19 19-2040 (1/2)
”I can't find it!” Zayne's voice rings down the hall.
”I told you, you left it on the nightstand,” I holler back at him as I adjust my tie, ”We're going to be late.”
He runs down the hall to meet me in front of the mirror, ”I'm coming. Stop fussing, your tie looks fine.”
I look over at the wall behind us, all the pictures covering it. Covering all twenty years since we graduated and went off to college, neither of us sure we would make it.
I look at my hand to see the black ring wrapped around my finger, an exact replica of the ones on the necklaces all those years ago. It finally happened.
”Josh?” I look up to see Zayne staring at me, thinking back I miss the pink hair that covered the jet black, ”Are you ok?”
”Yeah I'm just thinking, I often find myself thinking, thinking about how we got here. What we had to go through.”
He comes over and kisses me, his lips still as soft as they were the first time, ”Stop thinking,” he whispers, ”We have to go. We need to pick up everyone and then we need to get to the agency.”
He starts pulling me along to the door. He's so eager for what today means, what we've prepped all week for. What some could say we prepared all these years for.
Some years were harder than others, like the two years during college where Zayne and I weren't speaking because of a misunderstanding at a frat party, or the year Zayne got his job at the school LGBT+ support center and I got mine in my school's cafeteria and we never could get a hold of each other. Other years were easy, like the year Zayne and I moved back to Waco willingly and bought a house together.
It took a long time to build the lives we have now, from our house, to the home for displaced youth we opened a year and a half ago. While laws might change, people's opinions usually don't, so Zayne and I started a program that helps LGBT+ kids and teens who were kicked out by family, we call it Love Yourself Home. We offer a home, counseling and financial aid option to keep these kids in school. We're currently housing and helping sixteen kids ranging in age from eight to eighteen.
It's baby steps like that and others in the country that showed politicians that the LGBT+ community is not the enemy and helped secure nationwide marriage equality ten months ago. Needless to say, Zayne and I made our way to a courthouse within a week.
Today we need to go to pick up Arriana and her husband from the airport, then pick up all the parents from their houses to bring them by the house. We have a major surprise for them.
Today, Zayne and I adopt a fourteen year old girl name Jessica. Jessica was supposedly a problem child who really had just lost hope after so long in the system, Zayne and I eventually got through to her and she asked us to adopt her.
So much has changed in the years and it sometimes boggles me. Conrad became a prominent business man here in Waco before he got married and moved to Washington D.C., Tempe got married in college and is still with the guy, Caira is still single and has become the vice principal of our old high school, and mine and Zayne's parents retired here in Waco and have since just relaxed and enjoyed life.
Waco has become far more accepting, most all the country has aside from a handful of people. Now there's no fear of being attacked or abused while just walking down the street, instead, we've all come to see each other as what we are. Humans.
Zayne rushes to pick everyone and drop them off at the house. I tell Arriana to stall everyone for an hour, and like her normal self, she does so without question. I then replace Zayne as driver for safety reasons and we go to pick up Jessica. The way her face lights up when she sees us makes all the fighting worth it, all the years of fighting just to have this chance has paid off.
I look at Zayne and see the teenager in him again, the way his eyes light up and the way he squeezes my hand. He may have changed his hair and gotten older, but he's still very much the boy I fell in love with at seventeen years old.