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To say she’s never felt this way before would be a lie. What’s more accurate is probably that Marjan has never had any motivation or desire to really think about what those feelings might mean. She was engaged at 12 years old, and now she has Joe. Besides, Nancy is her friend. Not just any friend, but one of her closest friends.
It all started the day that Nancy accidentally sent a nude to the 126 group chat. What Marjan probably should’ve done was immediately close out of the photo and scrub it from her memory. That’s what a real good friend would do, right? But what she did was allow her eyes to linger for just a few seconds too long, and for the next few weeks, that picture was all she could think about.
When she closed her eyes, all she could see was the beautiful curve of Nancy’s body, the softness of her skin, in contrast with her toned stomach that she could just about see at the bottom of the photo. She wanted to reach through the screen, and back in time, and gently brush her hands across Nancy’s bare skin, warm against her own cool hands. She wanted to pull her flush against her body, so that she could just be close to her, and feel her chest rise and fall with every breath. She wanted to bury her face in the crook of Nancy’s neck, breathing in her scent, press her lips against her shoulder and shower her in soft kisses.
Marjan isn’t a prude, not by any means. She’s inexperienced, sexually, sure, because of her faith, but she doesn’t live under a rock. Plus, it’s not like she’s never experienced romantic and sexual attraction or desire, ever. There was that hiccup with Salim, when she realized she might have romantic feelings for him, until he went and ruined it by kissing her, of course, but that’s besides the point. And Joe – he was so sweet, so funny, so caring, and while she doesn’t quite know yet if she can say she’s in love with him, she certainly liked him a lot.
She’s not even sure what this all means. She’s seen a woman’s naked body before. She’s been in many a women’s changing room in her life, and people are not shy in there. In fact, she’s shared a changing room with Nancy for the last five years.
But there was something different about that picture. The way that it was shot, the way the light highlights every curve and contour of Nancy’s body; it stirred something in Marjan’s gut. Is this what people mean when they say they have butterflies in their stomachs?
It’s like the photo unlocked something in her brain, something that she suspects, upon a little introspection, she might find has always been there.
When Marjan was 14 years old, she had a best friend, Naomi. She was everything Marjan wasn’t; the yin to her yang, the sun to her moon. Where Marjan was outspoken, brash, and confident, Naomi was quiet, nonjudgmental, and empathetic. In many ways, Naomi helped Marjan become the person that she is now.
14-year-old Marjan had all of the confidence and spunk that she still has today, but without anything grounding her, not until she met Naomi. They met on the first day of soccer tryouts in freshman year. Marjan remembered the way some of the girls avoided her gaze when the coach asked them to pair up. She was used to this; it usually took people a little bit of time to look past their preconceived notions about her, because of the way she looked, and in recent years, because of the way she dressed. But Naomi, sweet Naomi, immediately locked eyes with her, and gave her the biggest smile she’d ever seen.
She stepped around a pair of blonde girls to get to Marjan, and said in a cheerful voice, “Hi! We have the same shoes, and so I thought maybe we could pair up?”
Marjan looked down at her shoes, and then at Naomi’s. She was right, they were identical. Which isn’t normally that extraordinary of a feat, but Marjan had begged her parents for these special edition hot pink and lime green cleats. They weren’t standard fare, nor were they cheap, but she wanted them so badly, and she’d traded in many weeks of hard labor in their backyard for them. If there’s one thing that Marjan can never resist, it’s a statement piece. And who says you can’t look good while playing high school soccer?
Marjan looked back up at Naomi, smiling. “Well, I never say no to someone with great taste,” she says. “I’m Marjan.”
“Naomi.”
And so began one of the greatest friendships of Marjan’s life. They were inseparable. Every semester after their first one, they made sure to sign up for all the same electives, so that they could be in as many classes together as possible. They’d hang out after school together, studying, watching movies, and Marjan’s favorite, just lying around on one of their beds in each other’s company, not necessarily doing anything at all.
It was all perfect, until the summer before junior year. Two things happened that summer. First, Naomi got a boyfriend. Marjan understood, logically, that she just simply wasn’t Naomi’s priority anymore, and that was part of growing up, but it didn’t stop her from feeling resentment towards not only Naomi’s boyfriend, but Naomi herself. Did their friendship mean nothing to her now that she had a boy in her life? Marjan had a fiance, and it’s not like she ever chose him over Naomi. She shouldn’t have felt this way, and part of her brain knew this, but it still felt like a betrayal.
Then, at the end of summer, Naomi’s dad got a promotion, and they had to relocate to Philadelphia, and by the time Marjan’s mom told her about it, they were already gone. Marjan cried for days. She cried because she was angry – angry that Naomi didn’t have the guts to tell her herself, angry that she didn’t make more time for them before she left, angry that she chose her stupid boyfriend over her. But ultimately, she cried because she was heartbroken.
She didn’t necessarily think of it this way at the time, but looking back on it now, through the lens of a woman who has lived a lot more life, she thinks that that was probably the first time she experienced true heartbreak. Sure, she’d experienced grief and loss, but there was something different about the way that her chest tightened every time she thought about Naomi. How, for the first few months of junior year, she’d have to excuse herself a few times a day to go to the bathroom and cry spontaneously. Everyday, having to walk through those halls that she once walked together with Naomi, laughing, arm in arm, as if it were them against the world, felt like having her heart ripped apart over and over. Some days, she would be filled with rage. Other days, she’d feel like she could barely even breathe.
Sure, Marjan had other friends, and she made new ones, but none of them could fill the cracks that Naomi left behind. In the end, only time could do that. And by the time she graduated from high school, she no longer thought of Naomi unless someone else prompted it. She no longer missed her.
Amongst all the confusing emotions she feels about this whole situation, one of the more prominent ones is guilt. Guilty, not for whatever developing feelings she might be having for Nancy, but guilty, for potentially having feelings that betrayed her friendship with Mateo. Guilty, because she knows that Joe deserves to know she’s having doubts. Guilty, because she thinks she’s taking too long to figure out what this all means so that she can decide what is the right thing to do.
Marjan wants to talk to someone – needs to talk to someone – about all of this, but despite the fact that the majority of their friend group is queer, she doesn’t actually know who she can confide in with this. Nancy was, undoubtedly, out of the equation, but the thought of bringing this to anyone else in their Catan crew felt wrong. Like she would be risking the dynamics of not only her relationships with them, but that she’d be risking the entire family they’ve built over the last few years. She couldn’t do that to them.
She feels a bit silly, having a whole existential crisis about something so fundamental at her age. She’s not a teenager anymore, with a lifetime of love and romance ahead of her. She has lived her entire 28 years of existence as a straight woman, and she doesn’t know how to just accept that she’s been wrong about herself the whole time. She takes pride in her assuredness, her self-confidence, and if she’s being honest with herself, these revelations are shaking her to her core.
Marjan’s distracting herself by mindlessly scrolling on Instagram, when she comes across a photo of that weird firefighter from LA they met during the wildfires a couple of years ago, Buck. She’d kept in touch with the firefighters from the 118 on social media over the last couple of years, but she hasn’t really been in direct contact with any of them other than Eddie, whom she exchanges the occasional text message with. But his newest photo piques her interest – it’s a photo of him and another big, burly man, who honestly kind of reminds her of Buck a little bit, but he’s kissing Buck on the cheek and it’s clearly an intimate photo. Unsurprisingly, Buck does not have a caption on his photo, which is unhelpful, but she clicks on the button to view comments, and…bingo.
therealhenriettawilson it’s about time you let tommy make the grid!
chimneycakes i knew him first
taylorkelly ❤️❤️
dr_karen you two are so cute <3
maymay_g so, when’s he coming to family dinner?
Marjan double taps on the photo, giving Buck a like. She doesn’t know him well, but he looks happy, and she’s happy for him.
The way that Hen and Eddie talked about him during the wildfires though, she was so sure that he was straight. When TK told them all about how Buck made a pass at him, Marjan had even laughed at him, teasing him for being so full of himself that he would just assume any man being nice to him was hitting on him. TK had insisted at the time that his gaydar was pinging, but the rest of the 126 just laughed it off.
All of a sudden, Marjan gets an idea. Maybe this is a bit weird, considering she’d only met the guy once, and only really interacts with him on social media, but she’s desperate for anyone to talk to at this point. She clicks on Buck’s profile, and clicks the “Message” button.
firefox: hey! i know this is kind of out of the blue, but i was just wondering if you’d be free to chat sometime?
firefox: not trying to hit on you, just to be clear
firefox: just need some friendly advice
theevanbuckley: whoa! a celebrity in my inbox!
firefox: haha. very funny.
theevanbuckley: i’m just kidding
theevanbuckley: what can i help you with?
firefox: you free for a call? it’s probably easier to explain over the phone than text
theevanbuckley: i’m just in the middle of a shift right now, but does tomorrow morning work? around 9am my time
firefox: yeah, that works for me.
theevanbuckley: 🫡
firefox: thank you, by the way. in advance.
theevanbuckley: jeez, you’ve got me worried
theevanbuckley: should i be worried?
firefox: no no, we’ll chat tomorrow.
theevanbuckley: 👍
She gets a phone call from an LA number the next morning. She’d texted Eddie last night, asking him to give Buck her number, and to say he was surprised would be an understatement. He was relentless with the questions, and she’d promised to let him know at some point, when she knew exactly what there was to tell. If there was anything to tell.
She picks up on the third ring. “Hey, Buck.”
Buck’s voice comes booming through her phone, loud and clear. “Hey, Firefox.”
“If you keep calling me that, I will hang up.”
“Hey, you’re the one who asked me to call you,” he quips.
“Details,” she scoffs.
“Anyway,” his voice softens a little, but retains its raspiness. “What’s going on? I know you said not to worry, but I figured it’s gotta be pretty important for you to ask me out of nowhere for help.”
Marjan gulps. She’s been thinking about this all morning, what she was going to say, how she was going to approach the topic. She knows it’s all kinds of weird to talk about it with someone who was barely an acquaintance, and she’d almost talked herself out of it numerous times. She might be brash and impulsive, but she wasn’t inconsiderate, and she knows that she’s probably crossing some sort of a boundary here.
“Listen,” she starts. “I want you to know that if at any time anything sounds uncomfortable to you, or you don’t want to share anything, or I’ve crossed any line, please, please , stop me at any time.”
“Okay…” he says, drawing out the word into an upward lilt, almost like a question.
“Um, so, I saw your picture with your…boyfriend?” she asks, hesitantly.
“Marjan, are you trying to ask me out?” Buck asks in response, his tone incredulous.
“No!” Marjan is quick to interrupt this line of thinking. She mentally kicks herself for starting off so poorly.
“Oh, okay,” comes Buck’s reply on the other end of the line. “Yeah, Tommy. He’s my boyfriend, why?”
“Can I ask you a personal question?”
“I mean, I feel like you kind of already have?” Marjan winces, but Buck continues. “But yeah, go ahead.”
Marjan took a deep breath. “When we met, at the wildfire,” she begins, and Buck hums in encouragement. “Did you mean to ask TK out?”
There’s a brief silence, before Buck’s laughter roars through her phone. He doesn’t stop for what feels like forever, and when he finally does, his answer comes in gasps. “I’m so sorry, I just completely forgot about that, and it’s just so funny in hindsight!”
Marjan’s ears pick up at his response. “So you didn’t know you were,” she pauses slightly, trying to find the right words, “into guys, at the time?”
“Oh god, no. I mean, I’ve always checked out a hot guy’s ass, but I thought that was totally straight behavior until pretty recently,” he chuckles. ”My sister and boyfriend set me straight. Or not straight, I guess.”
Marjan felt herself loosening up, the tension from the uncertainty of how this conversation would go leaving her body. Buck was pretty easy to talk to, and she smiles a little to herself, thinking that if they lived in the same city, they could probably be pretty good friends.
“Why?” Buck’s voice interrupts her train of thought. “If you don’t mind me asking.”
Marjan hesitates. If she says this out loud, she’ll be sharing this piece of herself that she’s never shared with anyone before, and that scares her. But what’s life without a little risk, right? So she dives in, reservations be damned.
“I’ve recently been…thinking. A lot. But I just don’t know if I can trust my thoughts, if that makes sense?” she waffles.
Buck hums in contemplation. “I think I know what you mean. Was there something that happened that prompted these thoughts?”
“Kind of?” Marjan isn’t sure if the nudie incident, as Mateo liked to call it, could really be considered something , but she supposes it’s not nothing . “Long story short, I saw an intimate photo of one of my best friends, and now I can’t stop thinking about it. About her.”
“Ah.” Buck pauses, before continuing. “For me, it was when Eddie started hanging out with Tommy, without me, and I started feeling left out, or jealous, I guess. And then I took it out on Eddie, accidentally maimed him, and then Tommy came over to apologize, and he kissed me.”
Marjan is speechless. First of all, Buck is a terrible storyteller. She’s struggling to piece together how these events tie into one another. For one, she thinks it sounds more like Buck was jealous of Tommy because of Eddie, not the other way around, but she, of course, keeps that to herself.
“And what happened after that?” she asks.
Buck chuckles. “Well, we went on a date, and Eddie showed up with his girlfriend at the time, and I went a bit crazy, and then Tommy left me on the side of the road.”
“I’m sorry, what?!” Marjan exclaims, suddenly feeling defensive of her friend. At least, she hopes she can actually call him that now.
“I deserved it, don’t worry,” he reassures her. “Anyway, I talked to my sister, and Eddie, and Tommy gave me a second chance, and here we are.”
Yeah, Marjan is very confused at this entire sequence of events, but she carries on. “So how did you know?”
“Know what?”
“That what you were feeling was actually attraction? I just keep thinking that if I actually were attracted to women, I’d have known before now, right?” Marjan finds herself rambling, but she can’t stop. “I mean, I’m a pretty self-aware person, and I’m pretty in tune with my emotions. But I have a boyfriend, and I was engaged to a man for most of my teens and early twenties. How do I know what I’m feeling isn’t just a phase?”
Marjan spits it all out as quickly as possible, not giving her brain a chance to catch up with her mouth and stopping her from voicing her fears and worries. That’s really what it comes down to, in the end. She wants to be able to logic her way out of this, to make sense of all of the different emotions she’s been feeling the last few weeks, but she isn’t able to ever come to 100% certainty on anything, and that uncertainty paralyzes her.
“Well, I don’t know about you, but I’ve come to realize that life is too short to not trust your gut.” Marjan suddenly remembers that he almost died in a lightning strike; she remembers Eddie telling her about it.
“Maybe it is a phase,” he starts to say. Marjan bristles at this. This was not what she was hoping to hear. “Or maybe it’s not,” he continues. “Either way, you’ll never know if you don’t lean into it.”
“But what if I blow up my whole life, only for it to not be real?” Marjan whispers, her deepest fears finally being spoken out loud.
Buck is silent for a little bit, and she almost thinks that he’s dropped off the call. “Can I be honest with you?”
“Please.”
“I think, if it is something that is taking up so much of your mind space, it’s pretty unlikely that it’s not real,” Buck says, his voice softer than it’s been the entire conversation up until this point. “If you explore something with this woman you can’t get out of your head, and it doesn’t work out, and the next person you date is a man, what then? Do you magically become straight again?”
Marjan ponders on this. She’s never thought about it this way before.
Before she can even gather her thoughts enough to formulate a response, Buck continues speaking. “I don’t know who this person you’re in love with is, but it seems like she’s gotta be a pretty special woman, to capture the heart of Firefox. If I were you, I don’t know if I could give up on that without trying.”
She sighs. “It’s not that simple, Buck.”
“Try me,” he challenges.
“She’s in a happy relationship. With one of my best friends. And they’re so good together. Not to mention, I have a boyfriend, too, who is so nice, and kind, and everything I had ever wanted.”
“Had,” Buck says. “You said, everything you had ever wanted.”
Marjan is stunned into silence. She realizes that Buck is right. Joe is perfect, on paper. And he’s a great person, one of the best she’s ever known. But she has this sinking feeling, just like she now knows about Salim, that he’s not her person. She’s starting to wonder if a man ever could be her person at all.
Marjan sighs. “I just feel like an imposter, you know? Like I just woke up one day because I saw a photo of boobies or something and now suddenly I’m a lesbian?”
Buck scoffs at this. “Please. First of all, you don’t have to rush to slap a label on it. And for what it’s worth, I think that if you spend some time digging through some old memories, I think you’ll probably find something there that will look and feel pretty differently now than it did back then.”
“Like you with TK,” Marjan offers.
“Like me with TK,” Buck agrees, laughing again at the memory.
He stops abruptly. “Hey Marjan, I’m so sorry, but I’ve got to go,” Buck says, apologetically.
“Yeah, of course. Sorry for taking up so much of your time,” Marjan says, concerned. She makes a mental note to check in later to make sure everything’s okay. “And thank you. Seriously.”
“Anytime, Firefox.”
“Bye, Buck.”
She hangs up, still as unsure as she was before the conversation about what she’s going to do next, but at the very least, she feels like she can finally admit something to herself. She’s in love with Nancy Gillian.
Marjan’s first order of business was to break up with Joe. Regardless of what she ends up doing with her feelings for Nancy, she knew that she needed to end things with Joe. It wouldn’t be fair to him, or herself, to let things continue as they were. She knew that despite not having answers to everything, she knew without a shadow of a doubt that Joe couldn’t ever be anything more to her than a dear friend, and lying to a friend just isn’t something Marjan is able to do.
It was hard, she thought, knowingly breaking someone’s heart, even with the confidence that it was the right choice to make. She’d never had to do this before. With Salim, he was the one who ended things, and even then, she realized that she was never truly in love with him, but rather just the idea of him.
In the moments leading up to the breakup, her heart physically ached, a heaviness encompassing her insides, and she choked back tears. Joe had been there for her, literally helped pick her back up again when she was going through physiotherapy, and she was about to go and break his heart. She’d felt a pit in her stomach, and she wanted to throw up.
She’d texted Joe to meet her at the park near his place after he was done with his clients for the day. It was quiet that time of day, so it was private enough, while still being neutral ground for both of them. The last thing she wanted to do was to do it in a place that he was going to have to relive over and over again.
All things considered, he took it pretty well, which Marjan predicted he would. He listened to her calmly, without interrupting her, and when she finally told him everything, all her doubts, her feelings, and her revelations about herself, he accepted it. He accepted her.
He was hurt, of course, and he’d said just as much, but he understood where she came from. She’d even asked him if he wanted to hit her or take out his anger and hurt in any way. He’d only gaped at her, incredulous that she would even suggest that.
In the end, they’d both agreed that once some time had passed, and they’d both had enough time to process everything, they could meet up for coffee, as friends. It was as amiable as any breakup could be, and certainly less disastrous than when Salim had dumped her.
Marjan left the park that day, her heart heavy for the sadness she unleashed upon Joe, but with a weight lifted off her shoulder. She doesn’t know if he’ll ever truly know how grateful she is that he was the one she was with in that moment; that if he were any other man, this may not have gone the way it did. She’s grateful for his love and his acceptance of every piece of her, even if it hurt him in the process. And so she remembers this, and makes a promise to herself to try her hardest to keep this friend in her life.
“Hey Marj?”
Marjan looks up from behind the shuffleboard table at TK, who’s struggling a little with the espresso machine. He looks like he could use some help, so she walks over to see what’s up.
“Hey buddy,” she greets him. “What are you trying to do there?”
TK grunts as he struggles with the portafilter. “I’m trying,” he tugs at the handle, “to get it to click into place.” He finally lets go, the handle sticking out at a weird angle. “It got jammed.”
Marjan gently pushes him to the side with her shoulder, taking over the machine. “How many times do I have to tell you, you can’t force it in?” She wiggles the handle from side to side, until it finally loosens up and pops out. She goes ahead and places it back correctly, before pulling a shot for TK.
“Thanks Marj,” he beams at her.
“I got you,” she smiles back.
“Actually, while I have you here, Carlos and I are trying to figure out the best day for our next Catan night. We’re thinking maybe next Saturday? Does that work for you and Joe?”
“Oh, um, Joe and I broke up,” she says. She’d been trying to find a good time to tell her friends, but she didn’t think announcing it around the family dinner table at the firehouse was the best idea, so she’d just kept putting it off.
“What?!” TK exclaims, his mouth wide open in shock. “When did this happen?”
Marjan shrugged. “Two days ago.”
TK’s brow furrows, his eyes drooping downwards in that concerned look that he sometimes gets. “Oh my god, Marj, are you okay?”
“Yeah,” she replies, handing him his coffee. “I ended things, actually.”
TK looks surprised at this. “Oh,” he says softly. “Do you want to talk about it?”
“Maybe later?”
“Of course, anytime you want.” TK wraps her up in a hug, and she can feel tears welling up in her eyes, not from sadness, but just from the sheer overwhelm of all the raw emotions she’s been feeling over the last few weeks. TK being so nice to her when she’d been the one to break Joe’s heart was cherry on top.
The tones go off, and over the intercom, a voice is calling for medical. “Gotta go,” TK says as he pulls back from the hug. “Love you, Marj. Text me if you need me, okay?”
“Yeah, I will. Thanks, TK.” she says, her voice cracking at the edges.
Marjan’s tying up her shoelaces and packing the last few things into her bag when she hears footsteps coming in through the changing room doors behind her.
“Hey Marjan.” Nancy’s voice is soft and hesitant, as if she’s approaching a wounded animal.
She turns around to face Nancy, who’s standing on the other side of the narrow bench where her bag is laying open.
“Hey Nance,” Marjan says, forcing a smile on her face. She’s still a little raw from her exchange with TK earlier, and she doesn’t like getting emotional at work.
“So, don’t be mad, but TK told me about you and Joe on our call just now.”
She sighs, knowing that this might happen. It wasn’t a secret, or anything, and she had been looking for the right time to tell everyone anyway, so she silently thanks TK for getting the hardest one out of the way for her.
Nancy takes her silence as a prompt to continue. “Are you okay?”
Marjan once again feels the tears pricking at the back of her eyes. She is okay, but whenever someone asks her that question, it’s like the floodgates just open. Nancy doesn’t say another word; she steps over the bench in one long stride, and envelops Marjan in a hug.
For a brief second, Marjan’s body goes stiff and she can’t breathe. But that second passes, and she exhales, easing into the hug. In the back of her mind, the thought of whether or not this was allowed does cross her mind, but she lets herself have this moment, anyway.
She pats Nancy on the back, indicating to Nancy to pull back from the hug. “I’m okay,” she says. Nancy doesn’t look convinced. “I promise,” Marjan reassures her, with a smile. She squeezes Nancy’s hand, before letting go, zipping up her bag, and heading out the door.
In that moment, she realizes that she truly is okay. She had been so caught up in her feelings for Nancy, specifically, and her guilt about potentially causing complications between her and Mateo, that she didn’t really stop to think about how far she’s come personally in a mere few weeks. She doesn’t have all the answers, nor does she feel like she can commit to any one label just yet, but she feels more like herself than she thinks she ever has before. And she’s proud of that, proud of herself.
For now, she’s happy seeing her friends be happy, together. Nancy and Mateo love each other, and Marjan loves them. She doesn’t want to get in the way of that. She doesn’t know if she’ll ever tell Nancy how she feels. She doesn’t even know if she’ll ever tell TK or Paul; maybe this is just a little secret she can keep to herself, even after she eventually comes out to them.
And strangely enough, she doesn’t feel sad about it. She feels free. Free because she’s opened a door, deep inside of her, and she has no intentions of ever closing it again.