“So, when did you know that you were…” Tanisha paused for a moment, looking between Sophia and me, “you know?” she finished, looking a little embarrassed. It had taken quite a bit of patient coercing from Sophia, with a little support from me, to get her calmed to the point that she was willing and able to talk. And her first question was one that I should have seen coming.

Exchanging a look, and nod, with Sophia, I decided to give an explanation, without going into too much of my background or details.

“Let me preface things with the statement that my background is complicated.” I let out a soft snicker, thinking back to my father and his treatment of me. Therapy had helped me get some perspective, allowing me to understand that my perception on some things had been skewed, but that did not change my lived experience. He might not have intended to make me feel threatened and sometimes worthless, but he had and as someone with a duty of care towards me, that was unacceptable. I felt Sophia gently squeeze my arm, providing me with silent comfort and strength.

“Due to that background, into which I will not delve further, I had pretty much accepted that romance and romantic relationships were not part of my future, so I had never given much thought to prospective partners or the whole dating-idiocy running rampant around the school I had been attending.” I felt my smile soften, as I thought of the quick kiss that Sophia had pressed on me, during that outing that had been our first date, even if I had been unable to understand that at the time.

“When Sophia kissed me for the first time, I was stunned. I may or may not have walked into a lightpost right after.” I admitted, causing both of them to giggle.

“What made you fall in love with her?” Tanisha asked quietly, maybe trying to get a new perspective, allowing her to sort her own feelings. I felt myself blush, just a little, as I tried to form the feelings within me into words that were more than just incoherent rambling, only to quickly realise that such a feat was beyond me.

“There is no single thing that I could point to. Nor do I think there would ever be one. I could tell you hundreds, maybe thousands of small things that I love about her, I could ramble for hours and hours, but those ramblings would never even come close to voicing the important part. Which is that I love her.” I explained, fully aware that my logic was as circular as it could be, basically stating that I loved her because I loved her, but if there was one thing I did not want to try using laws of logic on, it was love.

“Aww.” Sophia grinned, moving around Tanisha for a moment to give me a gentle kiss.

“I guess now’s my turn, right?” she asked, sounding a little amused.

“Similar preface, there’s shit in my background I won’t get into. Seriously messed up shit, though messed up in a different way from the shit in her background.`` She shook her head, likely remembering those days, searching for her brother, hunting down gang-members and looking for answers, on top of the suffering her parents were subjected to.

“I wasn’t really looking for anyone, but there was that girl in school, when I transferred in. Beautiful but the rumors were not all that friendly. Some said she only took the stick out of her ass to beat people to death with, others claimed she had frozen people with a stare and there was a lot more, making her sound like she was bathing in the blood of children, eating baby-seals and wearing a coat made from the fur of puppies, you know, Evil with a capital E.” she grinned, while I had to work keeping my expression under control. My lack of connections at the time, my lack of friendship remained painful.

“But then I got to know her and realised that she was actually a really smart and sweet person. Maybe a little stubborn, focused on maintaining a decorum you could only describe as old-fashioned, like some sort of noble from days past.” she paused, maybe realising that she was getting too close to things that should remain unsaid. “Anyway, I realised that there was more to the person than the mask she showed everyone around her, that she was a wonderful person underneath. So I asked her out on a date, even if she apparently had no idea that it was one.” she finished, not really explaining, but getting Tanisha to nod nonetheless.

“How did your family react?” Tanisha asked, now looking at me again. Sadly, there was not much I could tell her, not if I wanted to keep my original identity under wraps, so I could only shake my head, a sad smile on my face.

“That falls into things I do not want to talk about. Suffice to say, my father was never told and I do not think he would take it well. But this is my life, not his.” I explained, clenching my teeth to keep myself from continuing. Getting out from under his thumb had been a cherished dream of mine for years and while it had taken some rather extreme measures in the end, I had accomplished my dream.

“Her situation was unique, to say the least.” Sophia added, again squeezing my shoulder. “Well, everyone’s situation is unique, but hers was more unique than others. Or especially unique. Anyway, when I told my father, or rather, when he caught the two of us, he kinda lost it. Granted, the whole situation was messed up beyond all recognition, so my situation might not really be comparable to yours, either.” she chuckled, realising just how weird the situation we had been in was, now that we tried to use them as examples.

“Could you tell me what happened?” Tanisha prodded, getting a nod from Sophia in return. The following, strongly redacted, telling of Sophia’s story left Tanisha rather wide-eyed, the part about her brother dying, her mother vanishing and her father joining a cult sounding more akin to something out of a story than something that would happen to a person.

But while I doubted that the story gave her a relatable perspective, it most certainly managed to distract her, both from the identity-crises she was having and from the hangover she undoubtedly still suffered.

While Tanisha was distracted by Sophia’s story, I decided to be a little nosy and try to find some information on her family. While I had briefly met her parents, there had been very little interaction but I was somewhat curious.

Galatea and I started combing the easily accessible information first, using the usual search-engines to get an overview, before filtering and refining the criteria we were working with. That way, we managed to set up a public profile of her father, a relatively conservative preacher, and her mother, a wife and home-maker, within a few minutes. From there, we started to delve deeper, checking family connections and relations, which was where I found something interesting.

While Tanisha’s father had inherited the ministry from his father, her Grandfather, archived newspaper-articles hinted at a second son, who would be Tanisha’s uncle. Yet, there was nothing about that person, in the last three decades without an obvious reason for the disconnect.

At that point, my curiosity was fully aroused and Galatea and I started to put a lot of processing power behind it, using a few semi-legal backdoors into normally not accessible data-bases to collect more information. It was almost criminal just how wide-spread some of the back-doors were, especially when it came to access of communication-meta-data, as if they had been intentionally created.

Finally, after I had broken a few dozen laws and deeply invaded the privacy of Tanisha’s family, I focused back on the world around me, a smile on my face.

“You should tell your father, though maybe not on the phone.” I advised her and could see her face scrunch up in fear. “I have a feeling he will be a lot more reasonable than you would expect, though I cannot say the same for your mother.” I added, causing her to frown.

It was a safe bet to make, after all, her father was talking to his brother regularly, a phone-call every Saturday evening, always for at least thirty minutes, more often for over an hour. A brother who was the proprietor of a gay nightclub on the other side of the country and had been married to another man, their marriage on the day it became legal in their country.

“If you like, I know a few people who you might be able to talk to, people with a more relatable background than the two of us. Hopefully that will get you started on understanding yourself, and in turn, stops you from drinking too much. Drinking to have fun is alright, drinking to excess is not, okay?” Sophia asked, the fact that her voice turned almost motherly making me chuckle in amusement, given their respective physical sizes.

“That might be good.” Tanisha agreed, giving me hope that the conversation we had forced on her would be the first step on her path to getting better. Sadly, it would take some time to walk it, just like it took me some time to get perspective on the trouble my father had put me through.