I Have Come Home by Carla Bruce #5
But the following week, Neese takes a wild leap of faith and sketches a small heart in the corner of her notes, then subtly slides the notebook in Audrey’s direction.
Keeping her eyes squarely on their professor, Neese watches from her periphery as Audrey looks down, huffs a small almost-laugh, and then outlines the shape of the heart with her ballpoint pen, thickening the curved lines, slightly lengthening the points.
For now, it’s something.
Neese decides to show up at Audrey’s door with dinner the following night. She won’t press for any answers Audrey isn’t willing to share, but simple care and quiet company is something she’s more than happy to offer.
For all her boldness on the way over, as soon as Audrey opens the door, wrapped in a fuzzy blanket, bleary-eyed and blinking in curious surprise behind thick glasses, Neese blanks on the smooth opening salvo she’d rehearsed for the past fifteen minutes.
“Hi?” Audrey says, shaking her head minutely in puzzlement, then noticing the trays stacked in Neese’s hands. “Um, what’s this?”
“Food. I thought maybe you—” Neese takes a breath. “Have you eaten?”
Audrey’s eyes find Neese’s again, and for the first time in a while, there is something like a smile, no less warm for its hesitance.
“That’s so…You didn’t have to do that.” She leans against the door, drawing her blanket tighter around her shoulders, and regards Neese with such frank fondness that Neese can only shrug in agreement, her coherence momentarily scattered.
“Well.” She never wants Audrey to stop looking at her that way, but she can’t quite meet her eyes, either, warmth crawling up her neck. “Here I am. You don’t have to eat if you aren’t hungry,” she adds, as if anybody needs her permission to eat or not.
Thankfully, it’s this that splinters the tension, pulling a short laugh from Audrey as she eases off the door and opens it wider, gesturing Neese inside.
Not much conversation follows, which doesn’t surprise Neese—Audrey is under deadline and obliged to return to her paper, and Neese has brought a textbook for some assigned reading—and still, seated side by side on the narrow bed, the quiet sounds of their chewing, pages turning, pen scratching paper, the occasional quick remark or shared smile: It’s a balm, this new unfurling, quiet and tender.
“Thank you,” Audrey whispers at their parting, into a tight embrace that leaves Neese weak-kneed and gooey. “I’m glad you came over.”
Neese presses in closer, sweeping a hand up and down Audrey’s back. “Of course.”
“When I went home,” Audrey begins haltingly, seemingly content to remain locked in Neese’s arms, resting her head against Neese’s shoulder, “my mother asked me straight up, during dinner, if I was…” Her voice grows quieter, nearly a whisper.
“If I was a deviant. Her words. I’ve never seen her or my dad look at me like that before. ”
Neese listens, focusing on continuing her hand’s soothing movements, sympathetic horror rising like bile in her throat.
“It was what I expected, but not when I expected.” Audrey groans softly, burying her face in Neese’s neck. “At least they didn’t kick me out, I guess…And I’m sorry, if this is too much for you, I get it—”
“It isn’t,” Neese can’t help but interrupt, meaning it. “You can tell me whatever you want, whenever.” Let me hold the center. “You aren’t scaring me away.”
“Okay,” Audrey breathes. “If you’re sure.”
Neese nods, reveling in their closeness, breathing Audrey deep.
She isn’t alone in this, maybe she never will be again.
Their cheeks brush as they both hesitate to pull away, and like a moth to a flame, their lips find each other’s, moving slow and sweet.
Neese pulls away, but only far enough to rest her forehead against Audrey’s, unwilling to push, sensitive to her tender pain.
They breathe together that way for a little while, and then part.
Despite the turmoil on Audrey’s behalf still roiling in her chest, Neese can’t be sure her feet touch the ground the entire walk back to her dorm.
The first Lambda Student Alliance member drive is an undeniable success.
Their posters and table attract a fair amount of curiosity, and in some cases, outright scorn.
Blue and Cyrus prepare the members for this, reminding them to brace for backlash, an inevitability of being more visible.
But the overwhelming response is one of acceptance, and at best, gratitude.
The sign-up sheet is filled, necessitating pages ripped out of notebooks in order to keep capturing names.
Prospective members want to discuss the historic October march, they want to talk Stonewall and Marsha P.
Johnson and Harvey Milk’s demise, and resources on campus for gay or questioning students who don’t know where to turn.
“That’s us,” Blue declares proudly, over and over. “We’re building it, right now.”
And when a shy freshman approaches Neese, having recognized her from multiple library visits, she zeroes in on the hand that she doesn’t feel like removing from Audrey’s, eyes flicking between the two of them in surprised understanding.
“Hi there.” Neese smiles as Audrey lifts her other palm in greeting, bracelets clicking. “Are you interested in joining LSA?”
This story is based on a real person, Chi Hughes, co-founder of the first openly LGBTQ+ student organization at an HBCU.
I’m honored to pay homage to her pioneering spirit, and I hope to always have the audacity and the vision to dream bigger than the world I’m currently living in.
When we reached out to Chi to make her aware of the story in this collection, she shared that she was told by the Howard University student president that Black gay students were “another spoke in the wheel of genocide. But,” she continued, “love always seeks itself and prevails, as did LSA.”
I’m grateful to be Black and gay and alive right now, when we once again desperately need love—and courage—to prevail. Thank you, Chi, for showing us that it’s possible.
—Carla Bruce