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“I can’t believe you talked me into this,” Nancy groaned from the passenger’s side of Marjan’s car.
Her stomach was tied in knots at being this close to Marjan for so long. When she had agreed to the road trip to Miami, her geography knowledge really let her down. She had anticipated a few hours in the car, listening to music and avoiding any real conversation, but they were nine hours into their drive and all Nancy wanted to do was sleep or risk spouting her feelings for Marjan accidentally when her annoyance caught up with her.
“It’s not my fault you’ve never driven out of Texas, Nance,” Marjan teased, tossing a sour patch kid in her direction. “I thought you understood that this would be a two-day trip.”
“I thought the two-day part meant in total, not just the freaking drive there!” Nancy shot back–along with the candy–in retaliation. Marjan ate it happily but rolled her eyes when Nancy let out another groan.
“We’re stopping soon. I got us a hotel just outside of Pensacola which is only another hour or so. That’ll get us over halfway there!” Marjan was trying to be optimistic but all Nancy heard was ten more hours.
“I can’t believe we’re stopping in Florida overnight to get to Florida and that’s only half of this trip.”
“Bold coming from someone born and raised in Texas,” Marjan retorted.
“I can’t help where I’m from, Marj,” Nancy said.
“Yeah, well, unfortunately, neither can I,” Marjan muttered back. Nancy heard the annoyance in her tone and turned to glance over at her clearly frustrated face. “I don’t want to be going there either, okay? It’s just going to be my parents disappointed in me for not marrying Salim and horrified by the things I choose to do with my life. This isn’t something I want to do, you know?”
“Not really,” Nancy said softly. “You don’t… talk much about your family.”
Marjan scoffed. “Yeah, well there’s a reason for that.”
“We all have reasons for disappointing our parents but this feels like more than that. Am I wrong?”
“No. No, you are not,” Marjan admitted with a sigh. “My parents are traditional and I’m about the farthest thing from that. They want me to settle down into a respectable career and become a wife to a Muslim man and raise our children to be the same.”
“You don’t want that?” Nancy asked, turning her body as much as she could within the confines of her seatbelt so Marjan knew that she was paying complete attention.
“I want the opposite in quite literally every way.” Nancy furrowed her eyebrows and when Marjan glanced over at the silence, she sighed again. Her hands gripped the steering wheel until they were almost white before she started to speak again. “Salim was a good man but I could never love him. I knew that and I figured that maybe, one day, I’d be happy with the future we would create. My parents made it seem like it was the only option and therefore, the best. Then I– I realized, moving away from Miami and being part of the 126, that I couldn’t sacrifice so much of myself anymore.”
“That future would be a sacrifice? How?” Nancy inquired, trying not to pry but wanting so badly for Marjan to be saying what Nancy was reading between the lines.
“I want to keep being a firefighter, first of all. I love the intensity, the adrenaline rush of every call, the comradery of it all. I want my team to be the most important family to me. I can’t even imagine making one of my own right now.”
“Your parents want you to leave the 126?” Nancy tried to push away the panic that immediately consumed her.
“They want me to move back to Miami,” Marjan finally said. “This trip isn’t just a visit, Nance, it’s– Well, for lack of a better word, it’s an intervention. They want me to stop putting myself at risk, sure, but they want me to start making my religion the priority.”
“You do that, Marj. I see that every day,” Nancy reassured her truthfully.
Marjan wore her hijab at every call, even if it only proved more difficult for the job, and she took the time to pray, following each and every step that Nancy spent possibly more time than she should have googling. She cared about her religion more than Nancy had cared about, well, anything. Nancy wasn’t sure how her parents didn’t see that.
“I love being Muslin and what that means to the people before me and those that will come after me, but some of the sacrifices are just too great. I want my future to be something that happens unexpectedly, that’s a pleasant surprise to me, not some predetermined hetero wedding and picture-perfect praying preteens.”
“You say that like it’s a bad thing…” Nancy pried again.
“I don’t mean it like that. If you want to end up with some dude and have a gaggle of children, that’s fantastic! I just– don’t see that for myself.”
“Ending up with ‘some dude’ or the gaggle of children?”
“Is this the part where I actually come out to you instead of continuing to toe the line until you figure it out?” Marjan asked, glancing over at Nancy so quickly, she almost didn’t catch it. She was too busy gaping at the new–and incredibly exhilarating–information.
“And here I thought the 126 couldn’t get any gayer,” Nancy commented, hoping to break the tension that seemed to build up between them at the admission. Marjan let out a laugh followed by an adorable snort that had Nancy giggling even harder.
“Looks like it’s just you and Judd now,” Marjan said once their laughter had died down.
“Wait,” Nancy began, gaping at Marjan in the process, “you think I’m– straight?”
“You’re… not?” Marjan asked, eyes widening in surprise and another emotion that Nancy couldn’t quite put her finger on.
“Oh my god, not again!” Nancy groaned, slamming her head against the seat behind her. “First TK, then Paul, and now you ? I thought this team told each other everything!”
“Apparently that doesn’t extend to outing each other,” Marjan grumbled. “I am going to kill Paul.”
“Why Paul specifically?” Nancy asked. She had just admitted that almost everyone knew she was gay except for Marjan.
“Because,” Marjan began with an even heavier sigh than before, “I’ve been complaining to him for weeks that my crush on you won’t disappear and that it had to because you weren’t even–”
“You have a crush on me?” Nancy asked, interrupting anything else Marjan had to say.
“Can we maybe push aside that conversation for when we’re not stuck in a hotel room for the night and then a car together for another ten hours?” Marjan asked, though it sounded more like a demand.
Nancy thought about it for a moment, placing a finger on her chin dramatically as she did, only further annoying Marjan if her unimpressed glance said anything. She rarely ever had the upper hand with Marjan so she had to take advantage of it.
“I think the conversation should be had before we get to the hotel room at least,” Nancy decided.
“Why’s that?” Marjan asked, the frustration filling her voice just entertaining Nancy even more.
“I think being stuck in a hotel room the entire night with you knowing that I like you back would make it a lot more fun.”
“I– You– Wait…” That might have been the first time Nancy heard her stutter and it had delight erupting through her like a volcano.
“Hey, Marjan?” Nancy asked after a few moments. Marjan glanced over with hope in her eyes and it gathered enough courage in Nancy for her to ask the question that had been on her mind, well, since she met Marjan. “How do you feel about introducing your family to a future with me instead?” Marjan nodded and reached over to lace her fingers with Nancy’s hesitantly.
“That sounds perfect ,” Marjan decided just as Nancy brought their joined hands up to her lips to press a gentle kiss to Marjan’s knuckles. “Are you sure you know what you’re getting into?”
“With you?” Nancy huffed out a laugh. “Never–but I know it’s always worth it.”