“You’re gripping that soda water like it’s a life raft,” she said, not unkindly. “I’m Mari. I’ve been coming here since it was a dyke bar with a leaking roof. You look like you need a map.”

Leo picked up the glass. The condensation felt real in his hand. For the first time in months, the noise in his head went quiet.

“He saw you,” Mari said softly. “He recognized you. That’s the first ritual. You don’t have to earn a place here. You just have to show up.”

He took a sip. It tasted like possibility.

Leo let out a breath. “I need a whole GPS. I just… came out. At work. To my family. It went as well as a lead balloon.” He gestured vaguely at the room—the drag queen in a sequined gown arguing with a nonbinary person in a mesh tank top, the two older gay men holding hands in a corner booth. “And I don’t know how to be this . Part of… all of this.”

“First time?” A voice cut through his spiral. An older woman with silver-streaked hair and a leather vest covered in patches settled onto the stool next to him. One patch read Silent Generation, Loud Mouth .

The Blue Parrot had been a lot of things in its sixty years. A speakeasy, a disco, a briefly unfortunate fern bar. Now, in the humid Atlanta evening, it was a sanctuary. The jukebox played vintage Tracy Chapman, and the air smelled of old wood, nail polish, and something lemony from the diffuser behind the bar.