{Angel}

Angel's phone buzzed with texts on the bathroom sink, as she was bent upside down blasting the hair dryer at her freshly showered, navy-blue sheet of hair. When she flipped her mane back from her face, she dragged a finger down the phone screen, her mouth quirking.

Bri's texts were filled with their usual bubbly energy:

<mom found the most amazing place yesterday *galloping rainbow unicorn gif*>

<can't wait to show you!!>

These were interspersed with Patrick's matter-of-fact:

<what time is service?>

<you staying for soup lunch?>

<it's Tiff hi Angel xx>

Angel rapidly texted back, a grinning emoji vomiting rainbows for Bri, plus <thank youuuuu u r the best!!!> and <service starts at 10:30! yes to soup!> for Pat and his fiancé Tiffany. Probably he was driving and she was texting.

She liberally shook her magic hair dust into the roots of her mane and scrunched it up high and proud, looking a little bit like a rainbow unicorn herself. The sides were freshly buzzed around her dainty brown ears, and she ran her fingers down the tiny gold piercings that highlighted her favourite feature, smiling at herself. If all went as planned, next month she would have a roommate to try out Canadian-Filipino fusion meals and share studying angst.

Twenty-fourteen was going to be a new year and a new page for Angel Domingo. Maybe it was time for a bright new hair colour.

She flicked a lock of hair over her eyes, giving herself finger guns and a sneer in the mirror, imitating Lilo imitating Elvis Presley. She'd spent the evening at her work house re-watching Lilo and Stitch with Grace for the hundredth time. They could practically recite the entire movie together--Angel doing Lilo and Grace doing Stitch in her throaty voice. Thank God Disney started caring about BIPoC representation. When Angel was a child all she had was lily-white princesses to admire.

She'd made it to St Aidan's for every Advent service her work schedule permitted. The formality of the service style, the old hymns and spoken prayers, were unfamiliar to Angel, whose father pastored a small, charismatic congregation out east. That unfamiliarity felt safe; she was increasingly sure no one was going to spontaneously stand up and declare a 'word' against some aspect of the culture around them that was deemed sinful. The old hymns they sang couldn't have cared less about the gender or sexual identity of individual humans, and stanzas steeped in a worldview of a wrathful God and miserable, creeping humans were noticeably absent from St Aidan's hymnody.

In the midst of the strange pageantry and symbolism, Angel was beginning to recognize the kind, generous Jesus she knew personally, especially at the communion table and the weekly potluck lunches.

As she waited for Pat and Tiff in the back of the nave of St. Aidans, Angel used her phone to snap a photo of the stained glass window towering above her head, a glowing Mary holding a chubby infant on her lap, a feathered gender-neutral young person kneeling at her knees. She played with the filters on her phone to saturate the image with color, and posted it with the hashtags: #angel #worshiptheKing #namesake #sundaymorning. Her younger siblings and cousins still followed her photo stream; her older brother would probably say the image looked unforgivably Catholic. If they were on speaking terms.

The pews were three-quarters full, and Angel noticed Kurt Visser's tall, colourful figure in one of them, with Jon leaning into him, saying something--his grin flashed as Kurt laughed. A smile flitted over Angel's face as she looked away. She'd thought her boss was a very serious, non-humorous person until she started coming here and got to know the person Jon was when he was with his brother Cary, and Kurt...whatever they were to each other.

Cary was on the other side of the queer man, his dark head lifted and his hands folded as he gazed up at the stained glass, and it wasn't lost on Angel that there was a foot of space between him and Kurt's bright pink shirt, and no space at all between Jon and Kurt's bodies.

"Hey," Pat's voice caught her attention, his hand touching her elbow, and she smiled into his frank, square-jawed face.

"Found your way?" Angel asked. Tiffany was beside him, unwinding her scarf as she stared around the nave with wide eyes.

"If I'd know this place existed," Tiffany breathed, "I would have booked it for our wedding. This building is gorgeous."

Angel felt pleased as if she had anything to do with that.

Tagging behind the couple was a young man with a flop of dark hair over his almond eyes, and a pair of square glasses pushed up on his nose so large they looked like they needed their own set of windshield-wipers.

Pat turned between him and Angel. "Hey, Angel this is my friend Evan--Evan this is my friend Angel from work that I told you about." Angel glanced at him narrowly, wondering what specifically Pat had told this person, Evan, about. He'd said nothing to her.

"Hi." Evan made a small wave with his dimpled hand, smiling shyly.

"Nice to meet you," Angel said politely. She was guessing Korean or Chinese-Canadian? Evan was soft as a dumpling under his heavy overcoat, wearing a pastel sweater vest and pin-striped pants that came up a little short on his ankles.

Evan kept his head ducked as he shot quick glances around the room. "How long have you been coming here?" he asked, his eyes returning to Angel's face. She was used to reading the smooth facial expressions of Asian men and saw that he was uncertain and anxious.

She ran her hands over the sides of her pony-mane, tweaking the point at the back of her neck and taking a wild guess. "Just a couple weeks. I saw the rainbow on their website and thought I would give it a try. This gay isn't ready to pitch church in the bin quite yet."

His pink lips curved in a smile that made his dark eyes almost disappear in their folds. "Same here. My parents are trying, but their church...just isn't ready for me yet." He flicked a hand over his body, his voice soft and feminine. "I was completely surprised when Pat reached out and offered to check out this church."

"Pat is full of surprises." Angel lifted her shoulders in a shrug, her hands stuffed in her cargo pants pockets. "It's a bit old-fashioned here. But as far as I can tell, one-hundred-percent friendly to all the colours of the rainbow."

"Is that Jon?" Pat asked, using his superior height to peer around the room. He made as if to wave and call across the nave, and Angel smacked his chest.

"He's on holidays; leave the man alone."

"Oh right." Pat was still smiling. "Kurt Visser goes to St. Aidans too? It's like a who's-who of queer Edmonton in here."

The proximity of that sentence to Jon's name made Angel's scalp prickle with worry. It was none of her business how Jon behaved in his own church, but perhaps it would be best to redirect Pat's friendly, clueless energy. She steered him to a pew on the west side of the nave, purposely choosing one behind a pillar that shielded Jon's pew from view.

Pat and Tiffany fumbled their way through the read prayers, the standing and sitting for songs and the homily. When the robed woman at the front lifted the cloth off the communion wine and lifted her hands to sing the opening lines, Pat leaned over to Angel to whisper, "Can we go forward?"

"You can if you're baptized," Angel replied quietly. "But no one's going to ask to check."

"Oh, okay." Pat looked relieved.

Tiffany was looking a little stunned as the woman's simple, unaccompanied voice went up into the high vaulted ceiling. When the song was done, the she leaned across Patrick to Angel. "Who is that woman?" Tiffany asked, her eyes over-bright.

Angel smiled. "That's the lead pastor." That wasn't the title they used around here, but Tiffany came from the same sort of church Angel did and it was the title she would understand.

Tiffany blinked, her simply made-up face opening like she was going to laugh--or cry. "I love that," she said softly.

Angel smiled. She'd never in her life had a woman pastor before coming here. "Yeah me too."

By the time their woman pastor blessed them to go, the smell of French onion soup was wafting through the nave. A tall Black man bounded up to the front, waving his arm for attention.

"Lovelies, hellooo--just a reminder, choir practice is after lunch and we need all the voices we can get. You know how many of our neighbours will tippy-toe in here for our performance Christmas Eve. Even if you've never been to practice yet--" He pointed a glossy, painted fingernail across the nave, "--Jon White, I'm looking at you--" Angel heard Jon's warm, quiet laugh. "--Please come out and join us. You know these carols, y'all." The man snapped his finger for emphasis. "If you can carry a tune you come on down. Thank youuuu," he sang, pulling an invisible skirt out in a curtsy before sashaying back to his seat.

"Do you do that?" Pat's face was alive with interest as he glanced down at Angel.

"Umm not yet I haven't. I might, though." She had today and Christmas Eve off, and the lack of family gatherings to fill up her off-hours on this festive week made her sad to think about. "Why--are you thinking of joining Queer Choir last minute, Pat?" she teased.

Pat barked a surprised laugh. "Is that what your church choir is called?"

"Apparently, yes." Angel smirked back at him. "But allies and friends are welcome."

Pat leaned back to catch Evan's eye. "You sing, don't you Evan?"

"I do, yes," Evan said smiling.

Pat turned to Tiffany. "And I know you sing like an angel. Did we promise your parents we would be at Christmas Eve service or did we just say we'd swing by after?"

Tiffany snorted a small laugh. "Are you serious right now, Pat?"

"Yeah I am," Pat said. "Let's mingle with the people, hon. Get out of our rut."

Tiffany laughed, flicking her glossy chestnut hair over her shoulder. "Sure if that's what you want. I mean, I heard there was soup lunch. I'll never say no to church potluck."

And that is how Angel ended up in the echo-y church basement dipping crusty homemade rolls into a paper bowl of French onion soup, grinning at Evan's description of his engineering classmates after-hours antics, and answering a barrage of Tiffany's questions about whether there was children's Sunday school here and if they needed volunteers.

Out of the corner of her eye, she noticed Jon and Kurt beside the upright piano, their heads bent together over Kurt's guitar, conspiring. Hey eyebrows flicked up with interest. Kurt's social media had been nearly silent since his band dissolved; if he was playing something today, that right there would be worth any amount of possibly tedious carol singing.

The shout of Kurt's laugh drew Patrick's eyes to the two men, and his face grew puzzled. Jon was perched on the edge of the piano bench, touching Kurt's knee and speaking animatedly. Angel bit the corner of her mouth--Jon looked like someone had turned up the saturation on his filter, his gleaming coppery shirt picking out the warm tones in his hair and skin, his compact body radiating energy.

"Angel...." Pat said slowly. "Are we...one-hundred-percent sure Jon is straight?"

"Your boss is here?" TIffany asked, interested. "Which one is Jon?"

"With Kurt Visser."

"Oh," Tiffany started with surprise. "Wow, I didn't even recognize him." She blinked. "He is...very well groomed for a straight man," she said cautiously. "But I'm never going to claim I have some kind of 'gay-dar.'"

"My gay-dar is highly accurate," Evan said. "And I would say that for sure is a gay man." His coffee-brown eyes sparked with humor and his round cheeks were a little pink. "They were holding hands in service. I thought it was very cute."

*Just a lot of queer hair in these chapters and I'm not sorry. Nothing makes me feel confident like a nice tight buzz cut around my beautiful ears ;)

Finally a peek into Angel's world--how do you like seeing the story from her pov?

Angel is inspired by 3 different queer Filipino Canadian friends of mine, but I'm in no way an expert. If you're a PoC reader and anything flags for you please drop me a comment! I'm always trying to listen and learn.*

1968 words.