The fog had stayed for days, and I was afraid I might never get home. The roads were impossible to drive, and my mother would kill me if I missed the holiday dinner again this year.
“You work too much,” she would grumble into the phone, “You know, back in my day a pretty girl like you would find a man and settle down. Why do you waste your time with all this work?”
My heart sank as I heard her call me a “pretty girl.” I’d been out as non-binary for a year now; since last New Years. Maybe she forgot…but it was more likely she wanted to remind me of who she wished I was: her perfect little girl with long golden hair.
That hair had been chopped into a super short pixie cut, and my Catholic schoolgirl skirt was replaced by slacks. Then her praise had been replaced by discomfort that I was indeed…her child.
The truth was that I did find a man, and I was going to settle down. But we had only been dating for 6 months, and she would definitely not approve of him. He wasn’t exactly the clean cut doctor or lawyer I was sure she expected for me to marry. He was more of the blue collar worker with a scruffy beard who I met when he helped me with a flat tire on the side of the highway one day.
He was my hero. My knight in shining armor. But I asked him not to come with me, and as I waited for the train, standing in a thick fog, I couldn’t help but feel more alone than ever.
My father would have liked him, if he were here. Who knew where he was. He took a train one day, too.
I could hear the clack clack clack of the train as it approached with a shrill scream from its whistle. I wanted to scream, too. But I didn’t.
The train came to a halt in front of me, and as the doors opened with a screech, I held my breath. I was frozen in the fog. I couldn’t move from the platform. My heart was too heavy, and it held me in place.
The silence stopped time, and inside I was crying for help.
Then, there was a hand on my back and the familiar scent of bourbon and cologne wafted through me. As he stepped around in front of me, the fog parted and I could see him clearly: my knight.
“I thought you might be missing me already. I was missing you.”
I wrapped my arms around him, his beard tickling my face and asking me to smile.
“Let’s get on the train and get you home for dinner,” he whispered.
“I’m already home,” I smiled, looking up at his twinkling eyes.
The train doors closed and it clanged off out of sight, and we walked back to our place and had dinner. Just the two of us.
There was no need to ride a train that night.
I would wait until the fog lifted.
Elizabeth Penn 