“To do what?”
“Not kill myself, okay? Just give me space.”
Pointless moments of glaring, sighing. Finally I locked the door behind her. Pulled the box of testosterone gel from the med cabinet.
APPLY 1 PACKET TO UPPER ARM/SHOULDER DAILY.
The clear gel smelled sharply of alcohol. I rubbed it in vigorously.
Then I opened another packet.
This time I smeared it over my pecs. My tats glistened, the colors bold and bright.
Then another.
It worked best in places with little hair, and close to a blood supply. This one I spread between my thighs. It looked obscene, like someone’s come on my skin. I squeezed my lap shut and imagined Ingrid’s foot there, and groaned.
Another.
Empathy is correlated with estrogen. Higher E means higher empathy, and empathy is the dampener between the spark of rage and the fuse of violence. It’s not that men have lower empathy than women, per se—it’s that testosterone raises the threshold for accessing compassion. It’s harder to feel for someone. To flip the switch from selfish to selfless. If too much T could turn you into a brute, maybe too much E did the opposite. Made you too human. Too able to feel.
So I’d dope myself till the bleeding stopped. Till all feeling stopped.
Make myself hard, cold.
The perfect monster.
The kind who could kill.
—5—
Watching Tamsin dance was sheer torture. That leather ran over her body like ink, and she knew I was watching, so she ran her hands over it, too, till I felt light-headed. Somehow her ass always pointed in my direction, my dick pointing back like a fucking compass needle. I’d come to Umbra at Ingrid’s urging. We were doing this: breaking away from Black Iris, seeking our own vengeance. Assuming Tam was game.
And I had a feeling Ms. Baylor was just as hooked as I was.
The lights painted her body, cyan and magenta scribbling over black leather, and people stared. Some frat fuckboy tried to get her to grind and she teased him with smiles, hip bops, the gleam in her eyes somewhere between invitation and scorn. Her sexuality was intimidating. While Blythe was seductive in a mad, unmoored way, Tamsin’s allure was precise and controlled, calculated. Like Laney’s mind in Blythe’s body.
Almost too much girl for me. Too much of what I wanted, what turned me on.
I always fell for the girls with fangs and claws.
Must have a death wish.
In all honesty, tonight was as much about seeing Tam as avoiding Ingrid. Our apartment felt like a powder keg. Months passed with barely a word, then in one night everything ramped right back to full-tilt batshit. Armin said we all followed the same pattern: Laney and Blythe, Ellis and Vada, me and Ingrid. Toxic homoerotic friendships crossing the line from platonic to something more. Like some kind of book series or something. At first it was innocent: We’d change into basketball shorts and jerseys in the girls’ locker room, our skin grazing carelessly. Inge played lookout while I squeezed into my binder every morning, helped me unmummify before going home each night. Lied to my parents (She was studying at my house when I saw an LGBT crisis counselor), kept me closeted, safe. Love crept over us like a stain. Not real love, but a delirious poison. Her fingers lingering on my skin, mine on hers, then that first time in a shower stall, her hands on my tits and her mouth hot and vampiric. You’re so pretty, she said, and kissed me, and kissed me, and kissed me. Denial and desire in one breath. I thought, She likes the parts of me I hate, but it feels so good. So I didn’t stop.
In the end, we broke Armin’s mold. No HEA for us. Ingrid liked girls, and I was a boy, and that was that.
As I skulked around Umbra, I ran into Ellis in the Cathedral. Sweater and tie, red hair raked roguishly. She made a prettier guy than I had before T.
“You’re dapper as fuck, dude.”
She blushed. “Seriously?”
“You could give Armin a run for his money.”
“But really, how do I look?”
“Like the cutest boy in the room.”
Crooked smile. Pride radiated off her like heat.
It made me feel . . . strange.
Yes, men actually are shit at parsing emotions.
“What are you doing tonight?” she said.
“Meeting someone.”