Apple was sitting in the car and chewed on on her nails. She was on the way to one of her fathers political events. He had organized some kind of anti gay meeting – a topic that had always been important to him, but left him particularly restless since he read about Alabama – and of course he had to show off his wonderful family. As much as she loved her father and the spotlight, she didn't feel like it today. Raven just wouldn't leave her head and neither would the storm of emotions that she had to deal with since a few days. Guilt most of all, but also something else. The realization that Raven didn't care about her at all kept bugging her. It was like a vampire that has bitten on to her mind the moment it happened and has been draining her ever since.

The last days she had not dared to go near Raven and every time one of her indifferent looks hit her he just wanted to sink into the ground and never be seen again. It bothered her so much, she even prayed for it to stop every evening, but as always god did not seem to mind her suffering. Why do I even bother?

The car stopped and James opened it, ready to escort her into the building since some gay people and their allies were protesting in front of it. They were demanding to stop the hate. Didn't that actually sound wonderful? Why was it that only those who opposed her father ever demanded that? And was her father not just trying to protect everybody from sin? Raven came to her mind again. She was not exactly sinful. In fact – considering how they bullied her – thinking about how she had never even attempted to fight back, or to get revenge was prove of her wonderful character. Guilt made Apples heart feel terribly heavy again. Why had she been so terrible towards such a wonderful person? Because of what her parents taught her about poor people? It appeared wrong. It was wrong. What else had they taught her that was more than questionable? The seed of doubt began to sprout in her mind, leading her to question everything her parents ever told her.

"Miss White? Ready to go?" James opened an umbrella to protect her from heart shaped confetti the protesters kept trowing around everywhere. So dangerous! A sarcastic smile appeared on her face to replace the artificial one she always kept there.

"Sure."

Her father's event was held in a gym that the school it belonged to rented out to make some extra money and unlike usual she wanted to get out of the room as fast as she possibly could. Her doubts had turned into disgust the moment she realized what the people here were thinking and demanding. They looked down on other people because they were in love. She had done that! No wonder Raven hated her!

You wish. She doesn't care about you at all!

The thought made her frown for a moment.

She went on stage and smiled like she was supposed to, when she was supposed to and left the hall right after that. She needed fresh air. She needed a hate free space. Just how could she have bought into all that nonsense before?

She went to the bathroom, simply because of the lack of better ideas and bumped into a woman, that was just about to leave.

"Oh! Sorry. Are you alright?" She asked. She was old. Maybe seventy years old, dressed a little like a hippy and smelled of an unfamiliar kind of smoke. Her voice sounded rough and she had some kind of accent.

"Honestly?" Apple looked around to make sure non of her fathers associates were around. "No. But that's not your fault."

A gentle smile appeared on the old lady's face. "Let me guess. Your parents dragged you along and you don't like the way they talk about gay people?"

Apple was hardly surprised that she was able to get to that conclusion. It was likely written all over her face.

"Good guess. What are you doing here?"

"I am one of the gay people your parents like to talk about." She answered with a sarcastic tone in her voice.

"You are?" Now that she said it it was obvious. What else would she be doing here? "Can I treat you to a coffee?" Apple wanted to start over with her opinions of people. Prejudice had done her no good, so maybe it was time to try and be open minded. To get to know people instead of judging then without knowing anything about them.

The old woman shrugged. "Sure."

"So. You must have had an interesting live, right? When did you come out?" She asked, suspecting that life must have been hard of her back in her days, and then realized that she might have been rude. "If you don't mind talking about it, I mean."

The old lady laughed. "It's alright. If you really want to know, I came out when I was about your age I think. It was a terrible time back then. Women were expected to marry a man and to be his caring housewife, in most parts of the world we couldn't even vote at the time, you know? However I didn't like that prospect. To be honest the idea of having sex with a man alone was deeply repulsive to me, but being his loyal servant? Hell no! Of course at some point I fell in love with a girl for the first time. Marrying a man seemed more distant than ever and I knew exactly that everything would end up being just fine as long as I could be together with her. Turns out she was hetero though." She laughed like she was making fun of her own gullibility back then. "After she rejected me, she told everybody that I was into women and my parents being the good Christians that they were, kicked me out and never spoke to me again. Come to think of it I never came out in that situation. I was outed by her."

Apple tried to ignore the guilt that came up, when she thought about the parallels between the girl in the story and herself in regards to Raven and asked something to keep the conversation going. "How did you know that you were in love with her?"

"Just the usual symptoms. I liked to look at her, my heart skipped a beat every now and then when I was around her and I wanted to make her happy and a little later fantasies about kissing her and other stuff. Those kinds of things, you know? Thoughts and feeling you only have when you are in love."

Apple could imagine what she meant by other stuff just as precisely as she could imagine her parents scolding her for it. She sighted. Just how did her family turn out to be such a hassle? She loved them, but their political believes would make her life anything but easy.

"I see you have your own love problems young lady. Take it from an old hag like myself: However it turns out, it'll be fine in the long run as long as you don't die."

Love problems? She? No! Right? Now that she thought about it, she did want to see Raven smile and her heart skipped beats around her all the time and now that she thought about kissing Raven she actually liked the idea very much. Wait! What?! She was in Love with Raven?!

"Um, thanks." She stuttered while her face was a picture of utter confusion.

I am not in love with Raven!

Her imagination proved her wrong by bombarding her with ideas about kissing Raven and cuddling with Raven an doing other stuff, which gave her a fuzzy warm feeling and the kind of heartache that comes from wanting something and not getting it.

Apple buried her face in the palms of her hand and sighted again. She was in very deep trouble.