5. Go Your Own Way #11
On the last night of Katie's stay, Charlie told her on the fire escape.
They were sitting side by side with their legs dangling over the edge and the lights of Pasadena's City Hall glowing against the sunset spread out before them.
The air was warm and smelled like jasmine from the neighbor's garden, and somewhere down the block music was coming from an outdoor celebration at the park.
"I really like Joss," Katie said. "I hope to see her again."
"Perhaps," Charlie said, nonchalantly. Katie mimicked the word back at her in a ridiculous voice, which only made Charlie laugh.
Then, Katie went quiet. She thought about her sister's apartment and the sunlight through the windows.
She thought about the way Charlie had looked at Joss across the dinner table.
She wanted Charlie to know what she'd seen.
Not just Joss or California. All of it. The whole picture of who her sister was becoming.
"I love you."
Charlie heard a difference in these same words they exchanged often to one another. This time, they both knew it was different.
"I love you too, Kit-Kat."
Charlie turned her gaze back and stared at the city for a long time. Then she said, "There's something I need to tell you." Katie turned fully to look at her.
"I know." Charlie nodded, because of course Katie knew something was coming. Katie waited the way she'd always waited for Charlie. Patient. Present.
"I'm gay," Charlie said. The words came out quieter than she'd planned, but they came out steady.
"I've known for a while. Maybe a long time.
And I wanted to tell you because... Because your opinion matters more to me than anyone else's, Kit Kat.
" Charlie looked into Katie's eyes and waited, patiently, for Katie's response.
Katie was quiet. She looked at Charlie's face, really looked at it, the way she'd been looking at Charlie since she was old enough to focus her eyes. Then she said, "I mean, I suspected. I just didn't know what it all meant for a really long time."
Charlie's eyes shot open and she stared hard at Katie.
"You suspected? Really?"
"Yeah," Katie replied with a shrug of her shoulders.
"How long?" Charlie asked, trying not to let Katie know how desperate she was to hear how she felt about the news.
"I don't know," Katie said, pondering. "A while, I guess. Maybe always." Katie shrugged, and the shrug was so perfectly, infuriatingly Katie that Charlie felt her eyes burn. "I mean, you're my sister. I pay attention."
Charlie stared at Katie, seeing no anger or disgust on her face, feeling that it might be okay to ask the question she cared about more than anything.
"And are you... okay with it?"
Katie looked at her then with an expression that Charlie would remember for the rest of her life. It was not tolerance, not acceptance, but a look of someone who could not fathom why the question needed to be asked in the first place.
"Charlie," she said. "You're my favorite person in the whole world..."
At this, Charlie's breath hitched, just once, on the inhale, interrupting Katie, and she heard it because Katie heard everything. She actually turned towards Charlie, her body fully facing her.
"Charlie, listen to me," Katie began, grabbing Charlie's hands, causing Charlie to look turn her body fully towards Katie as well.
"You're the best person I know. You were the best person I knew when I was five years old and you were the best person I knew when I was holding popsicles on the back porch and you're the best person I know right now. Nothing you just told me changes a single thing about that. Nothing ever could."
Katie laid a hand on Charlie's forearm before fully pulling her into a hug. Charlie melted into Katie's embrace and held on tightly.
They pulled apart and returned to facing the sunset before them. They continued to sit there on the fire escape with their legs hanging over Pasadena, shoulder to shoulder, and Katie didn't say anything else. She didn't need to. She just stayed.
And Charlie took the opportunity to stay right there with her for as long as she had her little sister by her side.
In the end, Joss and Charlie didn't last, ending the way first real loves sometimes do, with more kindness than wreckage, and Charlie was grateful for that.
But Rumours became the commemorative album of that time in her life.
It had been there before Joss, and it would be there long after.
But this made Charlie purchase a cassette copy for the Plymouth so she could carry it with her, and the tape lived in the stereo right alongside Katie's mixtapes.
And when she was alone at night, she played "Songbird" on repeat, letting Christine McVie's piano fill the rooms with Charlie's perfected definition of love and of a life she was building from scratch.
The first love was gone, but this music would be in her memories, her changes, and her next steps forever.
Rumours was Frank's gift to her, and it would carry Charlie through thick and thin for the rest of her life.