Work Text:
2022
April goes back to Georgia for GOTV. She can’t just sit in Massachusetts in ivy covered buildings discussing elections like they are academics, discussing her home like there aren’t thousands of lives on the line.
She feels sick. She buys a plane ticket.
In the Boston airport, she texts almost everyone she knows from Atlanta, asks them if they voted early, by mail, or are going to the polls on Tuesday.
When she lands, there is a barrage of texts of voting plans. Even Luke Creswell responds, a Sterling took me to vote early :).
April sighs, looks at her phone. She hasn’t texted everyone. Especially not people she slept with a year and a half ago and still thinks about far too much. Even states and states away. Even though she is now surround by cool queer college girls. Even—April shakes her head. This weekend isn’t about residual feelings. This weekend is about—
AS: Did you:
a) vote by mail
b) vote early
c) make a plan to vote at your polling place November 8
SW: FINALLY!
AS: Excuse me?
SW: You texted LUKE before me!!! Luke!!!!
AS: Well, I’m more worried about his voting plan than yours. You should take it as a compliment.
SW: Sure.
AS: You never answered the question.
SW: B!
AS: Thank you. Is your roommate voting? Are all your friends voting? Is everyone you know voting.? Unless they are republicans, then do not remind them.
SW: Ew offended you think I would be friends with republicans. Besides you in high school ;)
SW: Though calling us friends back then is a little… simplistic.
SW : But yes yes yes. I even started asking my tinder matches if they had a plan to vote.
AS: That’s my girl.
SW: You know that you saying “that’s my girl” works better than anything tinder throws at me.
April smiles at her phone. Full on grins. Like she’s fucking sixteen again. This is not why she came back to Atlanta. Not to do anything besides get out the damn vote. But still—
AS: So I’m back in town until Wednesday.
SW: !!!!!!!!!!
AS: I’ll mostly be doing election stuff, but we always need more volunteers.
SW: Send me a link.
__
It’s hot in Georgia. In the 70s in November. An easy in to say climate change is on the ballot. April sees her sweat on Warnock and Abrams lit shoved under doors. She knocks out 50 by noon on Saturday, before chugging a water bottle until she can kind of breathe again. She thinks she’s shaking a little. But 50 is nothing. She has to keep going, everything is too important and too scary and—
“I have a question for you.”
April is on the doorstep of an older woman, talking through her screen door. She eyes April like she is the enemy. April smiles at her, infusing cheer in her voice.
“Of course. That’s what I’m here for.”
“How come you politicians come around here whenever there’s an election, but not the rest of the time? Do y’all actually care about us during the rest of the year?”
April swallows. The problem is, it’s a very good point. The problem is, she’s right. The problem is that electoral politics in this country are so fucked. But she has to believe they can get better, they will get better, she can make them better.
“I know,” she says to the voter. “I agree. But I believe the candidates on the ballot are actually people focused. I believe Stacey—”
The door shuts in her face. April takes in a deep breath. She’s shaking. She wants to pound on the door again, wants to ask the woman if she knows what is at fucking stake here. Wants to cry.
Instead she keeps going.
She doesn’t feel like debriefing after the canvass. The office is cheery, people are hopeful. April can’t ruin that. Can’t bring this northern cynicism back here. Not that April hasn’t been cynical since five years old.
She sits on the back steps instead, tapping her foot, checking her phone, then feeling sick at what she sees on it.
“Have you eaten?”
April turns around to see a vision of Sterling Wesley holding a paper plate with pizza on it.
“Hi,” April breathes. Like she’s stupid. Like she isn’t top of her fucking class at Harvard.
“They told me you were back here,” Sterling says. She’s nervous, April thinks. “And I figured I’d bring you some food. I remember you didn’t eat when we did that PSAT prep course and you almost passed out. Don’t want that again! Not that pizza is the healthiest option, but hey, can’t hurt.”
She’s still so fucking cute when she’s rambles.
“Thank you,” April says. She scoots over on the stoop.
Sterling sits next to her. Their thighs touch. April pretends not to notice, takes the pizza instead. It’s heavenly.
“So,” Sterling says. Her fingers tap on her leg. “I know you’re not… I know I haven’t seen you in a minute—”
It’s been three months. The end of summer break. Sterling had a boyfriend. It had been a year since they slept together and April hated hated hated that Sterling had a boyfriend, hated even more that she was so mad about it. So affected by it.
They’ve broken up now. April doesn’t care. She doesn’t. She wonders if Sterling is seeing anyone new.
“But,” Sterling continues, “I feel like you're normally front and center at these political things. Is there—is everything all right?”
Sterling’s eyes are so big, is the thing. They are so big and caring and pure, like the most important thing to her is April’s well being. It’s been a while since anyone has looked at her like that.
So April, embarrassingly, mortifyingly, starts crying.
It comes on so suddenly she can’t stop, and then tears are streaming down her face and she’s letting out big gasping breaths and then everything that has been rattling in her head for the last few months spills out of her mouth.
“It’s just—I don’t—I feel so fucking useless up in Cambridge. I feel like I am talking these things to death with other rich white kids while the world is crumbling. People are out here every day, doing the work, and I’m studying it? I’m sitting up there, useless and distant, when I need to be here.
“I need to stop these people. These people who want us… to have nothing. They want control over everything and they won’t fucking stop and it’s just… they’re all just like him.” April squeezes her eyes shut. “You know—you of all people know, Sterling, that if my dad wasn’t locked up in prison, he would have been there on January 6th, he would have been fighting to burn us all down and now it’s like… now it’s like there are a thousand versions of my dad running to control the state and I’m so fucking scared they are going to win. I’m so fucking scared they are going to win and I couldn’t do enough to stop them.”
She breathes out a long breath that turns into a sob, unable to stop. She feels a soft press on her shoulder, feels her body being slightly nudged so her face is lodged into Sterling’s shoulder, Sterling’s arm warm and solid around her. And April cries even more then, floodgates open.
She doesn't know how long she sits there, on the back porch of a campaign office, weeping into the shoulder of the first and only girl she’s ever loved.
“I’m sorry,” she eventually croaks out. “I’m not usually—I don’t know what got into me.”
“Don’t apologize,” Sterling says. “It’s okay to feel scared and hopeless. We all do. You’re not—you know you’re not single-handedly responsible for the state of Georgia, right?”
April sniffs. “Yeah, obviously.” It comes out a little mean, but Sterling just laughs.
“But you do so much more than you even know. I wouldn’t be out here if it wasn’t for you. Do you think Luke would know who his local candidates were if it weren’t for you?”
“He said you took him to early vote.”
“Yeah, because I knew you would want me to, April. You’re so… you are putting so much good in the world. You have to know that.”
April breathes out, long and shaky.
“I don’t know. It’s been a hard year.”
Sterling doesn’t ask if April means politically or personally. April appreciates not having to clarify. She takes a slightly more steady breath.
“It’s weird. I always dreamed of getting out of Atlanta, but now that I am, it feels wrong. I just… I don’t think I’m done with this place.”
“Yeah?”
April swears she hears hope in Sterling’s voice.
“Yeah,” April says softly. Her cheek is pressed against Sterling’s neck. “I think I might… I’ve always known law school is next and I want to do it here. Practice in Georgia. Help people here.”
“April, that’s amazing.”
April leans up, smiles at Sterling.
“I haven’t really told anyone that yet.”
Sterling grins. “So I’m special?”
“Don’t get to full of yourself, Wesley.”
Sterling grins even wider, knee bumping April’s. April looks at her, feels a chasm inside of her.
April is going back to Harvard in four days. April is nineteen and filled to the brim with anxiety. April doesn’t know when she will see Sterling Wesley next. But all April wants is to sit on the back steps of a campaign office with this person who miraculously always makes her feel better. It hurts how much she wants it.
April wants so many things it hurts. She wants Stacey Abrams to be the next governor of Georgia. She wants to have several diplomas. She wants to wake up and check her phone and not feel all-consuming dread. She wants to never see the man who raised her again. She wants to fall asleep in Sterling’s arms again. She wants to love her country.
She doesn’t know how many of those things she can get. She really doesn’t. Uncertainty has always been April’s enemy, but right now—right now she tries to make peace with it. She eats a slice of pizza. She smiles at the girl she might still be in love with and she tries to remember the good in this world. Then she’ll knock more doors. Then she’ll fly back to a place that doesn’t feel like home yet and she’s starting to think never will.
But she’ll be back.