“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 over 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.
“I love you, too,” she said.
It needed more than that. More than words. I pulled her face to mine, cheek to cheek. It felt like this should be the way to fix everything—to pull her back into my life. If I just held tightly enough. If I just tilted my face, let my mouth graze hers. If we just kissed like this, like we used to, our lips fitting together so familiarly, the nip of her teeth lighting every nerve in my spine.
I pushed myself away.
“Fuck.” Couldn’t look at her. “Sorry. I’m so sorry.”
“Stop saying sorry.”
The taste of her was in my mouth, cool smoke and spearmint. Below my belt everything was electrified. Her hand lay on my thigh, slid higher.
“I’m sorry,” I said again, meeting her eyes. “This was a mistake.”
And stood before I let this happen. This thing I wanted so badly.
We’d been together before Adam, before any of this. Established an intimacy. She knew my body as it had been before and as it was now. No surprises or embarrassments. It was so easy with her. So safe.
Ingrid settled back on the sofa, unfazed.
Knowing me.
Knowing I’d come back.
“I can’t,” I said, even as I knelt at her feet. “I can’t do this again, Inge.”
One hand raked through my hair, rough. She twisted, made me peer up at her.
“There’s a reason we keep doing this,” she said.
“It’s not romance. It’s codependence.”
“Whatever.” She pulled me closer, between her knees. Into her heat. “You want it, too.”
“Of course I do. But it’s sick, Inge. You don’t really want me, you want the girl version of me. She’s gone.”
Ingrid put her mouth to my ear. “When my eyes are closed,” she said, “you’re still her.”
For the very first time since I started T, I hurt her.
I grabbed the hand I’d smashed years ago. She writhed but I held on, stronger. I pushed that weak middle finger back, farther, farther, till she gasped. Then I held it there.
Ingrid smiled. In a tight voice she said, “?‘I don’t hurt girls.’ Liar.”
“You’re not a girl.” I pushed harder. “You’re a predator.”
“You’re acting exactly the way people expect you to now.”
“How is that?”
“Violent. Out of control. Like a typical guy.”
I released.