Mara leaned beside him, close enough that their shoulders touched. “Why wouldn’t you?”
“I don’t know if I belong,” Leo said. “At the march. With everyone.”
The rain had softened the graffiti on the alley wall, but the colors still bled into one another—pink, blue, white, and the warm glow of a single bulb above a fire escape. In the narrow gap between a laundromat and a shuttered bakery, Leo pressed his back against the wet brick and let out a breath he felt he’d been holding for twenty-two years.
The alley held its silence. Somewhere beyond the buildings, drums were being tuned for the Pride parade. Voices rose in laughter and chant, the polyphonic roar of thousands of people claiming space.