted out in our respective favorite sundresses: mine was pink with shirt-sleeves and white polka dots, hers was a sleeveless black number with gold stripes. I grabbed her arm and held her tight as we walked through the gym towards the back office, and whispered, “Just ignore them,” when I saw her eyes go wide with fear at all the huge dudes staring at her for various reasons. 

Nadine was waiting for us inside her office when we got there. “Hey, girl! And other girl! You must be Faith Watanabe!”

“I am she,” Faith nodded. 

“Kate’s told me all about you.”

“Oh?” Faith said, looking at the floor. 

“Good stuff, I promise,” I said, patting her on the back. 

“I just wanna start by saying you don’t have to do this if you don’t want to,” Nadine said. 

“I want to,” Faith said. “I think Kate’s idea is good. And if Gaines is as much of a tool as you make him sound like-”

“He is,” Kate said. 

“He VERY MUCH is,” Nadine nodded. 

“Then forcing his hand doesn’t sound like the worst thing in the world,” Faith said. 

“I couldn’t agree more,” I said. 

Nadine spent a few minutes adjusting the lighting in her office, then set us up for our photoshoot. It took about an hour, but when it was over, we had a full roll of pictures ready for social media to announce both my own friendship with my former arch-rival and Gaines’ public support of the trans community. Eric Gaines’ may have been a cynical asshole, but if I could use the implements at my disposal to push him into being more publicly trans-friendly, then I’d be doing myself (and probably other people as well) a favor. Nadine also had a whole ‘women in STEM’ angle she wanted to try pushing, but she mentioned that it would be better to wait until the finals tournament started to go for that. 

Of course, any of this working out long-term was contingent on me continuing to win. 

No pressure or anything.  

The shoot went by relatively quickly, and after that Faith and I decided to get a late lunch. She guided us to a ramen shop on Sawtelle Boulevard in Culver City, and after about forty minutes of waiting and parsing through anime merch shops, we were seated at a long bar table around the kitchen watching our soup and noodles prepared for it. Salt and pork and chicken and spice and seaweed scents all mixed together into a tantalizing symphony of aromas. 

My pork miso ramen and Faith’s chicken shoyu were placed in bowls in front of us, and Faith pressed cloves of garlic into both our bowls. I dug in with my chopsticks and took in a mouthful of spicy ground pork and red broth. “Mmmmm,” I groaned. 

“Good stuff, right?” Faith said, swallowing her own food. 

“Soooo good! How did you find this place?”

“Olivia took me here on our first date,” Faith said, smiling wistfully while looking at nothing in particular. 

… Until a moment passed, and suddenly she was smiling wistfully while looking very clearly at me. 

I shifted in my seat and broke off eye contact as Faith sipped from her glass of water, leaving a red lipstick stain on the rim as she stared longingly into my eyes. A hundred million thoughts all went through my mind at different speeds and in opposite directions, but chief among them was ‘you have a boyfriend, you have a boyfriend, you have an incredibly handsome and charming and supportive boyfriend.’

Did I miss something? When did this happen?! This made no damn sense- everything about Faith Watanabe had always been confusing, and now that was even more true than ever! 

Okay, let’s think about this- Zeke hadn’t said anything about this, and he told me everything so I didn’t think he was holding out on me. I was… Resigned to the idea that he might want to leave me for Faith, even if it would feel like my heart getting surgically removed without anesthesia. Faith was here first, had liked him longer, knew him better, could probably make him happier, and was way, way, WAY hotter than me. Dancing with her the other night had been fun, and dancing with her and Zeke had been REALLY fun, and I really liked spending time with her, and I really REALLY liked spending time with both of them… But I didn’t want to make Faith into a third wheel, and I was aware that I might wind up being the third wheel if he dumped me for her… 

UGH! This was so confusing! Why did nothing make sense!? Why did I have to be so freaking stupid?!

That was when I noticed Faith waving her hand in front of my face. 

“Gah!” I said, my slumped posture suddenly straightening. 

“You okay?” she asked. “You kinda… Went away for a minute there.”

“I, uh, well, you see,” I stammered, struggling to make eye contact. “You… I… How are things with you and Zeke?”

“Shouldn’t I be asking you that question?” she smirked. 

“I mean, it’s a relevant question for both of us,” I said. 

“That’s true,” she said. 

“After the other night, after we all danced together,” I said, “Did things go back to normal between you two? Did you talk at all about what happened? Are you guys okay?”

“To answer your questions in reverse order,” Faith said, “We’re okay. We haven’t talked about what happened. And I don’t know that things will ever really go back to normal per se, now that the cat’s out of the bag.”

“That… That makes sense,” I said, gulping down a mouthful of noodles and meat. “I just mean… What do you think is gonna happen between you guys?”

“I don’t really think that’s up to me,” Faith said, stirring her soup with her chopsticks. “It’s up to him. And you.”

“What… What do you mean by that?”

“I mean…,” she started, “I mean that I know what you were thinking, when you got me to confess to him. You thought he would leave you for me. Because you think you still aren’t done apologizing for being a jerk to me. But the reality, my dear Katie-”

I blinked with the rapidity of a machine gun open-firing. “‘My dear?’” 

“- is that I was just as much of a jerk to you, and I don’t think I’m done apologizing yet. You, however, have more than made up for everything. I really like the person you’ve become. Or maybe it’s just the person you’ve always been, whom I was just too dumb to see,” Faith said. She reached across the table and put her hand over mine. 

My brain was short-circuiting, and I dared not open my mouth for fear of stuttering at a million miles per hour. This wasn’t happening, there was literally no way this was happening-

“I like you,” Faith said. “And I like Zeke. I like you both the same way, even if it feels different with each of you. And I know you and Zeke have a good thing going, and I don’t wanna get in the way of it. I want you both to be happy. But you… You taught me to be brave, Katie Calloway. I mean that- you’re the bravest person I know. You see something you want and you go right for it. I want to be more like that, more like you in that way. And I gotta start somewhere. So I’m starting here and now, with you. Not leaving anything unsaid.”

A feeling surged through me, like I was being lowered into a hot spring after running a marathon, my aching limbs and throbbing heart finding relief and bliss and comfort. My mouth opened and closed, and Faith put a single finger over my lips. “You don’t have to respond right now. You can think about it, about how you feel about me, about what you want to do with this. I’m throwing a lot at you, I know.”

“D-does Zeke know you like me too?” I said, trying to focus on anything other than the finger hovering on the borders of my mouth.

“No,” Faith said, taking her slim, delicate digit off of my lips, to my relief and my chagrin. “I was gonna talk to him about it after the Gregson fight. He doesn’t need the distraction right now.”

“That’s fair,” I said, trying to keep my brain from melting out my ears. “Do you want me not to say anything?”

“I don’t think that’s up to me,” Faith said with a nonchalant shrug. “He’s your boyfriend, it’s your call whether or not you tell him about this conversation.”

“But what do you want me to say?” I said, staring into my bowl of food. “W-what do you want out of this? What’s your ideal outcome?”

She bit her lower lip a moment, then said, “I had a lot of fun dancing with the both of you the other night. If we could all keep doing that together, I think… I think that would make me really happy. But if that’s not what you want, or not what he wants, I’ll back off. Mostly… I just want you both to be happy.”

I gulped. “O-okay. I need to… I’ll take you up on your offer to let this marinate for a few days, yeah?”

“Sounds good,” she said, cupping my cheek and brushing a strand of hair behind my ear. I struggled not to release a sapphic moan there and then. “Food is on me today, yeah?”

I nodded. 

This was… This was a lot to take in. I couldn’t even believe it was happening, and yet… 

And yet here I was. So very blessed.