“That doesn’t mean shit.” Her foot slid across my lap, thrust between my thighs. Nerves lit with pain, and arousal. “Don’t be naive. Laney is ruthless. She’ll do anything to get what she wants.”
“I’m familiar with the type.”
Our eyes locked. Against the wan morning sky she was a statue carved from opal. Sun turned her cami translucent, traced the contour of the breasts inside. Her curves were blue shadow. For months—years, actually—I’d been too daunted to stare like this. Don’t look at me with that fucking male gaze, she once said. The same gaze that had adored her before I boosted my T to cis male range. Why is it different now? I’d asked. When did it cross the line from adoration to objectification?
It’s predatory, she said.
You always look at me that way.
But I’m a girl, she said.
So?
So girls can’t be predators.
Wrong, I thought, but she’d ended the argument by pushing me onto the bed and unbuckling my belt.
“What are you doing?” I breathed now.
Her foot ran up the inside of my thigh. “I’m fucking horny.”
“Ingrid.”
“Talking about hurting men gets me off. You too. I can feel it.”
Her voice made me shiver. It was vapor coming off a hot spring, a long-buried heat.
Halfheartedly I said, “Don’t. Stop.”
“Take that period out,” she said, her foot kneading, “and the meaning changes completely.”
I was hard as fuck. I’d been battling an erection all night, first over Tam, now Inge, and I couldn’t fight it anymore. Embarrassingly, I was wet, too. It’d been so long since I got wet.
She always did it to me.
“This is fucked-up,” I said.
“I know. That’s what makes it hot.”
“No, it’s fucked. You’re a fucking lesbian, Inge.”
She leaned closer. “And you have a fucking pussy.”
Something snapped in me, a spasm of furious eros, inseparable rage and lust. Denying and desiring me in the same breath. Fucking with my head, like she always did. I wanted her to feel how much that hurt. I could make her feel it. With this body’s strength, its ability to focus on something so single-mindedly it would deafen me to her pleas until I was done. Like the men I destroyed. How do you hurt them? she’d asked, and this was the answer: my hands clamping her thighs, my body shifting over hers. Our limbs twisted, tangling.
Then I realized the wetness between my legs felt . . . wrong.
Wrong in a very familiar, very alarming way.
I shoved her off. Stumbled to my feet.
Warmth ran down my thigh.
Oh fuck. Oh, fuck.
I made it to the bathroom, slammed the door. Dry heaved over the tub. Peeled my jeans off and stared with my mouth hanging soundlessly open, like someone in a nightmare.
Blood. Soaking my boxer briefs.
Everything went fuzzy and dim. Reality on pause.
When I came back to myself Ingrid was banging on the door.
“Are you okay? Talk to me, dammit.”
“I’m fine,” I croaked, scrabbling in the toiletry cabinet.
Nothing but tampons. God, fuck. I could not. I would not.
“Please, just open the door. Let me see that you’re okay.”
Her tone was wild, high. I nearly screamed, then remembered: the belt, the closet, her finding me.
So I made myself presentable and unlocked the door.
Quickly she scanned the danger points: wrists, neck, pill bottles. Then she touched my cheek, tentatively.
“You look like you’ve seen a ghost.”
“My own.”
Ingrid frowned. I sat on the rim of the tub, and so did she.
“Something’s wrong with me. All the symptoms add up.”
“What symptoms?”
“Moodiness, fatigue. Depression. And now this.” I couldn’t quite look at her. “I got my period, Inge.”
It sounded so wrong, so jarring. I half expected my old voice to squeak out. To look up at the mirror and see her sitting there, the skinny nervous wreck with a belt burn around her neck.
“What does it mean?”
“My hormones are messed-up again. If my period’s back, then my body’s running on estrogen.”
She laid a hand on my knee. “Why does this keep happening?”
“Who knows. Because I’m fucking with nature? Playing God, like Mom says? Maybe my body really, really wants to be a girl.”
“Or it’s stressed. Maybe your body’s telling you that you need a break.”
“From living?”
“From T.”
I detached myself from her, stood. “That’s not going to happen.”
“Okay, cool. Kill yourself in slow motion with hormones. I’ll just stand here and watch.”
“Don’t be a drama whore.”
“Don’t be a sexist prick.” She rose, loomed over me. “It’s been what, five years? Five fucking years. You got the changes you wanted. The voice, the beard. Listen to your body. You’re killing it.”
No matter how impassioned, Ingrid never called me Ren. It was a compromise we’d come to: I can’t call you some man’s name. You’ll always be Sofie to me. She’d dropped the deadname, at least, but at times like this I could hear it echo in her pauses. I could see the pearl blade of teeth knifing her bottom lip, forming the sibilants. Sofiya, Sofiya. Your name feels like a kiss. Then she’d smile. Or a bite.
“I need some privacy,” I said.