If I Was Your Girl(44)

A sudden thought occurred to me, and I slid my phone out from my pocket. “There is one person, actually,” I told her with a smile.

*

“So what do people do for fun around here?” Virginia asked as we pulled out of Bee’s driveway.

“Meth, mostly,” Bee said from the backseat. I craned my neck and saw her fishing for something in her bag. “Mind if I smoke?”

“I don’t know,” Virginia said. She reached up and poked at one of the torn, hanging strips of upholstery above her. “I’d hate if the smell messed up my car’s trade-in value.”

Bee’s sudden laughter catapulted her unlit cigarette into the front seat.

“I like her!” Bee said, leaning forward to grab her cigarette where it had landed in a cup holder. “What was your name again?”

“Virginia,” she said.

“And how do you guys know each other?”

“Virginia’s my trans mentor,” I replied.

Virginia raised an eyebrow. “What happened to being stealth?”

“She’s the only one I told,” I explained.

Virginia looked in the rearview mirror for a long time, then to the road, then back at me. She seemed to be evaluating something, but she didn’t say anything more.

“So where are you girls taking me?” Bee said as she ashed her cigarette out the window.

Virginia didn’t hesitate. “A gay bar in Chattanooga called Mirages,” she said, grinning in the rearview.

“Hell yeah!” Bee cried, slapping the back of the seat. “Are all your trans friends as badass as her?”

“Nope!” I said happily. “Virginia’s one in a million.”

As the interstate flew by outside the car, Virginia asking all the right questions and making Bee laugh, I smiled. She really was one in a million—she was the sister I never had, the watchful eye that had kept me safe, and I hated myself for ever thinking her anything but beautiful. I thought about how every person could hold two truths inside of them, how impossible it felt sometimes to have your insides and outsides aligned.

The conversation flowed as Bee and Virginia moved on to college plans, previous relationships, and tales of debauchery.

“I’m glad you guys like each other,” I said after a while, smiling. It had taken me a little while to figure out what I was feeling, but now I understood: it was the sense of two parts of me coming together. It felt honest.

“Sorry I’m being quiet,” I said. “I’m just … happy. This isn’t something I felt like I could ever have.”

Virginia smiled at me, warm and wise. “You can have anything,” she said, “once you admit you deserve it.”





21

I sat on the balcony with my laptop and a glass of sweet tea, enjoying the crisp fall weather and nursing what remained of a hangover while I tried—and failed—to finish a paper on Absalom. We’d gotten in late last night, and Virginia had left early this morning, before Dad even woke up. Part of me wanted them to meet, but another part of me was glad they hadn’t. The night with Bee had been great, but not everyone was Bee.

I sipped my tea and stared at the blank Word document on my laptop’s screen. The sun was setting, casting an orange glow over the parking lot below and the woods beyond. I thought of the cicadas, long gone by now, and listened to the rustling, howling wind that had taken their place. Grant’s shift at Krystal would be ending in a little over an hour. The thought that had been bubbling just under the surface for weeks arose once more, unbidden: What if I told Grant the truth?

“I can’t do it,” I said to nobody in particular. I’d been able to tell Bee because I’d gotten swept up in the moment, and because I knew that even if she didn’t understand, she’d try to. But what about Grant? Was it crazy that I wanted to tell him everything? Was it crazy that I felt like I couldn’t keep seeing him without at least trying?

I sat up straight again, took a deep breath, and opened my eyes to see the blank Word document still waiting for me. The cursor blinked over and over, like a promise, or a threat.

Dear Grant, I wrote after a moment. This is the story of my life. When I was born my parents named me Andrew Hardy and the doctors wrote “male” on my birth certificate. They had no idea who I would grow up to be.

*

I stood in the employee parking lot behind Krystal, my stomach in a knot. I had already been waiting for an hour, but it felt like ten hours and like five minutes all at once. The envelope in my hands was thick and crumpled at the corners from my constant fidgeting.

Inside it was a letter that told him everything: my birth name, my suicide attempt, how long I had been on hormones, the effects hormones had had, and the bathroom assault that pushed me into his life. Everything.

The back door opened, casting a warped rhombus of light across the pavement. I clutched the envelope tighter.

“Night, Greg,” Grant said, and I could see the sweat stains on his back. I thought of how he’d looked that first night with his shirt off, and of how he always smelled when he got sweaty, like dirt and salt and things I couldn’t name.

“Hi,” I said. He took in one sharp breath and stopped, his eyes glinting in the reflected light of a passing car. I opened Dad’s car door so the interior light revealed me and waved. I crossed into the darkness to meet him, feeling gangly and awkward, and gently pressed the envelope to his chest.