Wind hurled little meteors of ice at our faces.
“No one has ever touched me like you have,” she said. “No other boy is like you.”
Heat shimmered through me, collecting in my fingertips, my lips. She reversed it. Made me the paragon, the standard to measure other boys by.
I thought of Armin saying, I was comparing myself to you.
How could these things coexist in the world:
A girl who said I touched her with respect.
A girl who said I raped her.
I took a scalding gulp of coffee.
“Perhaps,” Tamsin said, sketching crosses in the snow, “it’s time we tell them everything.”
“Everything about what?”
“Adam, Ingrid, the flowers—”
“No.” The cup trembled in my hand. “Don’t you see? It’s him. This is his doing.”
“You think Adam is behind this? Convincing girls to shag you, then accuse you?”
“That’s exactly what I think. He’s flipping the table on me.”
Tamsin frowned. “What do you mean, flipping it?”
Shit.
“Just trust me on this, Tam. It fits too well. Adam and Jay are behind all of this. They have to be.” I shook my head, dazed. “This is surreal, being on the other side. The accused. I can’t believe him. It’s almost brilliant. The perfect irony.”
“Renard.” She laid a hand over mine. “Listen to yourself.”
“Why?”
“You sound very paranoid.”
“Yeah, well. A girl just fucking accused me of forcing her to—”
My voice fractured, crumbled. I looked away. Tried to pull free, but Tam held on.
“You didn’t force Norah,” she said. “But . . . someone hurt you, didn’t they?”
“No.”
“Ren.”
“Not me. A girl I knew.”
Her thumb ran across my knuckles. “What’s her name?”
“Don’t do this right now. Please.”
Years ago, I’d put that belt around my neck and stepped off the chair for two reasons.
The first was the girl who broke my heart.
The second was the boy who broke my body.
Mom said you were gone, Sofie. Mina was shaking as I hugged her on the school playground. A teacher watched, phone to ear. Soon there’d be sirens and flashing lights, because Mom had convinced a judge that her self-destructive daughter was a harmful influence and must stay fifty feet away at all times. To my mother, transition was “self-destructive” because I was tearing down my female identity. But to me, it was self-constructive. Not that it mattered—all my princesses knew was that I’d vanished. They wouldn’t let me see you in the hospital, Mina said. I thought you died. Kari, fearless, said excitedly, Are you a ghost?
Now Tamsin searched my face. But she didn’t push further. Instead she drew my hand into her coat, against her heart. That fist-sized ember where anger and love burned brightest.
“I’m so fucked-up, Tam,” I whispered.
“Not yet you’re not.” She squeezed my hand. “Let me get you wasted.”
———
It snowed all the way to her hotel, covering the city in pearl dust, here and there a glittering fragment of gem. The ruby brooch of a stoplight, the diamond studs of a passing car’s xenons. Evening fell, but without true darkness I lost sense of time. Before we went inside—before what I knew would happen tonight—I held her hand and walked along the river. No footprints but ours. Just us alone in this timeless, colorless limbo. Ice hung from a bench, a silver bracelet frozen midfall. Light shattered on the water in topaz shards. As if unbearably beautiful things had been hurled from a great height, smashed into the world to scatter their beauty.
Our breath steamed against the sky, white on white, lost. Our hands tightened.
The hotel bar was cozily dim, strewn with handsome calfskin couches, candles in hurricane lamps. The bartender gave a friendly nod. Tamsin sprawled on a sectional, hooked an arm over the back. Legs crossed, boots cocked. I imagined her in a classic Porsche the color of a shark, with a cigarette between her lips.
I sat a body’s width away. I could count every inch.
The bartender brought rum, and Tam raised her lowball. Melted amber dripped down the inside of the glass.
“What shall we toast to?”
Candlelight flickered over her face, kindling the gold fibers in her irises like tiny wicks. I raised my glass.
To you, bad girl. To the things I want to do with you.
But I said, “To vengeance.”
“To vengeance.”
Clink.
Fire rolled down my throat, a slow burn crawling through my veins. I watched her hand fall to the leather seat. Unconsciously, her fingertips rubbed a circle.
Look away, Ren.
“Tell me your story,” I said.
“Which?”
“The one where you kill a man.”
We sipped in sync. Without touching we held the same rhythm, instinctively aware of each other’s bodies. I could dance with her with my eyes closed.
“It’s an ugly story.”
“I need to hear about someone getting what they deserve.”
“He hurt me, Ren. Do you want to hear about that?”
Softly, I said, “Yes.”
“You’re fucked-up. Just like me.” She smiled. “You want to get angry. To get off on it.”
“I want to get you off.”
I touched her hand. Ran my fingers through hers one by one. Traced an oval in the pale heart of her palm. Her lips parted, eyelids lowering.
All these months and I still hadn’t kissed her. Not once.
Because I knew how this played out.
Same as it always did.
“Come upstairs,” she breathed.
I leaned across the couch and her body softened, slackened against me. Not in surrender but in need. I cupped her face, not kissing that mouth I wanted so badly, but the sweltering breath we shared was close.
“What if this happens,” I whispered, my words palpable on her lips, “and it changes things, and we don’t like each other anymore?”
“I don’t even like you now, you egotistic brute.”
“I think you’re lying.”
“I think I actually hate you.”
“If you already hate me, we should probably just let this happen.”
“Agreed.”
She moved to kiss me. With an excruciating burst of willpower, I pulled back. “Tamsin,” I said. Her lovely name. The feel of her in my mouth.
“Arsehole. You won’t, will you?”
“No.”
“I do hate you. Truly.”
“I know.”
Her gaze tore away. “Be a gentleman and walk me home.”
We stood, both woozy from alcohol and arousal. Sauntered toward the elevators, prolonging this.
My head said, Be smart. Let it go.
My body said, You fucking idiot.
The marble floor glared brilliantly. In the brass elevator doors, our reflections: the curve of her waist in that clinging jacket, the cut of my clenched jaw.
Ding. Our reflections pulled apart.
I stepped into the elevator with her.
Tamsin flashed a devilish smirk and said, “Going up.”
Doggedly, I watched the numbers tick.
Every step down the hall to her room was a battle. When her key card clicked in the lock I felt faint. Torture. The door stood ajar, a seam of shadow beckoning.
With the last tenuous strands of my self-control, I said, “Good night, Tam.”
“Bollocks to you.”
Slam.
I leaned against the cool metal and slid to the carpet, hands raking into my hair.
Fuck this. All of this.
I’d spent five years piecing myself together from shards. Growing stronger, bigger, harder. Now, when I’d finally built a body and a life I felt safe in, he came back. To show me just how flimsy it al
l was. A little boy stomping on my sand castles.
There’s only one thing that can cure fear.
What made me flit from girl to girl? Fear of intimacy, Tamsin said. So painfully obvious. Like a page from the fucking textbook. Survivors of sexual assault often find intimacy difficult. Sex may be accompanied by feelings of guilt, anxiety, and fear.
Norah and her crocodile tears. I could show that bitch how it’s done. How to really sell it.
Fuck her. Fuck him.
They thought they could take this from me.
They were wrong.
“Tam?” I said quietly.
“What.”
My heart leaped. Her voice was right on the other side.
“Open the door.”
I sensed her standing at the same time as I did. Her hand on the lock, the flick. Her silhouette against the pale drapes.
I stepped inside, took her face in my hands, and kissed her.
First it was just heat, all over me. A wave of it breaking on our mouths and spilling down my body. Her top lip between mine, my tongue gliding across, tasting burnt caramel. Tamsin let out a little breath that felt like the word “finally.” Then her arms circled my neck and I pressed her to the wall. The door swung shut, enclosing us in an indigo dark. Too much heat inside me—I meant to tease this out, but the slow-burning rum was lava now and it wanted to ignite and dissolve us both. My mouth on hers was animal, crude. My stubble dragged over her skin. She clawed the back of my head but her lips were supple, receiving me softly. Wild, her willingness to be roughed up. Her trust. This was where it got dangerous, I thought, my body against hers, my strength overpowering. This was where the lines blurred. Where consent could shift in a heartbeat. I pulled back to look at her.
Cool blue lit one side of her face. In noir monochrome her features were striking, lips swollen, nostrils flared. I ran my thumb across her mouth and it opened, revealing a moon-white arc of teeth. Those teeth closed sharply on the pad of my thumb. My core pulled tight, hips bucking against hers.
Tamsin laughed.
She shoved a palm into my chest and pushed. The mattress touched my calves; we toppled onto the bed. She climbed atop me but I wrestled her onto her back. So beautiful beneath me on the silvery sheet, dark and slender, her hair a black halo.
She touched the top button of my shirt, looking to me for permission.
I nodded.
Slowly she unfastened. It felt like my body coming undone, rib by rib until everything unraveled into my belly. Tamsin tugged my shirt off and stared up at me.
What will she think, what will she think.
Fingers touched my face tenderly. Sculpted cheek and jaw, traced the cords of my neck, moved without break over my pecs, my abs, coming to rest on my hips.
I didn’t move. Barely breathed.
I’d faced this moment so many times. So many times they tried to be nice, and gutted me. You look just like a boy. Not like you used to be a girl. I’d smile and take it on the chin and in my head I’d scream, I was never a girl. There was the way my body looked before, and the way it looks now. But I was always a boy inside.
Tamsin gazed at me for a long moment.
And pulled my body to hers, kissing me.
I kissed back, so relieved I almost laughed, then her bare hot skin glided against mine and I forgot all else. Other girls had seen me shirtless, touched me, but this was different. No curiosity or carelessness in her touch—it was raw need. She clutched at me so hard it hurt. Bruised me like she had before, lacing her marks across my ribs, my spine, so every time I breathed I’d feel her there. Roughed me up. I gave it back in kind, bit her lithe neck, scratched that perfect collarbone. Slid my hands inside her tee, and she arched against me and we clawed harder, harder, till blood bloomed beneath our skin. Our own black irises. I took her shirt off and crushed my body to hers. In a moment like this it was impossible to feel like anything but the man I was. No weak thoughts about shape and illusions, only her heat, her smell all over me. My mouth nipping at her throat. The taste of almond and salt. A kiss that trailed lower and lower to the dip between her breasts as I opened her bra. Tamsin let her head fall back, moaning, and I took her breast in my mouth, my hand playing down her belly.
It was too much, suddenly. Too fast, too overwhelming.
I kissed the hollow between her breasts. Paused there, heart wild, panting like an animal.
She grabbed a fistful of my hair and said, “Don’t you dare bloody stop.”
Huskily, I laughed.
I moved over her, kissed her lips, and after a fit of annoyance she went soft, sweet. Our legs tangled and the kiss turned openmouthed and intense, eclipsing everything. I wrapped my arms around her, marveling at how small she felt inside them. How pliant she was when I slid my tongue into her mouth. Absently, fingers twirled in my hair.
When we stopped for breath she said, “Fuck me, Renard.”
Everything below my waist went white-hot. “Let’s take this slow.”
“We’ve taken it slow for months. Let’s fuck.”
I groaned. Her leg was moving between mine.
“Tam, this is hard, okay?”
“Yes, it certainly is.”
I shoved a hand between us, blocking. “I’m not ready.”
All at once her body stilled. “Okay,” she said, cradling my cheek. “It’s okay. God, I just want you so much.”
You’re so pretty, Sofie. I just want you so much.
I closed my eyes and breathed. Stay in this moment, Ren. Don’t slip.
Tamsin’s touch turned gentle, reverent. We curled up face-to-face, limbs linked, tracing the lines of each other’s bodies.
“Don’t be afraid, beautiful boy.” Her lips brushed my forehead, and I felt that coming-apart inside my chest again. “I want you when you’re ready. And just as you are.”
———
Not a word, Laney said. Don’t react to Norah’s accusation publicly. Don’t even acknowledge it.
Pretend it never happened.
Anything I said or did would be picked apart, read into, distorted. So would silence. But at least silence wasn’t something you could quote, meme-ify, make viral.
Trust me, Laney said. I know how this shit works.
The outrage machine will eat anything you feed it. If you want to shut it down, starve it.
Make it as unviral, unshareable as possible.
Pretend it never happened. Just like someone who’s actually been violated pretends it never happened. To get through one more day. Then one more.
It surprised me, how much I missed vlogging. How much of an outlet it’d been. I missed sending those messages in bottles out into the universe, seeing them returned to me ten times over. The comments, the arguments, the support. Even the trolls, in some perverse way. Trolls were a sign you were saying something important. Something others wanted to silence.
It didn’t surprise me when I got lonely, logged into YouTube, and saw:
This account has been suspended.
Laney told me my only power now was silence.
But how could it be a power when my voice had been taken from me?
———
I have something to show you, Ingrid texted.
Give me good news, I replied. I can’t take more bad.
This will make you happy. Promise.
She sat me on the couch, phone on her knees. That witch-pale blond hair spun around her head in a loose chignon, elegantly mussed. Winter bleached all color but her eyes, a blue deep as blood in a vein, and for a moment I could remember the way they used to warm, looking at me.
“Another video?” I said wearily.
“Just watch.”
It started with her facing the camera, smiling. So pretty it felt like a gut punch. She was a woman now, but sometimes the girl in her bled through, too—the one I’d met before high school, the one who’d pulled a knife on the boys who’d mocked my short hair, who’d drilled me on layups and passes in her driveway, sunset sweeping ove
r us in fiery phoenix wings. Once, irked by her bossiness, I threw the basketball at her as hard as I could. Her middle finger made a sound like a stick snapping. In the ER later I cried, apologizing my ass off, but she waited till the adults left and said, Stop saying sorry. You made me stronger. There was something almost childlike about her relentlessness, something eerily pure. I loved that in her. And feared it.
Hello, princesses, she said, and swung the camera. Mina and Kari sat beside her on a park bench, bundled in duffel coats and rubber galoshes. My heart yanked toward my ribs. I bring you a message from your exiled prince.
Inge showed them a video of me on her iPad, recording their reactions. Kari, sunny-spirited, the youngest, laughed and smiled and soon grew bored, wandering off to the swings. Mina watched the screen fixedly. At the end she turned to the camera and said, Is he going to see this?
Yes. Do you want to send a message?
I miss you. One clear liquid thread ran down her face. Eyes like mine. Someday she’d look like the girl I once was, the woman I’d never become. Will you ever come back home?
There were other scenes—Ingrid buying them cookies, some YA books about trans kids I’d wanted them to read, finally dropping them off with my dad—but over it all I saw Mina’s face in afterimage.
“Turn it off,” I said.
Ingrid turned it off.
I took her phone and placed it on the table. I took her hands in mine.
And I started crying.
“Oh boy.” She squeezed. “This was not the plan. I thought you’d be happy.”
“I am.”
It was true. I felt it all over—a diffuse, euphoric tingling, a sense of oneness with my sisters, with her. Somehow I wrapped my arms around her and she hugged back, fiercely. All these years, she’d kept visiting them for me. Bringing gifts and messages. Chipping away at my parents. Dad was okay with me coming home, but Mom would never be. Not as her son. So Ingrid kept playing courier, even when we weren’t speaking to each other. She adored my sisters as much as I did.
I didn’t know how to say thank you. Instead it came out as “I love you.”
Inge stiffened. In the fading light the sapphire of her eyes turned dark, opaque.