Once a Stranger

Chapter 83: Pride

A/n: I published a new story today: The Scent of You.
I would love it if you take a look at it and give me feedback :)

Pov y/n

It's June, which means it's pride month, which means it's time to be extra proud.

I've been out for a while but June never gets any less exciting.
A bit of the excitement might also be because we're gonna fly over to LA at the end of the month to get married there.

But I'm also looking forward to going to pride this year.
Last year I totally forgot that and we were also quite busy but this year I want to go.

My home town is too small to have its own pride festival and a lot of people were probably too conservative as well. But New York City is definitely big enough for its own pride and I am really happy to attend it this year.

It's not the very first pride I'm going to, I went to one during college, for which I had to drive over an hour with the car to a city around that had a pride festival.
It was small but better than nothing. This will be the first pride I'm celebrating with my girlfriend though, so that's amazing.

Scarlett is also excited about this and instantly agreed to go with me when I asked her. She hasn't labelled herself yet, which is absolutely fine and she also doesn't need a label at all.
All I care about is that she loves me and she definitely does, no matter the label.

The media knows by now that Scar is dating me and she also gave a little statement about being queer, so it's not a problem.
It can be really annoying to have to think about this because it's nothing I was ever faced with growing up.
I always just did what I wanted to do, not caring what other people would think. But since Scarlett is a celebrity, she has a lot of eyes on here and therefore had to talk to her management about this before agreeing completely.

Honestly, if they would have said no, I would have talked to them and explained why this is none of their business. But luckily they didn't disagree, allowing us to have a great day together.
Rose was excited as well and declared that she will join us before we could even ask her.

I think it's sweet and amazing how open she is about these topics because many children don't quite understand the concept, which is fine and also sometimes the parents fault.

Rose on the other hand understands it and supports it, which I adore. Without wanting to pressure her into anything or labelling her, I do think she isn't straight either but that's hard to tell from the outside.

Going to pride needs a bit of organization though because it's a huge event with many people and especially crowds of people.
Luckily, none of us get panic attacks because of that but we also don't want to develop them throughout this event. Scarlett's biggest worry is to lose Rose, which I totally understand because Rose is a child and smaller than most of the other people.
Therefore she can easier get lost or overseen in a crowd.

We talked about how to handle the situation and for a moment Scar thought about buying a backpack with a leash on it to always have Rose close but that would be annoying in crowds because the leash could be a tripping hazard and cause chaos.
Besides, Rose is eight now, I doubt she would agree to wearing the backpack.

We ended up deciding that we will write our phone numbers onto her arms so she is able to call us on our phones if she gets lost.
We'll also decide on a spot near us that's not crowded where we will meet if we lose each other.
And last but not least, we will hold Rose's hand or make sure to have a safe eye on her or a hand on her shoulder or anything else in that direction.

Luckily, pride is at the beginning of June so we can actually attend it.
I also looked up when the pride in LA will be but we aren't there that early in the month but New York will be great as well.