“What the hell is wrong with you?”
I made myself inhale, exhale, counting each. “Please rinse it off before it’s absorbed. It’s highly potent. You don’t want it in you.”
“I know. But you’re kind of freaking me the fuck out. Will you calm down?”
I gave her space at the sink and an imploring look. She eyed me strangely.
“Uh, dude.”
My fucking pants, halfway down my thighs.
I zipped up as she washed the gel off.
“What is going on?” she said, toweling her hands. “Were you crying?”
“I’m fine.”
“What happened? You woke me up with all that noise.”
“Sorry. Anxiety cleaning.”
Ingrid leaned on the counter. “You are being totally weird. Talk to me, caveman.”
You can’t hide shit from your best friend. Even if she’s not really your best friend anymore.
We’d been thick as thieves in high school. Girls’ basketball, all four years—I was the one to her two, running point for the Nordic queen with the glacier-blue eyes. Svensson and Khoury, the demon duo. No one fucked with us on or off the court. In college things changed. I started my transition, and the tightness between us unraveled. All you ever talk about is hormones, she said, and we just finished being teenagers. Inge was witheringly sarcastic, but one night she looked at me with abject sincerity and said, It’s like we’re not on the same team anymore. We stayed together to save rent. Exchanged inanities, like hostel guests. Is it raining today? I bought milk. It’s your turn to clean the shower. I didn’t know who she was dating, what her plans were. What she thought of the man I’d become. It was too painful to part ways and too painful to keep up with each other’s ephemera, so we fell into friendship purgatory. Ghosting in and out of rooms, starting sentences with Do you remember when and then trailing off, grieved. Once, when a Black Iris escapade made the news—we exposed a date-rape drug ring in a notorious frat by drugging the ringleaders with their own product and tying them up, naked, on the campus common—Inge watched, and said, “Social fucking justice.”
She was still my sister-in-arms. If only she knew.
“I’m broke,” I said, and more words followed, in a flood. “I’m broke, and I can’t record a video for shit, and I fucked up this . . . big project a friend was working on, and I almost—” I caught myself, laughed.
“You almost what?”
“I almost feel like I’m PMSing again. How crazy is that?”
Ingrid studied my face. Same age, but I looked years older now. T carved the softness off. “Are you seriously broke?”
“I’m sorry. I’ll have rent, just a little late.”
She sighed. “Again.”
“I can probably borrow it from Ar—”
“What about this?” Inge jabbed a hand at my shoulder. “You have the money to pay for this shit, but not the roof over our heads.”
“Ingrid. This is a medical necessity for me.”
“Give me a fucking break. You won’t die without testosterone. You might even be tolerable to be around.”
At first I hardened. It was always like this now: All emotions started as resistance. A fight inside me. Flare of acid in my throat, a chemical fuse between gut and mouth. Brace against it. Hold it back. This is why men are quick to anger—everything we feel is an assault.
In the past, my dead self would have taken her words right into the soft pulp of my heart. I would have let them hurt me. I would have felt them.
Now my mind filled with cruelties like Sorry that you don’t like me now that I like myself and You’ve kinda been a cunt these days, too. Words I used to say to her with impunity. I couldn’t say them now, in a man’s voice. It was different. Everything was different.
“I’ll have the money on the first,” I said.
“Oh, come on.” She flung her hands up. “I’ll cover you. Just pay me back when you can.”
“I don’t want your charity.”
“It’s not charity, asshole. It’s having your back.”
Neither of us quite looked at the other. Silence stretched, twisted. Then, simultaneously, we both made fists and bumped them: one-two, switch sides, three-four. In the back of my head I heard the crowd chant our names. Svens-SON. Khou-RY. Sneakers squeaking on glazed hardwood. The buzzer blaring as my feet left the floor.
Something knotted unpleasantly in my chest.
“I’m making breakfast,” Ingrid said. “Want some?”
“I’m good.”
“Gonna stop by your parents’ this week.”
“Okay.”
“Any presents for the princesses?”
“I really am broke, Inge.”
“Then I’ll pick something up. Say it’s from you.”
Water welled in my throat.
When I didn’t respond she shrugged, turned to go. My hand half rose. I wanted those fingertips back on my skin, dangerous or not. I wanted human contact. Her contact.
“Ingrid.”
“Yeah?”
There were a million things I wanted to ask. Are you happy? Do you miss what we had? Do you miss me? Instead what left my mouth was “Are you still writing for that site?”