Chapter 11
chapter eleven
“Government Plaza Station,” the light rail’s speaker blared.
Oakland tightened her grip on her phone, fingers stiff inside her gloves.
Her palms were damp, heat trapped beneath the fabric, but she didn’t bother peeling them off.
They’d dry soon enough. Across from her, a bearded man in stained jeans and an oversized jacket slumped in his seat, garbage bags wrapped around his shoes.
Deep wrinkles creased beneath his closed eyes, quiet exhaustion etched into his face.
Despite his circumstances, he looked peaceful, swaying gently with the train's rhythm.
Oakland breathed in, her eyelids growing heavy. It was a long ride to St. Paul. Maybe she could sneak in a quick nap, too.
“Downtown East.”
The train screeched to a halt. Oakland rested her forehead against the cold window, watching as the last traces of downtown Minneapolis blurred into the distance.
She loved the Twin Cities. She was fourteen when her family moved to St. Paul from Provo.
She still missed Utah’s mountains, the comfort of familiarity, and the tight embrace of the Mormon community—but the Twin Cities offered something else.
Something electric. A world that, for the first time, wasn’t entirely LDS.
Back in Provo, church wasn’t just part of life; it was life.
She never really questioned it. But public school in Minnesota cracked the edges of her world.
She met people who believed differently.
People who didn’t believe at all. The idea of a life outside the church was once unthinkable.
But sometimes, late at night, she let herself imagine it.
A life untethered. A life that was truly hers.
The cost of that kind of freedom, though, was too high.
She was nineteen when she knew, truly knew, that she was different.
But the truth was there long before then.
She always knew, deep down, that she was gay.
The signs were impossible to ignore: the way she clung to her female friends, the flicker of jealousy when they got boyfriends, the excuses to hold their hands, to stay close.
She craved something she never entirely understood, until she did.
By the time she reached college, she learned how to be careful. She kept her friendships distant, never letting herself get too close. It was safer that way. She never even said the words out loud, even now in her late twenties.
“West Bank.”
The train slowed near the University of Minnesota, and a flicker of nostalgia pulled at her. Four years. She spent four years on that campus, balancing coursework with devotion, throwing herself into the LDS Student Association as if sheer involvement could hold her faith together.
She almost went on a mission to Peru. At the time, she told herself it was out of dedication, a way to serve.
But deep down, she knew better. It wasn’t just about faith.
It was about space. An escape hatch. A way to put thousands of miles between herself and the crushing weight of expectation.
To exist, if only for a little while, without the constant pull of family, church, and the invisible lines she wasn’t supposed to cross.
And yet, the thought of pausing college felt just as suffocating.
Staying meant pressure; leaving meant uncertainty.
But there were moments she wondered: what if she left and never returned?
What if she disappeared into the hills of Peru and slipped away into a life of her own?
The thought was fleeting, absurd. But it persisted.
“Stadium Village.”
The doors slid open, and a pack of rowdy college boys poured in, their voices too loud, their movements loose with alcohol.
Oakland tensed instinctively, shifting in her seat just enough to make herself smaller.
She kept her gaze on the window, watching their reflections instead of looking at them directly.
They weren’t doing anything wrong—just drunk and full of themselves, laughing too hard, bumping into each other like overgrown puppies.
One of them stumbled, grabbing a pole to steady himself, and for a split second, her shoulders went rigid before she forced herself to relax.
The acrid bite of cheap beer filled the air, and an unexpected pang of nostalgia came with it.
She wasn’t old, not really, but something about passing the university tonight reminded her of college and made her feel like she had lost some vital, reckless part of herself that she would never get back at 28.
She shouldn’t have gone to the brewery.
She told herself she went out of politeness, maybe to gain a new client for her practice, but that was a lie. She went for Christine.
Ever since Christine left her exam room, Oakland couldn’t stop thinking about her: about that nerdy charm, the way her dark eyes sparkled with mischief. Christine wasn’t like the women Oakland usually swooned over. She wasn’t intense or dangerous.
No, Christine was safe and sweet. But something about her, about the soft curve of her waist, the way her chest filled out her shirt just right, made Oakland’s pulse kick up.
She wasn’t just cute; there was a softness, a quiet hesitance that felt almost tentative, like she was waiting, open but never pushing.
And somehow, that made Oakland question her instincts.
Like maybe, just maybe, this girl was worth knowing.
“10th Street Station.”
Oakland tore her gaze from the window and glanced at her phone. The screen was dark. Typically, she distracted herself with podcasts, games, or anything to keep her mind occupied. But tonight, her thoughts were too loud.
The train hissed to a stop, and she stood, moving off the train and stepping onto the platform. She was almost home.
St. Paul always felt different from Minneapolis: quieter, grittier, more full of character.
Where Minneapolis had the gleaming high-rises, new restaurants, and constant development churn, St. Paul held onto its past. The old brick buildings, the dive bars where the same regulars had been drinking for decades, and the streets that weren’t in a rush to change. She used to love that about it.
But in the past couple of years, something shifted. It didn’t feel the same anymore.
She walked past a bus stop and nearly stopped short. A Tate poster, plastered on the side of the shelter, half peeled at the edges, his smug face and blue eye staring back at her.
It made her feel sick.
It wasn’t just the city that felt different.
It was everywhere. The rhetoric, the way people talked, the things they suddenly felt emboldened to say out loud.
She noticed it more at church, the quiet slide toward something uglier.
Sermons laced with warnings about “modern values.” The men in her congregation, ones she had known for years, parroting things that made her feel nauseous.
More talk of submission, of a woman’s place.
More veiled, and not-so-veiled, comments about people like her.
She always felt a little out of step with her community, but now, it felt suffocating.
And worst of all, she felt alone.
Because they worshiped Tate and everything he stood for. It showed how they nodded along, parroting his words like scripture, blind devotion, echoing off every wall.
She let out a slow breath and kept walking, her hands stuffed into her coat pockets.
Her mind turned to the events of that day.
It had been years since she had kissed a woman— since she kissed anyone romantically, for that matter. Years of carefully curated distance, of keeping herself locked away behind walls built from duty, faith, and fear.
But tonight, that woman—Silver, was it?—kissed her. Like it was fun. Like it was no big deal.
And for a split second, Oakland let her.
The world shrank instantly, the bar’s noise fading to nothing. The soft press of lips, the warmth of someone else’s touch—it had been so long, too long. She forgot how much she craved it. A thousand thoughts crashed into her at once. She shouldn’t have let that happen.
But she did. She leaned in. Just enough to blur the line.
And then, worse, her mind slipped even further. She wondered what Christine’s lips would feel like, how she might taste, how she might kiss. Would she be slow and teasing? Or would she press in, hungry and wanting?
A shiver ran through her, heat pooling low in her stomach.
The entrance of her apartment building smelled like mildew and old carpet, the air thick and stale from years of indifferent ventilation.
Oakland climbed the stairs, her legs aching from the ten-hour shift at the clinic.
She was too tired for this. Too tired for anything but stripping off her scrubs, collapsing into bed, and maybe finding a moment where her mind wasn’t knotted with guilt, duty, and the constant hum of disappointment.
She reached her door, slid the key into the lock, and paused.
It was already unlocked.
She hesitated, heart thudding, before pushing the door open. Every single lamp was on, flooding the small apartment with an unrelenting, clinical brightness.
Her stomach sank.
Only one person would show up like this.
“Dad?”
Footsteps creaked against the hardwood. Not hesitant. Not rushed. Just waiting. Her father stepped into view a moment later, his face drawn, his thin frame casting long shadows against the kitchen wall.
“Hello, Oakland,” he said, voice edged with something too heavy to be casual.
She glanced around, expecting her mother to appear, to balance out the tension with her usual quiet diplomacy.
“She’s not here,” he said before she could ask.
Not a family visit, then. A conversation. A warning.
He stepped closer and pulled her into a tight hug before she could react. His thin but unyielding arms wrapped around her like a vice, the scent of his cologne sharp against her nose, familiar and suffocating.
She stood still, hands stiff at her sides, waiting for it to end.