My feet point inward as I walk through the grocery store with my right hand firmly grasping my mother's. I watch them with a scowl as I try to correct how each step lands, knowing she'll chastise me for it the moment she glances down and sees. Fix your feet, Lola, people will stare at you. Feet straight, Lola, like the path you walk for the Lord. My feet are straight, it's these stupid legs I can't straighten out!

The store seems more crowded than normal suddenly, and I squeeze my mother's hand just a little tighter as I step in close. She glances down with a scowl and rips her hand away.

"Are you trying to cut off my circulation?" she snaps. "Hand on the cart!"

I swallow down the lump in my throat and blink away the tears as my hand grips onto the side of the cart so tight my knuckles turn white. I can't let her see me cry. She hates it when I cry. This is why I can't take you anywhere, Lola! It's always a production with you! I'm sorry, Mommy. I'm trying not to cry so much.

We stop in a crowded aisle and she steps away to browse the shelves. I focus on my feet again, stepping in place repeatedly to practice straightening each one. It's only a few minutes that she's away when I look up and realize I can't see her anymore.

"Mommy?" I call out. A few people look down at me but keep walking.

The chatter in the store gets louder, and somehow it's seeming more crowded than it is on the day before Thanksgiving. My hand drops from the cart as I nervously lurch forward in search of her, spinning as I move in case she pops up behind me. I'm too short to see above the displays and cold cases, so I run around them as I move.

She's wearing a navy blue windbreaker, the same one she always wears when it starts to get cold out. But her normally-unique attire is useless to find her, because I keep seeing it on complete strangers as I turn in aisles desperately.

"Mommy!" I scream again. No one seems to notice me this time.

My breath comes faster as I keep searching futilely, shelves whirring past as I bolt between them and my heart feeling like it's about to explode from the pain of not having her near. I can feel the hot tears streaming down my face already and I don't even care if she's mad. I just want to find her.

Finally, I do. She's walking back down the same aisle we'd been in, heading straight for the cart. She pauses when she reaches it and glances around briefly, not seeing me running behind her.

"Lola?" she calls out.

"Mommy!" I yell back, feeling a wave of relief wash over me.

It's no use. She doesn't hear me. She pushes the cart forward, continuing to glance around as the aisle crowds up again and it gets harder to see her.

My heart can only beat so fast, and I'm sure it's at its limit now. I'm shoving past people and they don't even notice. My mom keeps walking.

"Mommy!" I cry out again.

It's so quiet. It feels like I don't have any air in my lungs to scream with. She keeps walking.

"Mommy!" I try again. It barely makes a sound.

"Mommy..." I whine inaudibly, reaching out for her as she turns out of the aisle.

Mommy... mommy... mommy, why can't you hear me?

I wake with a start in my bed, my heart still racing and my thoughts still running wild. It takes a moment to get my bearings before I exhale heavily and fully relax into my pillow again. It was just a dream, the same stupid dream that's been haunting me since childhood.

I'm twenty-five now, officially on my own in the world and perfectly capable of walking with my feet straight. It's always been hard between my mom and me though, and from an early age I got the sense that motherhood had never been in her plans. You can't just live the way you want to, she'd explained to me, you have to live for God. Getting married and having children is the best way of living for God, so of course that's what she did. It infuriated her then, when I had the audacity to tell her that I didn't want to live that way. She'd given up her happiness for me, and she expected me to repay her by doing the same.

As much as I would love to do exactly as she'd always hoped, it's impossible. I don't even like men. God thanked her for being a good Christian with a lesbian daughter, and it never ceases to ruin a conversation between us when the topic of my future comes up. That's why I left my little hometown in Minnesota and came to LA, to get away from her harsh gaze and unachievable expectations. I admit I may have been a little naive in expecting the distance to be some magical cure-all for the way I've always felt, but I had to try.

It doesn't matter. Dwelling on it never helps. I roll onto my side with another heavy exhale and close my eyes in a futile attempt to sleep. Instead of sleeping, I toss and turn for hours while my inner monologue chastises me relentlessly for my inability to just be normal. Just sleep! You've got no problem doing it after lunch at your desk! Just fucking SLEEP!

Lo and behold, it accomplishes nothing. It's around four in the morning when I'm finally tired enough for my brain to shut up, just two and a half hours before my alarm to get ready for work. I wake to the sound with a bitter mood to start my day. I hate having insomnia on a Sunday night, it makes the rest of the week completely suck.

I stumble through my morning routine grumpily, taking way too long in the shower and staring at myself for an eternity in the mirror in search of part of me I like. I'm too thin, too short, the hair hanging just past my shoulders is too blonde, and my pale skin and pale blue eyes give me a ghostly look that would scare you to see me at night. The bug-eyed glasses look certainly doesn't help. Just like that, my morning is ruined.

The one redeeming quality of every day is my job, and my mood lifts as always when I step into the elevator. I work for The People Agenda, a non-profit dedicated to bettering the lives of everyone through widespread acceptance of all our differences, with a focus on uniting the straight and LGBTQ plus communities. We run ad campaigns of all kinds, using every form of media available to us from radio and TV to billboards and magazines.

My job is writing for our ad campaigns and submitting editorials on related hot topics to local and national magazines and newspapers. I took the job as an internship my last summer before graduating, and I was one of the lucky two from my group to get hired on as a permanent team member.

"Lola, where have you been?!" Kyle squeals dramatically when I come into view.

He's already sitting at my desk with his laptop out and a coffee for each of us, his blonde hair styled up and back like every emo guy in 2016. He's the other lucky one from my internship group, and we've been best friends since the day we met. It's easy to be his friend. He doesn't care about the fact that I'm gay like all my friends back home did; he is too. It's just a side-note in our friendship, and not the butt of every joke made between us.

"I'm not even late," I counter with a scowl as I glance at the time on my phone.

"I got here before you and that means you're late," he responds decisively, sitting back in a huff with his arms crossed over his chest.

I drop my bag on the floor and sit in my chair beside him. "What's got you here so early anyway?"

"Girl, do you ever check your emails?"

"Before work? No."

"Well you should have, because we've got a big project starting today!" he says giddily, scooting closer and putting his laptop in my hands. "Read."

It's opened to an email from our boss, Alex, sent at six o'clock this morning, because they still haven't figured out how to delay their emails until working hours. I skim quickly at first, slowing down when I realize just how big this project is. It's the biggest we've ever done. We're not funding it ourselves; this time we've got a financial backer who wants something groundbreaking, and they're willing to pay just about any amount for a story they believe in. All we have to do is find that story and share it with the world.

"This is incredible," I muse aloud in awe.

"Right? Isn't it?" Kyle agrees excitedly.

"Any ideas on what we might do?" Mariluz chimes in as she pulls up a chair on the other side of my desk.

She was our mentor when we came in as interns, but the three of us clicked like we'd been friends our entire lives. I was starstruck the first time we met, instantly recognizing her tawny skin and shoulder-length puff of kinky brown hair from The People Agenda's "Any Way Is OK" campaign, which she served as the face for.

We all have our own desks now but mine has become the gathering hub for the three of us every day. It makes the workday fly by, and Alex doesn't mind it as long as we all submit our work assignments on time. If not for our arrangement, Kyle would probably never submit anything on time.

"It should be a biopic, those are popular right now. How about Benji Bravo?" Kyle suggests, leaning back in his chair as if this is our choice.

"I think he's a little out of our league," I answer with a laugh.

"I don't know about that," Mariluz disagrees with a knowing smile. "One of our interns may or may not have a connection."

Kyle's arms fly out toward Mariluz and he grins big. "Look at that! We've already figured out what we're going to do! What are we doing for lunch?"

"It's a little early to be planning lunch, Kyle," Alex's voice interjects.

The three of us look up at them as they approach. Alex likes to avoid being labeled by telling people as little as possible about themselves. We don't know their age, though their gray pixie cut suggests they've been around a while. We don't know their sexuality either, as Alex has always maintained that their private life is just that: private. The most we have to go on is that they are non-binary, have always been non-binary, and do not take kindly to being called a female in any way.

"Well I finished everything else I need to already," Kyle responds confidently. "Benji Bravo biopic for the project. Send it over, they're going to love it."

Alex's eyebrows raise in skepticism. "He's certainly on our list of possibilities, but if I'm honest, I'd really like to do something a little less obvious. Maybe we could highlight someone who isn't already a well-known and well-loved gay media personality."

Kyle lets out a defeated groan and drops his head on my desk. "It's too early for this."

"Maybe a night shift at McDonald's is a better fit for you," Alex responds flatly.

His head turns and he grins mischievously at Alex. "You'd beg me to come back just because you miss my vibes."

Alex rolls their eyes. "Get working before I decide to test that theory out."

Kyle scoffs in offense as he sits up, grumbling "meanie" under his breath. Satisfied to see him at least feigning work, Alex turns their attention to Mariluz and me.

"Any ideas from you two?"

I shake my head as I reach for my paper cup. The coffee hasn't woken my brain up enough to really get it going yet. Mariluz scrunches up her face and sighs.

"I want to highlight someone Latino, but I'm worried none of them will want to do something so exposing," she laments.

The gears start slowly turning in my brain as I think about it. "What if we didn't make it about a single person, but rather the queer experience as a Latino person?" I counter. Mariluz appears to consider it.

Alex nods thoughtfully. "That's a possibility. Is there a specific community you had in mind? Something local?"

"Actually, yes!" I answer excitedly, suddenly remembering a recent conversation I had in a coffee shop with a Mexican-American trans woman who was shunned by her family. "Last weekend I met someone who—"

The loudest shriek I've ever heard abruptly erupts from Kyle beside me and he jumps to his feet. His hands alternate between fanning his face and covering his mouth, and he can't seem to rip his eyes away from his computer screen. He jerks one arm toward it and points for us to look at what he's seeing.

"Oh my God, oh my God, oh my God," he continues frantically, unable to find other words.

Alex, Mariluz, and I rush over from our spots to look at Kyle's screen, and my jaw drops as I take it in. Posted to a celebrity gossip site just minutes ago, there's a picture that seems to have been taken from outside of a hotel room. It shows a man sitting on the end of the bed, with another man leaning over him as their lips lock tight in a passionate kiss.

I'm not sure who the one standing is, but I'd know the one sitting from miles away and without my glasses. His face has been plastered all over my bedroom walls since middle school, and his voice has sung me through all of my lowest moments right up to this day. It's none other than Chris Ellington, lead singer and rhythm guitarist of arguably the best band to ever exist, Unsent Souls. But... he's not gay... is he?

"Rigo?!" Mariluz shrieks out in shock.

"Oh wow. That's certainly unexpected," Alex comments.

"Is this real?" Mariluz demands, still struggling to grasp it.

"Of course it's real!" Kyle fires back, leaning in to tap the up arrow key.

The headline reads "Mexican Rapper Rigo and Unsent Souls Frontman Chris Ellington Lock Lips in Spanish Hotel." For a moment we're all quiet as we soak it in. A realization suddenly hits me.

"This is it. This is our story," I tell them excitedly. The three of them look up from the screen at me and Kyle's face instantly lights up.

"Um, yes!" he agrees eagerly. "This is about to be the biggest story for the next five years and we have got to be the ones who tell it."

"Hang on, what story?" Mariluz interjects quickly. "What if this was just a one-time thing?"

Kyle lets out a hearty laugh. "No way, girl. I don't know how far this goes but I would bet my whole year's salary that this," he points at the picture on the screen, "isn't the whole story."

Alex sighs pointedly as they cross their arms. "This is nothing more than conjecture. I don't want you guys banking all your time on something so... fresh, and worst of all, unconfirmed. You're not getting anywhere near them to talk about this any time soon. Yesterday they were already out of our league, but today they're playing an entirely different ball game."

"I can do it," I insist confidently. "We'll do our research and we'll find a way to talk to them. I know we can." There's no one better to tell Chris's story than me, after all. I'm his biggest fan.

"Don't bank all your time on it," Alex repeats firmly. "I want other ideas from you three at our meeting on Monday. I'll be submitting the one we decide on that afternoon, and I will not submit an idea that we don't have a shot at actually doing."

Kyle starts to disagree. "You don't know if we—"

"Shh. No. Don't," Alex cuts him off, waving their hand dismissively above their head. "I'm not saying you can't work on it at all, I'm saying don't waste all your time on it, please. Is that understood?"

They look between the three of us for confirmation, and we all nod as their gaze shifts. They nod once with satisfaction at our compliance and step away, leaving us to figure out what our next steps are as a team.

"Okay, first thing's first," I begin. "We need to figure out how they even met."

"I'll search Tumblr," Kyle announces.

"Tumblr?" I laugh as I glance at him.

He meets my eyes with a grin. "No one has theories like the Tumblr girlies, and they include proof. If anyone knows, it's them."

"How about you, Mariluz?" I ask her without looking away from my screen.

She doesn't answer for a moment, so I look over at her. She looks up to meet my gaze as I do, and she appears lost in her thoughts.

"Sorry," she exhales. "I just don't really know how to wrap my head around this."

"What do you mean? It's just a picture, we don't really know anything else," I remind her.

"I mean Rigo is not a representative for us. An ally, maybe, but he's never taken pride in being one of us. His songs are all about women, the dancers in his music videos and on tour are all women... he just can't be gay," she explains, still in disbelief.

Kyle looks up from his research at her pitifully. "Girl, have you ever heard of 'the closet?' I think he's been in it."

Mariluz rolls her eyes and shoots him a serious glare. "When you have some proof, come talk to me."

"Oh I will, girl. You'll be the first to know when I have his homoerotic text messages in front of me," he teases her. He turns to me quickly. "Chinese tonight. We have work to do."