Kiss Me For Citizenship

AdrianI had thirty days left in America before they put me on a plane back to a country that would throw me in prison for kissing a man.The envelope sat on my kitchen counter, and I'd been staring at it for more than twenty minutes. My fingers hovering over a mug of coffee that had already gone cold. The coffee spilled so badly that it had sloshed over the rim and spread across the laminate, dark and slow, like blood creeping toward the edge.The Department of Homeland Security logo glared up at me in unforgiving blue ink.Notice to Appear.Three words. That's all it took to end everything.I read it again. Maybe this is the fifth time. My vision kept blurring, tears I refused to let fall, making the letters swim. Some desperate part of my brain kept thinking, maybe if I just read it one more time, the words would change. Maybe they'd rearrange themselves into something I could survive.But they didn't.Ninety-three days. That's how long my student visa had expired. And the tech st

AdrianI called Mason forty-seven hours and thirty-two minutes after our meeting at the coffee shop.I'd spent two sleepless nights staring at my ceiling, weighing federal prison against deportation, fraud against survival, my conscience against my life. The ceiling fan had gone around and around above me, hypnotic and useless, while my mind spun in the same circles. What if we got caught? What if this destroyed me? What if going back destroyed me worse?In the end, survival won. It had to.Because going back to Manila wasn't just going back, it was erasure. A slow death disguised as family duty and heterosexual respectability. It was watching myself disappear piece by piece until nothing was left.I picked up my phone before I could talk myself out of it. My hands were shaking so badly I almost dropped it twice while dialing.Mason answered on the second ring."I was wondering if you'd call."His voice was calm. Unsurprised. Like he'd known all along what my answer would be."I'm in

AdrianMason's apartment was worse than I'd imagined.It was a one-bedroom in the Sunset District, tucked into a building that looked like it had been built in the seventies and then abandoned by everyone except the landlord who still collected rent. The hallway smelled like old cooking oil and something vaguely floral that didn't quite mask the underlying mustiness.Inside wasn't much better.The carpet was beige or had been once.now permanently stained with the ghosts of previous tenants. The appliances were harvest gold and wheezed like asthmatic lungs every time the refrigerator cycled on. Law books were stacked everywhere on the coffee table, the kitchen counter, the floor beside the couch like legal barricades against the world. The furniture looked secondhand, functional but joyless.The bathroom was so small I could barely turn around without my elbow hitting the sink.This was where I'd be living for the next two years.I stood in the middle of the living room with my two