“Oh my God, this is a photo of me when I was, like, seven,” Adelia thrusts her phone in my face, and my eyes are met with a picture of a light blonde girl with a pink sparkly cowboy hat on and full-on pink cowgirl sparkly outfit, finished off with pink boots with stars on them.

“Very Chappell Roan of you,” I comment.

“I know, right!” Adelia turns off her phone and sets it on the table, grabbing for her pizza. “Now, show me some baby photos of you! I want to see.”

“Oh, I don’t really have any. At least, not on my phone,” I admit. “But I’ll look. I think I have some from when I was five.”

“Okay, that works too.”

Scrolling through the thousands of photos my photos app has, I come across one of me when I was around the age of twelve. The photo wasn’t a particularly happy moment in my life.

“Let me see,” Adelia begs, reaching for my phone and pulling it out of my hands.

“Give it back! That’s not a good one.”

It’s too late. Adelia has already started examining the photo.

“Why were you crying in this photo? Do you remember any context?”

“Um,” I shift in the red booth seat. “I…don’t know.” My statement does not sound convincing whatsoever.

“Come on,” Adelia pleads. “You do know, you’re just not telling me.”

“Fine,” I cross my arms. “I mean, that wasn’t a happy moment, as you can obviously tell. If you look at the background, you can see a ton of pews–this was taken in a church–and I was upset because my parents had decided to punish me by taking away my phone for a week.”

“Why’d they do that?”

“Well,” I take a deep breath. “There was this girl. She was a friend. A close friend. Her name was Maria,” I begin. Adelia takes my hand, rubbing her thumb across the top part of my hand. She can sense that this is hard for me to talk about. “I really liked her. We were very close. But…those feelings started to turn into something more.”

“Oh,” Adelia’s eyes grow sympathetic.

“Yeah,” I mutter. “I told my parents about it right after the church service was over, right after the priest talked about ‘loving thy neighbor,’” I put in air quotes. “I thought, after hearing that, my parents would still love and accept me. But…they didn’t take it too well.

“My parents both looked shocked at first, and my mother kept saying over and over again that I was just confused, that I was confusing this for the deep love someone would feel for a sibling, but…I kept protesting against her denial, and then that’s when my parents registered it: I liked a girl.

“That wasn’t what they wanted for me. First off, they thought I was too young to even consider romantic relationships…but I wasn’t even suggesting one! I simply told them about my feelings for Maria.

“Second, they didn’t want me to like someone other than a boy in that way. That was not only against what they had planned for me, but also against their religious and moral beliefs.

“So…yeah. They took my phone away and they also forbade me from seeing Maria ever again. Their little plan happened to work out nicely because about a month later, Maria moved to a different city.”

Adelia is silent for a moment. In fact, she looks like she’s about to cry.

“Addie?” I ask, concerned. “What’s wrong?”

“Um,” Adelia clears her throat, swiping under her eyes to prevent the tears from escaping and ruining her makeup. “No that…I just can’t…” She can’t seem to be able to get the words out.

“You ‘just can’t’ what, baby? You can tell me. I’d never judge you.”

“I’m just a very empathetic person, especially when it comes to those that I love. That…what happened to you…that’s horrible. And it clearly still hurts you to think about this very day. I’m so, so sorry you went through that.”

“Adelia,” I whisper. Her gaze is downcast, staring at the hole in the booth seat. “Look at me. Please.”

She slowly drags her gaze from the seat to my face, and then, her eyes lock on mine. They’re almost crystal clear; that’s how light her eyes look when she cries.

“It’s okay. I’m okay. Look at where I am now. I have you, the girl of my dreams. I’m living my best life right now. What’s in the past is in the past. We learn from the past and move on.”

Adelia sniffs. “Sorry, I ruined the moment…”

“Baby, you didn’t ruin anything!” I assure her. “Not at all! I’m happy to be here with you.”

“You sure?”

“Yes,” I insist. “Why do you always feel like you ruin things? You think so negatively about yourself.” There. The question I’ve been dying to ask for a while now.

Adelia takes in a shaky breath. “I mean…I do know why, but I don’t want to talk about it. I just want to have a fun date with my girlfriend and roller blade some more and crash into more walls and people.”

I laugh at that. Tucking a strand of hair behind my ear, I reply, “Okay, if that’s what you want.”

We finish up eating, and just as I reach over for my roller blades, Adelia grabs my arm to stop me.

“What?”

“There’s a photo booth in the arcade!” Adelia exclaims.

I sit up, shifting so I can look her in the eye. “Ooh, okay. Do you want to go there first?”

“Yes!” she squeals, clapping her hands excitedly. Though that’s something a little kid would do, Adelia looks awfully adorable when she gets that excited. 

Leaning in, I kiss her quickly on the lips.

“Oh, uh,” Adelia looks around after I pull my lips away from hers. “Are you sure you want to do that in public? I mean, I don’t mind, but I don’t want you to feel pressured–”

“Adelia. I did that because I wanted to. Like I said about holding hands, we can kiss in public as long as my parents aren’t around.”

“Oh, so we have to act like platonic friends around your parents?”

“Unfortunately, yeah.”

“Oh well. I can live with that. As long as I’m with you, we’re good.”

Standing up, I stretch my hand out, and Adelia takes it; I pull her up from the booth. “Okay. Let’s go to the photo booth before anyone else does.”

“Do you have money on you, though? I think we need to pay, like, a dollar in order to take photos.”

“Yup,” I reply, patting my pockets.

Winding our way through the arcade, we finally make it to the photobooth, which is actually quite small; it’s this small rectangular prism-shaped thing with a sunshine yellow sign on top with “PHOTOBOOTH” written in bold red print.

Adelia enters first, and I try to follow suit, but I stop short when I see how small it is on the inside; there’s only enough room to seat one person. What kind of a photo booth is this?

“Come in!” Adelia calls after me, pushing the light blue curtain all the way to the side so the entrance is completely open.

“Um, there’s not enough space in there for the two of us,” I hesitate.

“Elena.” Adelia pulls me by the arm and puts me on her lap, all in one swift move. “See? There is enough room.”

 I freeze up a little bit. My heart catches in my throat, and I can feel the heat rise in my cheeks.

“Um, Elena? Are you okay?”

I look into Adelia’s ocean eyes, but say nothing. I can’t get any words out; it feels as if someone is strangling me, almost. It’s kind of hard to breathe.

“Sorry, uh, was what I did…too much?” The last two words come out in a squeak.

“No!” I finally find my voice. “It wasn’t. I just wasn’t expecting it. I guess I’m experiencing some...gay panic…right now,” I admit.

Adelia’s face fades from stone-cold concern to honey-sweet relief and happiness. She does also look…a bit smug. “I do that to you? Huh. Never thought I could do that to a girl.”

“Shut up! Now I regret saying anything at all.”

Adelia reaches over me and pulls the curtain shut. “Nuh uh. Now, are we going to take photos or what?”

“Oh, right.” I fiddle with my pocket until my hand slips in and I pull out a dollar bill, insert it, and the screen in front of us then lights up.

“Ooh, we can pick filters and stuff,” Adelia looks like a little girl enchanted by some kind of toy, what with the way she’s fixated on the screen, scrolling through the filters.

“I don’t want filters. I just want it to be you and me, our natural selves.”

“But filters are fun! Look–this one makes us look all shimmery,” Adelia moves her head around, testing different angles.

“How about I just want to see my beautiful girlfriend the way she is, without filters?”

Adelia blushes at this. Quickly, she goes back to the “no filter” option. “Well, okay. That works too.”

“Ready?”

Adelia nods.

I press the start button, and we have three seconds to pose.

Before I have any time to think, Adelia plants a long kiss on my cheek, and I smile, surprised, and that’s our first photo.

Next thing I know, Adelia is kissing me on the lips, and that’s our second photo, with Adelia’s arms around my neck.

The third one, I take the initiative this time, kissing Adelia’s cheek and wrapping my arms around her torso, drawing her as close to me as possible.

The fourth one, we both decide, to just hug and smile into the camera.

“Whew! That was so quick,” Adelia laughs. “Now get off my lap. My legs are going numb because of how heavy you are.”

“Hey! That’s not nice,” I exclaim, standing up and stepping out of the booth. Adelia follows close behind me.

Two slips of the four photos come out of the dispenser, and I grab them, examining them, with Adelia looking over my shoulder.

In the first photo, I look surprised, but I don’t look bad. Actually, I don’t look bad in any of the photos, nor does Adelia. In fact., we look adorable together.

“Aww,” Adelia gushes as she pulls one of the slips of photos from my hand, giving the photos a closer look. “We look so cute together.” Adelia looks back at me, smiling, eyes shining. “I’m so happy we found each other.”

A tear slides down Adelia’s cheek, but I’m quick to react, swiping away the tear with my thumb. I kiss her gently on the forehead. “What happened?”

“I’m just happy. I haven’t been this happy in so long. You make me happy, Elena,” Adelia breathes.

“Aww.” Now I can feel myself starting to tear up.

“Hey, look who’s tearing up now!” Adelia laughs, wiping under my eyes just as the tears come out in little droplets.

Laughing, I wrap Adelia into a warm embrace. “I love you.”

Adelia stiffens for a moment. Pulling away, she looks me in the eyes, a serious look taking over the usual softness of her face. “You…do you really?”

“Yes,” I whisper. “I don’t know if it’s too soon to say, but–”

Adelia cuts me off by planting her lips on mine, kissing me quickly, but deeply.

“...I’m guessing it wasn’t too soon then?” I concede as soon as Adelia pulls away.

“Nope. Not for me.”

We both giggle at that, and hug each other again.

I love you so much, Addie. More than you think, more than you’ll ever know, more than words can describe.