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After the Where Does the Good Grow finale, Sara is so tired. Her muscles ache, yes, but so do her bones, her hands, her feet, even her skin. Her eyes feel squinty and unfocused, and her head feels cloudy. She can’t believe how—honest she just was. She can’t believe how good it felt.
Tegan ends the call, and Sara is immediately flanked by both of her partners.
She doesn’t look up from her phone. “I’m fine,” she says, before either of them has the chance to ask. The camera is still open on her phone and Sara is surprised to see that she’s smiling. She locks her phone, pockets it, and looks up at Emy, who is already smiling back at her.
“We know,” Stacy says, and reaches out a hand to grasp the back of Sara’s neck and massage it lightly. The touch startles her for a second before she relaxes back into it.
She hadn’t wanted to do the show today. She’s so tired, and it makes her sick to reveal details about her private life on the internet, and even sicker to lie. But this felt okay. She may hate the internet, but she feels good about Where Does the Good Grow, feels good about the fact that she and Tegan have managed to create something fun and authentic and well-received during this shitty time where they can’t tour and they can barely make money and they can’t imagine what their future is going to look like.
She turns to Stacy. “That was an impressive cameo,” she tells her, grinning just like she grinned moments ago when Stacy appeared on camera.
“Thank you,” Stacy says. “It was now or never. And my hair does look good right now.”
“What about my cameo?” Emy demands.
“Oh, that wasn’t a cameo, you were a full-on co-star,” Stacy says.
“You were a very good co-star,” Sara assures her. “People are obsessed with you. Did you see those comments? Jesus. You’re still the most popular member of Tegan and Sara, I swear.”
Emy laughs, but Sara can tell that she’s pleased, if a little embarrassed, by all the attention she was getting. “Your fans like that I’m mysterious.”
“Okay, first, they like that I’m mysterious—that’s my thing. And second, they’re your fans at this point.”
“I hate to break it to you, babe, but I don’t think you’re as mysterious as you think you are,” Stacy cuts in. “And there were a shocking amount of comments about you being ‘literally god,’ Emy, so. Whatever that means.”
“I’m so tired, you guys,” Sara whines, just for the pleasure of complaining to people who have to listen to her complaints.
Stacy smiles, rolling her eyes a little. “Your thing is over, you know, you can take a nap.”
“No, I can’t!” Sara protests.
“Why not?”
“Bruce is working on our deck! I can’t just leave him—“ she starts.
“You could let him take a break, too,” Stacy says.
“He can take a break whenever he wants!” Sara protests.
“Can he?” Emy asks skeptically. “I thought he was only allowed thirty minutes for lunch?”
“I was joking!” Sara insists.
"Hmm," is all Emy has to say about that.
“I promise I’ll entertain Bruce. He’s not hard to entertain, he’s pretty low maintenance,” Stacy says, still stroking through the unruly curls that are falling around Sara’s neck.
Sara nods, sleepy and grateful. “Okay,” she says, meaning thank you.
“Saras can have little a nap, as a treat,” Stacy says.
Emy cackles, and Sara says, “What the fuck is that? Is that a reference to something?”
No one answers her, opting to continue laughing at her expense, clutching at each other for support.
Then, through her laughter, Stacy manages to choke out the words, “collaborative . . . life . . . partner.”
“God, I can’t believe you said that,” Emy says.
“It’s true,” Sara protests, feeling grumpy but also warm and relieved. She hasn’t fucked anything up, not today. She didn’t come out, exactly, but she was honest, and the world didn’t end, and her girlfriends didn’t stop loving her.
“It’s romantic,” Emy says through giggles. “Isn’t it?”
“Oh yeah,” Stacy says, and she still hasn’t gotten her laughter under control either. “I like that it makes it sound like being your life partner is such a big job that it requires that two separate people work together to do it.”
“I mean,” Emy jokes, “it’s kind of true.”
“You’re being mean,” Sara accuses, but the truth is that she kind of likes it when they gang up on her like this. They’re teasing her, sure, but their voices and their smiles are warm, and they’re both watching her, thinking about her, talking about her. And she can’t deny that she likes that.
“Emy, can you carry me inside?” she says.
“Can I? Maybe. Will I? No,” Emy says, but she extends a hand to pull Sara out of the chair and when she’s standing she lets her lean her head against her shoulder. “Come on,” she says indulgently. “We’ll take a nap.”
Stacy puts a hand on Sara’s face. “Did you sleep last night?” she asks her, searching her eyes.
“Not really,” Sara admits. “I think I was stressed.” It’s good to have Bruce here, and it’s so good to have Emy here, but it’s overwhelming, too. The deck and the remix record and the foundation fundraiser and the Instagram show feel like a lot, all together, and she feels like a kid on the last day of school, desperate for summer break. Bruce is spending the day with Tegan tomorrow, and then he’s flying out in the evening. The show is over, the record is ready, the foundation board meeting is finished. She can relax, probably.
“You’re okay now, though?” Stacy asks.
Sara nods, and she means it. Surprising as it is, Sara is okay.
Friday is weird, but not in a bad way. Sara wakes up in Emy’s bed, alone, body still achy, but well-rested. She sits up and realizes she’s not completely alone—Holiday and Like Like are both staring at her from separate corners of the room, unnerving identical gazes. The two of them had reached a truce, after Like Like’s third or fourth visit to Vancouver, but they still kept their distance.
Sara follows the smells of breakfast to the kitchen, twin cats trailing behind her, and finds Stacy frying bacon and Emy chopping vegetables. Bruce is wrestling with the coffee machine. Bruce Springsteen is playing softly from the speaker on the counter. Everything feels hazy and soft, like she’s stepped into a dream world perfectly curated just for her. She stands by the coffee maker, grunting. Whatever Bruce is doing, he doesn’t seem like he’s succeeding. Sara scans the room, eyeing Stacy’s mug and then Emy’s.
Stacy doesn’t even look up from the stove. “No way,” she tells her, wrapping a proprietary hand around her coffee cup. Emy is focused on slicing an avocado, so Sara swipes her mug and steals a large gulp of coffee. Emy gasps, affronted, and Stacy shoots Sara a disapproving look. “The first pot was for people who woke up at a reasonable hour,” she informs her, but there’s no heat behind it.
“We can share,” Emy says magnanimously, taking a sip and handing the mug back to Sara. Sara isn’t a person who can form sentences or even words before coffee, so she just reaches out a hand to graze Emy’s arm in thanks. “Tegan and Sofia are on their way over,” Emy tells her.
“Ugh, why?” Sara complains, leaning back on the counter.
“You invited them,” Stacy says, laughing. She’s already very awake, and Sara resents the fact that she ever decided to couple with a morning person.
“I invited Tegan? To my house where I live? I would never.”
Bruce looks up from the coffee maker. “Be nice to your sister,” he chastises lightly. “And help me with the coffee maker, this thing is so complicated.”
“Sorry, Bruce,” Sara says, and as the first jolts of caffeine start to reach her brain, she recalls that he is a guest and she should be doing a better job of hosting him. “I’ll make the coffee! You should sit down.”
She helps make breakfast, letting Emy put her to work making omelets, and soon Tegan and Sofia show up to entertain Bruce. They eat outside, and its sunny and warm and the food Is delicious. She still feels a little shell-shocked after yesterday. Nothing really happened, but she feels . . . different. She feels like she’s opened a door, and it would be so easy to walk through it.
Everything has always felt so hard for Sara, and there’s a part of her that is always so surprised when things actually do turn out okay.
On Saturday they leave early for their day trip to the lavender fields. Stacy drives them up the coast, Emy next to her and Sara, whose legs are the shortest, in the backseat. This makes her feel like a kid on a road trip with her parents, in a hazy-nostalgic-comforting kind of way. Stacy, like Emy, is a good driver, as sensible and competent behind the wheel as she is anywhere else. Sara loves the sensation of being in the back of a car that either of them is driving. She feels safe, as close to relaxed as she ever gets, almost at ease.
Sometimes she feels like a kid, the way Stacy and Emy take care of her. It’s helpful in those times to remember the years she spent on her own, taking care of herself. It’s helpful to remember that she was happy then, being single, once she got the hang of it. She knows herself, and her self is someone she can rely on.
She’s choosing this life. It isn’t that she needs her partners (although she does), but that she wants them. It’s not weakness to sit in the backseat, to let go of her ever-present impulse to control, to direct, to manage, and just enjoy the ride sometimes.
Plus, she knows she gives as much as she gets from her partners. Or, she knows that she tries to, and she knows that they think she succeeds. Which is almost as good.
That morning, they get dressed for the day like it’s a collaborative art project, which is how they do almost anything that involves Emy, from cooking to designing stage sets to having sex. Sara puts on Emy’s soft white shirt, long sleeves and three buttons at the neck, with her own jeans, Docs, and thinking hat. Her girlfriends, artist and fashion professional, dress each other.
They fit into most of each other’s clothes, including shoes, and they try out different pieces on each other while Sara watches, sitting on the bed with Like Like in her lap. Stacy puts Emy in a simple shift dress of hers, with soft yellow flowers, adds white converse and an oversized denim button-down of Sara’s. Emy dresses Stacy in a short-sleeved white button-down, done up high on her throat, with grey jeans and docs.
Sara is mesmerized by Emy in a dress, bare long legs that stretch for miles. It’s endlessly sexy to Sara, the way that Emy can flit between points on the spectrum of gender expression so beautifully, and with seemingly no discomfort or confusion. Even more than it’s sexy, it’s fascinating and incredible and inspiring to Sara. She knows Emy has her own insecurities, but she’s comfortable in her body in a way that Sara will never be.
Emy can play with gender like it’s a game, like it’s art. For Sara, it mostly feels like work, or like a test she can’t pass. What can she wear to make her feel the shortcomings of her body less acutely? What will make her think about her body the least? What clothes will draw less attention to her? What will draw the right kind of attention, and what is the right kind of attention? What will make her feel comfortable? Why has she never, ever, not once, felt comfortable, no matter what she wears?
Stacy puts on lipstick, a soft pink, while Sara stares. “You want some?” Stacy asks her softly. Sara nods, and holds still while Stacy applies the color to her lips. Sara examines herself in the mirror and smiles. It strikes her, looking at the their three reflections, that Stacy looks the most obviously gay, which makes her smile.
The first time Emy had come to Vancouver after they’d become . . . whatever they were, Stacy had joked that sharing clothes was going to be the best part of being in a lesbian throuple. This had worried Sara at the time, because everything was worrying to Sara during that visit.
She’d agonized for days before Emy’s arrival about whether to make up Emy’s usual bed in the guest room. Sara couldn’t imagine anything more suffocating than sleeping three to a bed all week, but she was terrified of Emy feeling unwelcome in any way. Sara wondered if she should take the guest room and give Emy her place in her and Stacy’s bed, but that arrangement, although appealing, seemed—strange.
She knew how stupid this fixation would sound if she voiced it to Stacy, who, like Emy, was very well aware of Sara’s aversion to sleeping in crowded spaces. So she didn’t voice it. But the night before they were set to pick Emy up from the airport, she found Stacy putting sheets on the guest bed. Stacy was good at taking choices away from Sara, when they were too hard for her to make, and Sara loved this about her.
The next morning, they’d picked Emy up and immediately met up with Tegan and Sofia for brunch. Sara impulsively ordered bottomless Bloody Marys when their server appeared, and then started to feel self-conscious about it before Tegan and Emy both joined her in solidarity. She forgot sometimes that the three of them had been a unit, first, and it was comforting to be reminded of it. Emy had been a part of her life for so long, and even when things changed, there was a lot that stayed intact.
Stacy sipped a single mimosa and kept a hand over Sara’s knee beneath the table. Stacy was nervous too, but she was much better at faking calm than Sara. And where Sara always turned ever-further inward, Stacy tended to combat her own anxiety by taking charge, by supporting Sara, by making sure the conversation was flowing smoothly. Sara envied this sometimes, but she was mostly just grateful to have Stacy, balancing her out and holding her up.
Sara didn’t know how to be less nervous, but, for once, she was actually grateful for Tegan’s reliably attention-grabbing presence. She watched as Tegan and Emy negotiated their usual plan to split two dishes in halves, a savory and a sweet entrée, which they’d been doing for over a decade. Their normalness, combined with Stacy’s hand on her leg and the buzz from the cocktails, helped Sara, slowly, to settle into the day. She didn’t stop feeling shocked to see Emy there, to know she was there for her, to know that Emy had agreed to be with them. But she started to accept it as reality, as a part of her life that wasn't going to disappear.
After brunch, they all went to the beach. No one got in the water except Tegan and Emy, neither of whom had brought proper bathing suits. The others looked on from the shore as they ran into the ocean, splashing each other spiritedly, doubtlessly planning a “surfing” trip later in the week that Sara would have to try to talk Emy out of.
They didn’t get home until late, and Sara was sleepy from a day full of sun and alcohol and anxiety. She realized she hadn’t even kissed Emy yet, and she could, and she should. And she did.
She vowed not to let anyone else come over for the next few days, least of all Tegan.
Later that week, Sara had insisted on bringing Emy to see Candace with them. Well. She hadn’t so much insisted as she’d cautiously suggested, bringing it up in their group text in a way she’d hoped she could pass off as a joke if she needed to.
Emy, do you want to meet our couple’s therapist? She’d written an lol and then deleted it, embarrassed, but she did send it while Stacy was at work, which was cowardly. She hadn’t discussed it with her, because she knew what her response would be: she’d be supportive, yes, but she’d want to talk about it. And Sara couldn’t bear to talk about it any more than necessary.
Emy had answered quickly and sincerely: sure, if you want!
Stacy had written, do you think we have to pay extra for throuple’s therapy?
hahahahaha, Emy had sent. Then, I’m more than happy to come if you want me there!
we’re not doing “throuple,” Sara wrote. Then, Yeah. If that’s okay?
She wasn’t sure why it was so important to her that their therapist meet Emy. Well. She knew that she wanted to take this seriously. And she wanted to show Emy how seriously she took it. And oddly, like a child seeking parental approval for a deed well done, she wanted Candace to see how serious she was.
She woke up the morning of their usual appointment with a roiling stomach and a nagging headache drilling into both temples. She watched jealously over her coffee cup as Stacy and Emy ate avocado toast, laughing over the videos Max, who was cat-sitting, had sent of Like Like. Emy had brought him on her next visit, which Sara was happy about. She wanted Emy to feel at home in Vancouver, to be at home in Vancouver.
That morning, they didn’t outright ask her if she was okay, but they kept sneaking glances that were so full of concern that it made Sara feel even sicker. They met with Candace first thing every other Thursday morning and Sara was glad, at least, that the appointment would be over soon, would hopefully not ruin their whole day together.
She knew that this was her idea, that she wanted this, but she also felt like she’d been called into the principal’s office.
While Emy was showering, Stacy cornered Sara in their bedroom.
“You look like you’re going in for some kind of ritual torture,” she told her. Her voice was fond, and compassionate, but matter-of-fact. “You know this was entirely your idea and also literally a voluntary service that we’re paying for? You aren’t being called in for an interrogation, Sara.”
“I know!” Sara said, meaning that she knew intellectually. Her stomach, her head, her anxiety was a different story.
Stacy just looked at her, calm and knowing and gentle. “We don’t have to do this,” she said. “No one is dragging you anywhere against your will. Well, no one but yourself.”
“No, no, you’re right, I’m the one who wants to. Sorry, god,” Sara said. “I’m sorry, I don’t know what’s wrong with me.”
“Don’t be sorry, sweetheart. I just want you to feel good about this,” Stacy told her carefully.
“I do feel good about this,” Sara said, and her throat hurt with meaning it.
“I do, too,” Stacy said, and Sara let out a breath she hadn’t realized she’d been holding.
“It’s going okay?” she checked, feeling stupid for having to ask. By all accounts, they’d had a really good week, so far. Almost too good.
“Yeah. Sara. It’s going great,” Stacy said. “I know telling you this is meaningless, but, relax. Everything is good. Sometimes it feels like you’re just constantly bracing yourself for something awful to happen.”
“That’s because I am,” she admitted, with a little, self-deprecating laugh.
“I know.” Stacy said. “Good thing we’ve got therapy in an hour, huh?”
Sara snorted, but she was still too anxious to feel truly amused.
Like so many things Sara’s anxiety chooses to fixate on, the appointment wasn’t bad. The three of them sat on the couch together, Sara in the middle. Normally this arrangement would make her feel a little claustrophobic and suffocated, but that day she felt grounded by it, one of her people at either side, surrounding her.
“This is the famous Emy?” Candace asked.
“Yep, here she is,” Sara said, putting her hands our like she was displaying her, since she kind of was.
This felt. . . . surreal. Sara had spent untold hours in various therapists' offices talking about Emy, and it was bizarre to see her in one of those very offices now.
“It’s nice to finally meet you,” Candace said. “I’m so glad you were able to come in today.”
“I’m so glad to be here!” Emy said, sounding like maybe she really was. “Sara asked me to join, so I did. I’m glad Sara and Stacy wanted me here.”
Sara forgot sometimes that Emy was incredible at talking to strangers in a way that boggled Sara’s mind. If Sara had to work a merch table night after night or coach a soccer team full of kids week after week, she would be entirely lost, and she’s certain that at least half the people she dealt with would end up hating her. She does best when the groups she’s talking to can’t really talk back. But Emy is not someone who makes enemies, just friends and admirers.
“Sara, you asked Emy to join you and Stacy today?” Candace asked. Sara nodded, feeling her palms start to sweat. “Why’d you ask her to come?”
Sara felt—cornered. Her first instinct was that it had to be a trick question. But no one seemed combative, or upset, or even a little on edge but her. Luckily, Candace was familiar with Sara’s tendency to interpret questions as veiled attacks, so she jumped in before Sara could say anything.
“It’s not a trick question, Sara,” she said, like she had read her mind. “I understand why Emy’s here. I think it’s a great choice. I just want you to hear you explain your reasoning, and your goals for the session.”
“Oh, right,” Sara said. For weeks, she had been planning what she would say in her head, often not realizing she was doing it, but she forgot all of it in that moment. “Okay. Well, this is where Stacy and I talk about our relationship, and now our relationship includes Emy,” Sara said, like she was explaining something to a child. “So I thought it was important for her to be here, since she’s an integral part of that relationship. And also because it’s—it’s sort of a big change, for all three of us.”
“It is,” Candace agreed. ”This is the first time you’ve all been together since deciding to embark on this new relationship configuration?”
“Yes,” Sara said. “Emy’s in town until Sunday.”
“And how’s it going so far?” Candace asked, still, to Sara’s dismay, addressing only her.
Sara wanted to look to her partners for confirmation, but she knew how obvious and weak it would look to check with them both before answering and she couldn’t choose whose approval she was most worried about. So she said, “I think it’s going well? I mean, I’m happy with how it’s going. I’m happy Emy is here. I’m—grateful, to Emy and to Stacy, for . . . accommodating me. For agreeing to this.” Gratitude is a difficult emotion. She never feels worthy of the things that she’s grateful for, and it makes it hard to show her thanks. The gratitude gets all mixed in with the shame of not deserving the good things she’s given.
“Is that how you feel?” Candace asked. “That your partners are accommodating you?”
“Yes,” Sara said, because she did feel that way, even though it suddenly felt like the wrong answer.
“What do you mean by that? That they’re accommodating you? Like they’re sacrificing something?”
“Yeah, I think they’re both making sacrifices. I mean, this whole thing was my idea—“ she starts, only to be interrupted by everyone else in the room at once.
“It was Stacy’s idea,” Candace cuts in at the same time that both Emy and Stacy say, “What—?” And, yeah, Sara could admit that they were technically right.
“Okay, but it was an idea she proposed in order to make me happy. It’s something she’s doing for me. I don’t mean it in a bad way, I just mean—if it wasn’t for me being—me, I don’t know, different, Stacy and Emy wouldn’t be doing this. I don’t mean that I think they aren’t willing or even that they’re unhappy, but it’s obvious that they’re doing it for me.”
“Stacy, is that true?” Candace asked. “Do you feel like you’re accommodating Sara by being in a polyamorous relationship?” When Candace asked Stacy if she agreed with something Sara said, it usually meant that Sara had been wrong. But she didn’t understand how she was wrong about this.
“Not at all,” Stacy said, and Sara was annoyed with herself for being surprised. She hadn’t expected to be surprised by anything in this session. “No, I think—look, Sara, yes, I would make sacrifices for you. You know I would make all kinds of sacrifices for you and your happiness. But this isn’t one of those times. It’s not anywhere close to a sacrifice. I love Emy. I want to be with Emy.”
“I know that,” Sara started, but she suddenly found herself at a loss for words, despite all her careful planning. She wanted to make them understand her, but she realized she didn’t totally what understand what she meant herself. “But . . .”
“But what?” Stacy pressed.
“I guess part of me feels like you signed up for a normal relationship with me, and then I just sprang this weird, new thing on you out of nowhere,” Sara tried to explain. She was caught up in her own nerves and her desire to communicate clearly, and so she was shocked to hear Emy laugh.
Emy was laughing too hard to speak when Sara turned to her to try to figure out why she could possibly be laughing, so Stacy spoke for her, and when Sara turned, she saw that she also looked amused. “Sara, you didn’t think this was a shock to either of us, did you?”
“Well . . . yeah, kind of? Why the fuck would it not be a shock?”
“I mean . . . you kind of talk about polyamory a lot?” Emy ventured, sounding confused that she had to explain this.
“What? No, I don’t.”
“You kind of do, babe,” Stacy said. “But anyway, I don’t expect you to be normal. And I don’t care about being normal. Normal doesn’t work for us. If we had ever tried to be normal, we would have already been married and divorced by now.”
Emy and Sara—looked at each other, and, despite themselves, laughed. “For the record, I don’t want normal either,” Emy said. “I know you think—thought—I know you worried that I wanted you to be something you aren’t. But I don’t. Not anymore. I know you. I see you. I respect you. Okay?” For someone who had never been to couple’s therapy, Emy was good at it. Fucking teacher's pet.
From then on, Emy joined their appointments remotely when she was in Montreal and in-person when she was in town. Candace didn’t charge them extra, although Sara would have been willing to pay for it.
They’re driving north along the coast, and Stacy is playing something in the car that Sara has never heard before. It’s beautiful and soft and very gay, something about being seven years old and in love with your best friend, and when Sara asks what it is both Stacy and Emy seem to think she’s joking. She isn’t.
“Sara, are you kidding?” Emy says, turning in her seat to scrutinize her face. “This is Taylor Swift’s new record? That she released this week? You know, your close personal friend Taylor?”
Sara’s face wrinkles. “This is Taylor Swift?”
“Jesus,” Stacy says, “You really do hate the Internet. You’ve already publicly endorsed this album, so I hope you like it.”
“Okay, Tegan publicly endorsed it,” Sara corrects her, although this is news to her. She should probably start paying more attention to their socials again. “I’m sorry, this is Taylor Swift? Is she a lesbian now?”
“Sometimes people are bisexual,” Emy informs her, sticking out her hand back toward Sara to shake. “Hi, I’m Emy. Nice to meet you.”
“Taylor Swift is bisexual?” Sara asks dubiously.
“No,” Emy admits, laughing. “Not officially. God, you haven’t even heard betty yet. You’re going to lose your mind.”
In a few hours, they’re at the lavender farm.
Emy can’t stop taking pictures—of the endless fields of purple, the pale blue sky that stretches on forever. Of Stacy and of Sara. Stacy is initially a much more cooperative model than Sara, but she quickly tires of posing, preferring to roam the fields untamed. Sara would rather keep staring at the colors than look at a camera, but she can’t deny Emy. Emy, who is practically a luddite, has only just gotten portrait mode, and she’s been excited to test it out all week on subjects both willing and unwilling. So far Mickey has been her best behaved subject.
But after just a few minutes, Emy gets impatient with Sara’s inability to stand still as well. She sighs like an exasperated parent. “Don’t pay attention to me, just look dreamily into the void and pretend I’m not taking your picture.” Sara obeys, walking toward Stacy and grabbing her hand, Emy trailing behind them with her phone out. She rolls up her sleeves, and the sun feels so good on her bare skin.
Sara does think about what they must look like, sometimes. She’s used to people staring at her, of course, first for being an identical twin girl, then for being an identical twin girl who looked like a boy, for being an adult who looked like not quite a woman but not a man either, for holding hands with her girlfriend on the street, for being a semi-famous person. She gets up on stage half the year and charges people money to look at her, pays someone just to design the lights to hit her face just right. And she’s gotten used to, if not comfortable with, photoshoots, and she and Tegan are constantly filming themselves and posting it on the internet for thousands of people to see.
But that isn’t her. She’s private, really. She’s shy. As committed to accessibility and openness and authenticity as she and Tegan have always been, the internet, the media, the world doesn’t see her, really. They see a version of her that might sometimes look like the version of her she gives to Stacy and Emy every day, but it’s not the same.
She’s always known she was different, but for a while, she was able to convince herself that she was different in the same way Tegan was different, the same way that her fans are different, the same way that millions of people are different. And she is different like them. But there’s more.
She knows it’s something awful and narcissistic within her that makes her fixate on her own specialness. But the thing is, she doesn’t see herself as exceptional. She sees herself as anathema. Emy would tell her to be less self-important about the whole thing—and she has. Stacy would tell her to relax—and she has. After all, Sara is just one-third of this relationship—Stacy and Emy are just as in it as she is, so they’re just as strange as she is. But no matter how wise her partners are, Sara is who she is. And, for better or for worse, Sara is an intensely critical, sensitive, and self-conscious person, and her first instinct is always to judge herself the harshest.
She can’t accept that they’re different quite like her. Because without her—her inability to let go, her inability to stand still, her inability to be satisfied—they would never be in a polyamorous relationship to begin with. They’d both be happy with just one person. In fact, if it wasn’t for Sara, Emy and Stacy could be perfectly happy together as a couple. This is a reality that Sara likes to imagine sometimes, not necessarily in a sad way. It’s almost a fantasy for her—her two partners, happy, accepted, free. Together. In the fantasy, she isn’t dead or anything, she just—doesn’t exist, and never did. Never had the chance to make either of their lives harder.
Sara has always had a harder time than everyone else. She isn’t feminine enough, but she definitely isn’t masculine enough. She could never date boys, even when she was dating them. She was better at dating girls, sort of, but she couldn’t ever seem to keep them. Her body has never felt quite right, either, but it hasn’t felt wrong enough to do anything about it. She doesn’t feel like a lesbian, really, and she doesn’t feel like a girl, all the time, but she’s the farthest thing from straight, or a man. She’s just . . . Sara. She’d rather hold onto these words that half fit than risk alienating herself—from Stacy and Emy, from Tegan, from the fans who look up to her, from the media, from anyone else who thinks they deserve to have a goddamn opinion about her own private life.
When she thinks about it, really takes a step back from inside her own mind, she knows that she has no right to feel anything but unconditionally supported. By all counts, she has so much. More than nearly anyone else. Three (3) supportive parents, two (2) amazing partners, one (1) identical twin sister to carry half the weight of the world. She does hate being a public figure, a lot of the time, but she has management that gets her, and, for the most part, fans who support her and Tegan without conditions.
They’re right on time for their wine tasting.
Sara asked Stacy and Emy not to tell her the itinerary for the day. This was something they did often, when Sara hadn’t planned a trip herself, because it turned out that if Sara had no knowledge of their schedule, she couldn’t be stressed (and annoying and tyrannical) about sticking to it. Stacy has suggested this once years ago on one of their first trips together, and Sara had balked at the idea of relinquishing control. But it worked. When she lets go of the responsibility, it frees her up to actually enjoy the experience.
The woman who does the wine tasting asks them if they’re on a “girlfriends’ trip” and Emy answers, seriously, “Yes! That’s exactly right. We are on a girlfriends trip.” Sara breaks first; the laughter is uncontrollable. She drags Stacy down next. Emy, pleased at having made them laugh, is in hysterics for a full minute while the woman looks on in confusion, busying herself arranging the wines.
Sara feels self-conscious about her lipstick, about the length of her hair, realizing she’s been read as straight. She’s been thinking a lot recently about how people read her sexuality, how it’s different from the way people read Stacy’s, and Emy’s. Quarantine, all this time she’s been dressing and performing gender for no one but herself, and Stacy, has been both freeing and confusing.
She feels suddenly anxious, desperate to correct this woman about not just her identity but about her partners’. Half the time she’s terrified of what will happen if strangers like this know she’s gay, and recently, if they know she’s with two women, but the other half of the time she’s anxious and honestly horrified that people won’t know she’s queer, won’t know how much she loves both Stacy and Emy, how proud she is to be with both of them.
Shockingly, the woman is not deterred from attempting more Heterosexual Small Talk with them, even after their uproarious laughter. “Did you girls leave the husbands at home today?” she asks.
Stacy and Emy, who have barely recovered from their first laughing fit, struggle to keep it together. Out of the corner of her eye, Sara actually sees Emy spit-take some wine (thankfully white) into a napkin while Stacy slaps at her arm in uncontrolled glee.
“Actually, they're both my life partners,” Sara says, throwing the rest of her tasting portion back.
It’s not exactly a private wine tasting, but it’s early afternoon and there are strict social distancing requirements in place, so they’re the only people on this side of the tasting room.
The mentioned life partners stop laughing. They stare at Sara, probably wondering if she’s having a stroke.
Sara’s had to come out more times in her life than she can count. And even though it’s become easier over the years, she feels nervous every single time. In recent years, she’s been prone to assuming that everyone knows she and Tegan are gay, and it’s mostly just amusing to have to correct people who are publicly unaware of their sexualities. But since entering a relationship that’s not just queer but somehow extra-queer, she’s felt eighteen years old again: simultaneously desperate to hide and desperate to declare her truth to the whole world.
“I’m so sorry for assuming,” the wine server says. “I have a gay nephew, you know?”
When it’s clear that Sara is too shell-shocked by her own words to respond to that, Stacy turns away from her for a moment to give the woman a smile. “Don’t worry about it.”
Emy is still scrutinizing Sara closely, clearly worried she’s having some kind of breakdown.
Sara can’t handle the looks they’re both giving her, so she gets up, walks to the bathroom, locks the door, and then stares at her lipstick in the mirror. She likes the way it looks. She feels softer in it, almost pretty. It sort of feels like she’s wearing a costume, but not in a bad way.
Emy had asked her once, years ago, if she ever felt like she wanted to use different pronouns. She still can’t think about it without feeling an overwhelming wave of shame, because she had reacted in exactly the wrong way. She hates to remember, but she remembers exactly what she’d said: “No, oh my god, I’m not some kind of freak!”
Sara can close her eyes even now and see Emy’s face when she’d said that. She hadn’t even been angry, just deeply sad in a way that made Sara try frantically to talk her way out of her missteps. “I’m sorry, I’m—you’re right. I don’t always feel like a girl. But I like she. She/her/hers,” she said, wracking her brain for the details of the lesson Emy had given her months ago on the trans community. “I shouldn’t have said that. I was reacting to my own . . . my own internalized shit. I don’t think trans people are freaks. Not at all.”
It’s not that Emy ever lets her off easy, but she knew, somehow, when Sara was sincere. And Sara usually was sincere. So she’d let it drop at that, just saying, “Let me know if that ever changes, okay?”
Sara, equal parts shamed and touched, had just made careful eye contact and nodded past the lump in her throat.
She doesn’t want different pronouns now, either. She isn’t sure what she wants, but it seems like it’s just a different version of the same thing that she always wants: to be more herself, to feel more herself, to live her life as authentically as possible.
She splashes some water on her face before making her way back to their table. The server is gone and her glass is full. She takes a sip before apologizing. “I’m not sure what’s wrong with me, sorry.”
Emy reaches for her hand under the table. “Don’t apologize, sweetheart.”
Stacy says, “We don’t care if you tell people, Sara.”
“We just want to respect your boundaries,” Emy continues.
Sometimes that feels like an accusation—we’re totally comfortable with ourselves and our relationship, it’s you who isn’t, you’re the one who has these weird hang-ups you can’t get past—but, today, Sara chooses to take it for the honest and incredible show of support and love that it is. So all she says is, “I love you.”
The next and final stop on their day trip is the farmers’ market, where Emy and Stacy trail through the stalls hand in hand engaged in what appears to be a competition to see who can find the bougiest and most obscure ingredients for dinner. Sara hasn’t even heard of most of the stuff they’re buying, and she isn’t really interested. She looks at the plants, instead, takes some videos for the Instagram, then just trails behind her girlfriends, watching them.
Soon, Emy will drive them home. Sara will sit in the backseat and they’ll probably listen to Taylor Swift and Sara will probably fall asleep halfway to Vancouver. They’ll make dinner and Sara will arrange the lavender they bought at the farm as a centerpiece on the dining room table and they’ll eat an elaborate meal and drink the rosé they bought from the woman who knows they’re together and tomorrow Sara will wake up in her bed, or maybe Emy’s bed, with all of their cats staring at her.
She feels an impulse to rush up behind her partners and throw her arms around them both.
For once, she follows it.