Archive of Our Own

I was sitting in my favorite spot on the planet, with my favorite person on the planet. My truck was parked in the lot overlooking my high school’s football field. From the bed of my truck, everything from the melting snow on the field to the stars above our heads sparkled. Marco sat close to me, and even when he wasn’t speaking it was as if I could always hear his presence. Or maybe he just muted the rest of the world’s noise, I didn’t know.

When we had started making out earlier, I had pulled everything in my pockets out of them, because when I lay down with him it all fell out anyway. So my wallet, my phone, my keys, and some gum were sprawled out on the blanket between us. At some point, I had begun to stargaze. Marco had taken the opportunity to snoop through my shit.

Not really snoop through my shit, though. He was snooping through it in a very Marco way, which meant politely, curiously, and indifferently. He knew the code to my phone – nothing to hide anymore, so I’d given it to him – and of all things, he had ended up taking a picture of me while I wasn’t looking. It ended up blurry, somewhere between what I look like when I’m not looking at him and what I look like when I’m staring at him unamused.

He had laughed, but ended up putting my phone down in exchange for snooping through my wallet.

“Aww,” he cooed. I groaned, knowing exactly what he was about to say. “You’re totally the guy that would carry a picture of his mom in his wallet.”

“Shut up.” In the dark, Marco couldn’t see me blushing. Likely, he didn’t need to see my blush to know I was embarrassed.

“You know,” he continued, still with that teasing tone, “My mom always warns Ymir to avoid men who don’t like their mothers.”

“Your sister’s gay too, right?”

He nodded. “So, I guess that advice goes to me. My mom would be proud.”

“If she knew I was your boyfriend,” I grumbled, “If she knew you were gay.”

Marco sighed. When he opened his mouth to say something, I held my hands up in defense. I didn’t want to get into this with him again. I was pressuring him. I couldn’t understand what it was like to have parents that wouldn’t accept me…well, if we didn’t count my dad. Which, really, I didn’t count my dad. Anyway, he was waiting for the right time.

Which, speaking of waiting for the right time, he didn’t have any problems pressuring me. He didn’t have any problems not understanding what it was like to have a body he didn’t feel comfortable existing in let alone fucking in.

I shivered.

Marco saw it, but didn’t say anything. He was a little better about not bringing it up, at least. I probably brought up his Coming-Out Issue like once a day. He brought up The Sex Issue thing like…whenever I made out with him for too long, and we were both heated and sloppy and needy. He would ask, cautiously, in a way that was easy to turn down, because he knew I probably would. It would be something like, “Should we stop?” or “Have you changed your mind?”

If I was honest with him – I always tried to be – I never wanted to stop and I was always on the brink of changing my mind. But then he’d ask me, in a sweet, breathy, patient way, and I would feel him hard against me. All at once I’d remember that I didn’t have a dick, I wasn’t hard, and I could never, in my life, ever, have sex the way I was meant to.

If I tried to explain to him this feeling, he’d probably think I was exaggerating. But really, I wasn’t. Not even a little.

Which, of course, was why the be-honest-with-him policy wasn’t working this time.

“Your license…” Marco whispered, pulling me back to reality.

“Yeah, the picture’s awful.” I cringed. I hated pictures of myself.

“No, not that – wait, what?” he asked, cutting himself off. He wore a concerned expression. “Do you not realize how photogenic you are, Jean?”

“What?”

“Even when you’re caught off guard, your pictures always look like you’re modeling or something,” Marco muttered.

“The one you took earlier didn’t,” I argued.

“That’s because it’s dark, and the camera sucks.”

“Sure it is,” I replied. He shook his head, and I realized that he wasn’t kidding. He wasn’t boosting my ego. He meant what he was saying, and I suddenly felt like an asshole for not taking him seriously. Marco hated pictures for a whole different reason than I did, and I should know better than to complain about how I looked in pictures.

The problem was that I always forgot about The Weight Thing. I only ever paid any attention to it when someone else was. Unfortunately, that happened a lot more than it should. Often enough that I could assume if someone looked at the picture of him on his license, they’d definitely comment on it.

“What were you going to say?” I asked, hoping I could distract him, since I’d already failed at comforting him.

“I just never realized…your license has – your name, I mean, it’s –”

“Jeanice,” I said. “That’s my birth name.”

In the four months since we’d started dating, I’d never told him that? I guessed I just didn’t consider it my name anymore. Really, I hadn’t ever considered it my name to begin with. Even before I was old enough to know what being trans meant, or willing to talk to my parents about what I was feeling, they were calling me Jean.

“Your middle name is Cheyenne?” he asked.

“Yeah.” I sighed. “My aunt’s name.”

Marco’s thumb stroked my photo. His eyebrows were knitted together. He sniffled. I didn’t know what I’d do if he cried about it. I still didn’t know what to do when I cried about it.

“The letter ‘F’,” he whispered.

“It’s on everything. Medical records. Job applications. College applications.”

“What happens if you get pulled over?” he asked.

I shrugged. “I try not to think about it.” I was so tired of trying not to think about so many things. I had just turned eighteen, and Marco had a summer birthday. When he was little his parents enrolled him in kindergarten ahead a year instead of behind. Marco had been eighteen for his entire senior year. Since it was April, I was running out of time to apply to colleges and financial aid and all that. I’d taken my SAT, and did alright. One reason I was procrastinating the rest of all that shit was specifically because…I didn’t want to check the ‘F’ box. I hadn’t had my name or license legally changed. I couldn’t even hope to get my birth certificate changed.

The other reason I was putting that shit off was because I didn’t know where Marco was going to school. At the beginning of this year, he’d mentioned something about maybe following his sister to Arizona for college. At that point in time it had crushed me a little to think of him moving that far away.

But now, I had an excuse to follow him. If he wanted me to, of course. I just didn’t know if he did.

He was quiet for several minutes, just staring at my license. I’d done the same thing many times before. This was the first time I ever thought, maybe, Marco understood on some level what it was like to be me. Like maybe, he was thinking about his own license, and what it would look like with a different name and the letter ‘F’ instead of the letter ‘M’.

But instead, he asked, “You really weigh 140 pounds?”

“What? Uh…yeah.” I couldn’t tell if I was happy he’d changed the subject or not.

Marco’s eyebrows rose.

“What?”

“That’s just…really light,” he mumbled, “Like, I could bench press that.”

“Quit rubbing it in,” I spit. Marco didn’t even have to go to the gym to be strong. I, on the other hand, had been unable to bench press the fucking bar for over a month when I first started weight-lifting. Even now, anything over a hundred pounds was pushing it. It wasn’t fair. I’d been on testosterone for three years. My body should gain muscle as easily as any other guy’s did.

I shook my head. I was overthinking it. I’d been in football for four years, but had only weight-lifted for two. I wasn’t behind.

I wasn’t.

I swore.

“Rubbing what in?” Marco asked.

I scrubbed my hands over my face. I hated how genuine he sounded. He didn’t have a clue why hearing that would upset me.

“Are you okay?” he asked. He rested his hand on my shoulder.

When my eyes met his, all the anger in my body fizzled out of me. Without needing me to explain, I could tell he’d figured it out. Somehow, that didn’t make me feel better.

“Sorry,” he said, “Sorry, I didn’t even…I wasn’t thinking about that.”

I nodded at him.

“Being strong isn’t everything, Jean,” he continued, “There’s nothing wrong with being weak and brave instead.”

“Whatever, Marco,” I whispered. He always got like this. Philosophical and inspirational and bullshit. He always thought too highly of me. One day, he’d wake up and see me the way I saw me, and I’d be fucked. That terrified me.

And I wasn’t brave for transitioning, even though he thought I was. He confused bravery with surviving, doing what I had to do. The two weren’t interchangeable.

My hands balled into fists, trying to keep my cool. Trying to keep from crying because I hated nothing more in the world than crying, especially in front of Marco. I hated that even though we were both men, I always felt like he was the man in our relationship. That was how sex would be, wouldn’t it? It’d be a dick in a vagina, and guess who had which.

It shouldn’t bother me. I shouldn’t see it that way. Sometimes, I convinced myself not to see it that way.

But no matter what, the thought kept coming back.

My fists were shaking.

“Hey,” Marco whispered, and one of his freckled hands came up to tilt my head toward him. “I’m sorry.”

Before I could respond, he kissed me. Like I always did, because I was so fucking weak, I gave in to the kiss, melting under his touch. We kept kissing, and I remembered I was in my favorite spot, with my favorite person. For now, maybe Marco could mute the noise in my head too.

…

After dropping Marco off at his place, I drove home and made it in the door just in time for curfew. On weekends, especially now that I was eighteen, my mom didn’t worry too much. But it was a Wednesday, and therefore a school night.

“There’s some leftovers if you want them,” she called to me from the living room.

“Okay,” I said, even though I knew I wouldn’t be eating them. My stomach was still turned upside-down because of my night with Marco. Lately, it seemed, every conversation between us was so tense. It never used to be like that. Even since we’d been dating, we never got in fights. Now I felt one rising to the surface. Every time I was with him, I had to weigh every thought I had before saying it out loud. It was becoming exhausting. Other than with my mom, I never bothered avoiding an argument. I never cared if someone was mad at me.

I walked through the kitchen toward my living room. It was tiny, but my mom had managed to squeeze a sofa, a loveseat, a coffee table, and a TV stand in there. An end table stood at each end of the couch. Basically, a foot wide path surrounded the coffee table, and that was all we’d seen of the carpet since we’d moved in. My mom always told me she hated vacuuming anyway.

I squeezed through the path, my shins rubbing up against the table, and plopped on the loveseat, sending throw pillows flying.

My mom sat on the couch. Her posture was stiff. She was knitting, without even watching her hands. Her eyes were on the TV.

Most of my nights were like this. My mom and I watching TV. We didn’t eat dinner at the dining table unless we had company. It was comfortable like this, the two of us. I never missed my dad. I didn’t think she did either. Although, sometimes I thought she missed having someone besides me.

“What did you two do tonight?” Her eyes were still watching the TV screen. Some cooking show she always insisted I watch. She would say, “You’re going to have to cook for yourself someday.” She greatly underestimated my ability to tolerate unseasoned, microwaved, plastic-wrapped food.

“I parked my truck at the field and we sat around.”

She gave me The Mom Look. She too, it seemed, always expected me to be having wild sex or something.

“Really,” I told her, “It’s not like that, okay?”

“You know, we don’t know for sure if…” she continued, “I just want you to be careful, that’s all.”

I sighed. My mom always backed out of whatever she was about to say, but I knew her too well and always knew what she would have said. My mom was about to say: You know, we don’t know for sure if you can get pregnant.

She’d only almost brought this up one other time since I’d begun dating Marco. My mom was good about these things. She picked up on when I couldn’t handle a conversation, and did her best not to almost bring it up.

Why tonight, I didn’t know. Maybe it was just a mom thing. Like, all moms could just tell when their kid was thinking about unprotected sex, I didn’t know. Since that was pretty much exactly what I was thinking about at the time, it was safe to say this might be the case about moms.

She was right. We didn’t know if I could get pregnant. I shouldn’t be able to. I hadn’t had a period in years. Testosterone made many trans men infertile. I hoped that was the case for me, because the thought of getting pregnant was the type of thought that made me stay home sick and burrow underneath the covers and blast music.

However, the thought of me getting pregnant, even at eighteen, and even on accident, still thrilled my mom a little bit. She’d never admit it, but I could tell. My mom wanted grandchildren. She wanted my children, my biological children, to be her grandchildren.

I shivered again. Tonight was barely brushing the surface of all the thoughts I was trying not to think about and already I felt like I might throw up.

“It’s not like that,” I repeated to my mom. “We don’t – we haven’t – Christ.”

My mom sighed. She frowned and brushed a stray strand of blond hair behind her ear. “Please, Jean.”

“Sorry. Just slipped out.” Really, it had. Normally I was really good about swallowing the Lord’s name before I blurted it out.

“Well, when the time comes,” she started.

“I got it, Mom.”

She gave me a small smile. It was a please-be-patient-with-me-I’m-your-mom-I’m-supposed-to-be-protective-okay smile. I smiled back.

She pursed her lips afterward, her eyes suddenly focused on her knitting the way it hadn’t been until now. The TV droned on through a Windex commercial and a Pizza Hut commercial before she stopped pretending she actually needed to look at her hands while she knitted.

She asked, “So, with Marco…is it like what happened last time? With that girl?”

I groaned. “Mom. Do you even get how, like, weird it is to ask your son about his sex life?”

“Maybe for you.” My mom shrugged. When I continued to glare at her she deadpanned and rolled her eyes. “I’m bored. The most exciting thing that’s happened all day is finding out that the Andersons' kid was arrested for a DUI and possession.”

I snorted. Ever since Sam Anderson beat me up with some of the other football players for being trans, my mom had soaked up every bit of shitty gossip about that family she could. Before he’d broken my collarbone, my mom had still hated Sam’s mom, but she never had a reason to. After I got beat up, she’d told me, “I knew I hated that bitch for something.”

“Well?” she asked, “Is it?”

I sighed, recalling the night my mom was thinking of.

The one and only time I had ever snuck out, I had gone to a party. Even before I’d ever even gone to a party, I had known I hated them. But I had gone to this one because I had a massive crush on the girl that invited me. We had sat next to each other in a class, and although we hadn’t known each other well, we had occasionally talked in class. When I asked her if she had any plans for the weekend – intending to find the courage to ask her out if she didn’t – she told me she had a party to go to that night, but didn’t know if she’d go because she had no one to go with. I told her parties were lame, and she had agreed. Then she had said – I swore she was blushing – that, “The party might not be as lame if I was there.”

I went, and looking back, I had no reason not to tell my mom about the party. She probably would have let me. The only reason I didn’t tell her about it was because I knew she’d make a big, embarrassing, deal out of it. I didn’t have a lot of friends. And I especially had never had a girlfriend. If I had told her who I was going with, the interrogation about her would have been relentless, and I would have chickened out of going. Without even talking to my mom, I had considered not going. I didn’t want her to talk me out of it.

I had walked, because at the time I didn’t have my license. Once there, I had spent a good portion of the night hanging out with other members of the football team. At the time, I was annoyed because I could hang out with them any night, I didn’t have to hang out with them when they were all getting drunk and breaking someone else’s furniture.

Even if I was good at being one of them. Actually, I was the best at it. Unlike them, I’d learned and practiced how to be the douchiest asshole there ever was. But it was exhausting trying to keep appearances, to be one of them, to constantly be bragging and speaking over each other and coming up with new ways to use the same old insults toward each other. Most insults between us came in the form of this-person-is-a-little-bitch, and this-person-has-a-small-dick, and this-person-likes-it-up-the-ass, and this-person-has-never-gotten-laid, and this-person-plays-football-like-a-girl.

I hated them all. I’d always hated them all. I hated myself for being one of them.

But then I felt someone tap my shoulder, and without even bothering to say goodbye to the guys I let her drag me away by my wrist.

We didn’t immediately end up in a bedroom. She asked me if I wanted a drink, and I told her I didn’t drink. It made me sound cool and mature, but in reality I refused to drink because who knew what kind of shit I would confess if I got drunk. Drunkenly telling people I was trans, and not remembering it in the morning until I saw myself blubbering about it in a Youtube video online was not how I wanted coming out to happen.

We talked for a while in the hallway. At first I kept my distance, because I didn’t know if she was going to get drunk. But she only had the one beer, and she walked in a straight line, and when I asked her what my name was she said, “Jean,” not “John,” which was how most people ended up pronouncing it once they were drunk. She even rolled her eyes at me, because she was sober enough to realize I was trying to discreetly find out if she was drunk. “Jean,” she breathed, “So careful with me.”

Then she kissed me. I’d never been kissed before. But I already knew that it was my favorite thing ever. I already knew that any moment that I wasn’t being kissed for the rest of my life, wouldn’t be as good as it would have been if I had been kissing.

She pulled away from me, and I leaned into her, unwilling to stop just yet. “Why?” she had asked. “Why are you so careful?”

And what was I supposed to say to that? Hey, Mikasa, I’m not the gentlemen you think I am? I just fucking pay attention to how I would have been treated by men if I hadn’t transitioned? Or, possibly, how I still would be treated once people found out?

I couldn’t tell her that, so I just blushed and ran my fingers through my hair, unwilling to look at her.

Apparently, she liked my response, because she tugged me by my wrist into a bedroom. No one else was occupying the room. She lay down on the bed, without looking at me, without inviting me, without saying a word. I stood, awkwardly, wondering what she wanted me to do. She smiled and told me to come closer. So I did. Easing myself over her, I kissed her more and more until I thought I wouldn’t even notice if I stopped breathing. Her hands roamed up underneath my shirt. I flinched, always insecure about my chest despite never needing to bind. Her hands were so gentle. I shivered underneath her touch. She lifted my shirt off of me.

Then it was my turn. My hands slid up her tank-top, rucking it up high enough to expose her black bra. She unclasped it for me, giggling about how incapable boys were with bras.

And I just…I felt like such a fucking man in that moment. When I didn’t know how to take a fucking bra off. It was so manly of me to not fucking understand a really simple clasp. Such a small thing, but it made me forget who I was and that was all I had ever wanted.

We were both shirtless, and while I kissed her she let my hands explore. Her body was so soft. Not soft like Marco, but soft like a girl. Soft in the even-though-I-have-a-six-pack-my-stomach-feels-like-silk way that Mikasa had. And for once I didn’t think about how if I hadn’t transitioned, my body would be that soft, and my chest wouldn’t be flat, and my stomach would be hairless. I just thought about how warm, and soft, and fucking amazing it felt to have her body pressed against me while we kissed.

But then one of her hands slid away from my back, into the pocket of her jeans. She pulled something out of it, and said, “If we’re going to keep going.” To finish her sentence, she slid the condom between my hand and her breast.

All at once, every insecurity and doubt I’d managed to repress rushed to the forefront of my mind. I was half naked with a girl who wanted to have sex with me – but, not really me. With someone who looked a lot like me, and acted like me, but wasn’t me. Me, but with the dick I didn’t have. A real man, a gentlemen. Her idea of me. She wanted to have sex with a lie, and if I tried to explain to her now that I wasn’t who she thought I was, she’d never want to continue. No one ever would.

I looked into her eyes. Gray, and glossy even in the dim lighting. Her cheeks were pink. I didn’t know if she was heated from kissing me, or nervous to continue, or embarrassed for offering or what, but she looked fucking beautiful. I wanted her. I wanted her so fucking bad. But I didn’t even know how to want her in this body, how to have her if she’d let me.

I sighed. Ran my fingers through her silky, black hair one more time. She smelled like lavender.

I stood up. “I can’t. I’m – I’m really sorry.”

As I pulled on my shirt, I tried not to look her in the eyes, because seeing her hurt like that made it even harder to turn her down. All I could do was act unaffected, like I hadn’t been all that interested to begin with. Maybe the obvious lack of a bulge in my pants was even helping me out there.

Before I stepped out the door, she said, “You’re too careful, Jean.”

I let her believe the reason I left her was because I didn’t want to take advantage of her. Maybe then, at least, she wouldn’t hate me for the rest of the school year. Maybe that would make her want to be with me even more, like it had in the hallway when I tried to find out if she was drunk.

But it didn’t, and on Monday, when I sat next to her in science, she didn’t say a word.

“Listen,” I’d started. I’d been gathering the guts to do it all weekend. “Mikasa, I – I –”

But I looked at her, and she was blushing like she had in the bedroom. My nerve dwindled, and instead of saying it the way I wanted to, like the gentlemen she thought I was, and just asking her out…I stammered, “You’re – God, you’re pretty. Um, listen, I really like you, okay?”

But she only nodded. “Thanks.”

We didn’t speak in class anymore after that. I couldn’t blame her.

But before Monday even came, I’d run home in the dark that night after the party I shouldn’t have gone to. The night I snuck in through my bedroom window, and stayed up all night trying to calm my heart down, trying not to cry, trying not to scream, trying not to think about who I was so I could get even a second of sleep that night.

In the morning, my mom knew something was wrong. I had to debate whether or not I wanted to get away with sneaking out, or talk to my mom, the only person who knew I was trans, about the best and worst night of my life.

I talked to my mom. On principle, she grounded me for two weeks. But really, all my mom was doing was giving me an excuse to stay away from everyone at school until I stopped feeling like shit.

My mom was still waiting for an answer. “It’s not the same as what happened with her…” I finally said, “Marco knows about me.”

My mom didn’t miss a beat. “But?”

To buy myself some time I picked up the fallen throw pillows. Hugging one of them to my chest, I sat back in the loveseat and stared at the ceiling so I wouldn’t have to be reminded that the only person in the world I could talk to about this was my fucking mom. “He has the body I want, mom. It’s not the same because…with her, it was like, she was different than me. And when I looked at her I got to see what I wasn’t in a completely different way than when I look at Marco. When I looked at her, I saw the things I wasn’t – but they were all things I didn’t want to be. When I look at Marco…It’s everything I’ve ever wanted.”

My mom looked confused, and for a moment I thought she was going to bring up his weight. I’d learned to anticipate that, whenever I talked about Marco or introduced him to someone I knew. I couldn’t believe that I’d never noticed before we were dating how many other people made Marco’s weight their business.

But my mom wasn’t even close to thin either, and I let out a sigh of relief when she didn’t bring it up. Instead, she said, “But Jean, you have all of that. You look just like – like what everyone thinks a boy looks like.”

My mom had learned to be careful with her language too. She tried so hard, and God, I loved her for it. But before she learned all the things she shouldn’t say or should say, a moment always passed that she didn’t know, and she sounded just like everyone else in the world who didn’t accept me.

Like when I told her Marco and I were dating. She had looked surprised in front of him, but I didn’t think Marco thought anything of it. Even if he wasn’t a guy, it would have been understandable for my mom to be surprised to learn that her son was dating his best friend, the friend she’d known for years but had obviously never considered could be more than a best friend.

Once he left she brought it up.

“So…” she had started, “I guess, I don’t understand. I thought you liked girls?”

“I do,” I replied, as if it was obvious, so she would know that it was obvious.

“But…Marco? If you wanted to be with a boy then why...” Whenever she didn’t want to say became a boy, because she knew that bothered me, she just gestured to me as if my appearance explained it all. “Why all this?”

“Mom, nobody completely changes their body, and goes through surgery, and pays all that money, and deals with all the shit trans people get, just so they can be in a straight relationship. I did this for me. And, yeah, I like girls, and I like guys. But that has nothing to deal with me being a guy. Completely different things.”

The great thing about my mom though, was that once I explained something to her she never questioned it again. She never doubted my credibility on the subject like other people would.

And besides, she loved Marco. I knew it would be a surprise to her that I liked guys, I knew she wouldn’t understand how being bi works, or for that matter, how being trans works. But that didn’t matter, because she begged me to invite Marco over for dinner, and constantly asked how we were doing, and told Marco all the time how happy she was that her “son was dating such a polite young man.”

I finally shifted in the couch to face her. “I know people look at me and see a guy. The problem is, once they know about me, they don’t anymore.”

“Oh, Jean, I don’t think Marco would start to see you as a girl.”

I nodded at her, and smiled as best I could. What I didn’t do, was explain to my mom that even if Marco looked at me and saw me the same as he always had…I wouldn’t. Each day I clung to my masculinity, barely hanging on to it. The slightest push, someone telling me I had pretty eyelashes “for a boy”, or that I had small hands “for a boy”, or that my handwriting was neat “for a boy”, could make me fall. And I’d spend the rest of the day sinking and drowning in my own skin.

I was terrified that if I had sex with Marco, the whole time, I’d feel like a girl.

“You’re probably right,” I said. “I’m gonna go to bed, okay?”

She nodded. I stood up, and because she’d been nice to me, and because I knew no one else would see, and because I knew she felt like I was gone a lot, and would soon be gone even more, I kissed my mom on the forehead before I headed to my bedroom. She tried not to act affected, but my mom wasn’t very good at hiding how she felt.

…

It was late. Late enough I knew I’d be dragging my feet to every class tomorrow morning. I’d probably fall asleep in first period. I’d probably have to ask Marco to drive.

If tonight paid off, I wouldn’t care.

I was in my room. My curtains were drawn. When I looked down, I couldn’t see any of my body, since my comforter was black.

Normally, I slept in pajama pants and a T-shirt. If it was summer, I might ditch the T-shirt. But I never slept in just my boxers. I hated my hips too much.

Tonight, I was naked. I’d spent the last ten minutes breathing shallowly, hyping myself up. My heart was pounding like a twelve-year-old that just learned porn exists. Hell, my heart might be pounding worse. I’d never done this. I was eighteen fucking years old and I’d never jerked off before.

If I thought too much about it though, I’d feel like an idiot and back out. I had to keep telling myself that this was for my own good .That if I ever wanted to move forward with Marco – and I really fucking wanted to – then I had to get over whatever the fuck my issue was with down there.

God, I might as well have been a fucking twelve-year-old.

Letting out an exhale and closing my eyes, my hand slid down my stomach. Hesitating, I let it rest against my naval. If I were like any other guy, I probably wouldn’t have to reach any further.

I shook my head, rustling my pillow. As if shaking my head could somehow discard the thought.

My hand slid lower, through blond curls and eventually lower than that. My thighs spread, making room for my hand. I winced. It was like touching someone else’s body. Moving my hand around didn’t help. I felt the sensation but it was like no matter how much I touched it, I wasn’t touching myself.

I didn’t even know what I was fucking doing. How pathetic was that? I didn’t even know how to jerk off. I had avoided doing this for so long.

But even as I let out a shaky breath, and even as I bit my lip and pinched my eyes shut trying to fight back the wave of dysphoria – I tried to push through it. I wanted this. Hell, I fucking deserved this. I’d been pent up for years and I knew guys who couldn’t handle going longer than a few days.

So I thought about Marco. And I thought about all the times I’d reluctantly had to pull away from him when we both got a little too worked up. I imagined his hands sliding up my shirt. His breath on my neck. His lips on my earlobe. Oh fuck, I loved when he did that.

It took a long time to figure anything out. Putting my fingers inside myself had kind of hurt. More than anything, it was annoying. Its existence was annoying, and go figure, putting something inside of it was annoying. Fucking hell, sex was never going to work.

But when I pulled my hand back, the pads of my fingers brushed against something. My back arched and I moaned into my other hand.

Of fuck, oh fuck, oh fuck, oh fuck fuck fuck.

Marco, I reminded myself. Think of Marco. I imagined him pulling our shirts off. My hands running over his chest, his broad shoulders, and through his happy trail. Kissing the freckles on his shoulder. Leaving a hicky just below the collar of his shirt so that he would say my name. Him rolling on top of me and –

Oh fuck. My body was shaking. I couldn’t keep still, writhing in my sheets and clamping my mouth shut so that I wouldn’t wake my mom. I had never imagined that it would feel this fucking good.

I imagined the feel of Marco’s weight overtop of me, heavy, but holding himself up easily. That always made me feel protected. As much as I hated even admitting to myself that I liked the feeling of him protecting me. If he had been there the day I came out to the football team, I wouldn’t have needed stitches or an arm sling.

I imagined then if we weren’t dressed, and if we were actually having sex, how fucking strong his thrusts would be. He was so fucking strong. Could lift me above his head if he wanted to. And if he was that strong…and he was fucking me hard then –

I was whimpering now. My stomach was tightening and I had bitten one of my knuckles to shut myself up. I was so wet; it felt even better.

But I didn’t think just about having sex with him. I imagined what his mouth felt like on my lips. He had such full lips, and his kissing was always so tender, so drawn out and deep. He was such a good kisser. And then I thought of what it would be like for his mouth to not be on my mouth. I thought about him kissing somewhere else and parting his lips to –

“Oh, fuck Marco,” I hissed into my hand, as wave after wave of bliss crashed through me.

Minutes passed, and I was still panting. My body was weak, like all my joints had loosened at the hinges. My sheets were wet with more than sweat. My body was shivering.

But as soon as I recovered, I felt sick to my stomach. My sheets were wet because of me. I had just come for the first time and nothing was even on my stomach. The longer I laid in bed, the more I became hyperaware of every part of me. I leapt out of bed, grappling for clothes in the darkness without even turning on my bedroom light. I didn’t want to see myself.

But even as I pulled on pants, it became clear that getting dressed wasn’t going to make this disgusting feeling go away. My mind and my body felt thousands of miles apart in that moment, and I headed to my bathroom. Closing the door behind me and locking it, I started the shower. I didn’t turn the light on in here either. My hands slid along the wall until my toes bumped the porcelain tub, and I climbed in yanking the curtain behind me. On the floor of the tub, I sat down and hugged my knees to my chest.

I stayed in there for as long as I could stand, waiting for the shower to wash away the feeling I had in my gut along with the mess I’d made of myself.

This time when I clamped my mouth shut, it was so I wouldn’t hear myself crying.

…

In the morning, I hadn’t slept at all, of course. My mom frowned, but didn’t comment on it. The nights I ended up in the shower without explanation weren’t a mystery. She knew why I had gone in there, even if she didn’t know what had caused the feeling. I was grateful for her silence.

Before I left for school, she passed me a twenty for gas money and handed me a garbage bag to take out. Then, as I was about to step out of the house, she added, “Oh, yes. Before I forget. I was wondering, have you tried talking to Marco about what happened with that girl? You know, to…to get passed this issue?”

My mom officially knew way too much about my personal life. Did she realize she was pretty much giving me advice about how to get laid?

But I shoved that thought aside to make room for all the excess panic that had just cluttered my head. I’d never told Marco about what happened with Mikasa. Hell, until last night, I hadn’t even thought about what happened with her in over a year. I practically forgot there was even something to talk to Marco about.

I had no idea how he’d react.

“Jean?” my mom asked, completely oblivious to the mental fucking hurricane that was happening inside my head right now. I considered pretending to be sick, or begging her to let me stay home, or intentionally rear-ending someone on the way to school to avoid having to go.

But that would only take care of today and I couldn’t ignore Marco forever. I’d have to tell him.

“I, uh, didn’t even think of that,” I stammered. My voice had risen an octave. “I’ll just, uh, do that, then.”

My mom looked like she was about to say something but I slammed the door and ran to my truck so fast I almost tipped over the garbage can shoving the garbage bag into it.

On my way to pick Marco up, I practiced out loud how I would explain to him that I had kept another secret from him.

…

Pulling in front of Marco’s place, I waited for several minutes while he got ready. My heart was thudding in my chest. I kept wiping sweat off my forehead. My hands gripped on to the steering wheel as I stared out the window at Marco’s front door, each second stretching on in my mind like waiting for a jump-scare in a horror movie.

Eventually, he stepped out on to his porch. Momentarily I was exhilarated, nervous, and flooded with affection like I was the first day I pulled up to this driveway before school. His undercut was parted in the middle and combed. It would be messy by the end of the day. He was wearing a plain gray T-shirt and jeans, his hands tucked into his jean pockets and the broadness of his shoulders enunciated by the tug his heavy backpack had on the shoulder straps. It was April and the snow hadn’t quite melted. Marco’s skin was brown, his scent earthy as he climbed into my truck, and he was the warmest part of a cold spring.

“Hey,” I said. He grinned at me. He had dimples and they never ceased to distract me from my thoughts. Sometimes I took a break from whatever we were doing to kiss them. In this moment, I kissed only his lips. Just a peck, a greeting that I saved for him each morning no matter what kind of mood I was in. Even when I was in the terrified-he’d-be-mad-at-me-in-a-second mood.

“Hi,” he chirped, “So, I thought about what you said.”

I had no idea what he was talking about. I said a lot of things. “What?”

“I’m going to come out.”

Until now, I didn’t think I’d ever actually considered the weight of that decision. The words I wanted to say were lodged in my throat. He waited for me to respond, but I only gaped at him.

After several silent seconds passed, Marco’s expression became less sure. He even looked disappointed in my less-than-enthused reaction. “Isn’t that what you wanted?” he asked. His brown eyes were so big in that moment. Now I felt disappointed in myself too.

“Well I – Uh, I mean.” He looked at me with a worried expression. I still couldn’t figure out how to respond.

“I think it’s only fair…since your mom knows, and everything.” Oh God, he looked ashamed. Why had I made him feel this way? Why had I given him so much shit about staying in the closet?

“Marco…” I started. “It’s not – look, I’m sorry I gave you shit. I just…I’ve never, you know, had to…”

I’d never had to be in the closet like that, not with my mom. But when my dad had still been around, I did have to. Well, I didn’t know if I so much as stayed in the closet, as every time I came out of it my dad shoved me back in. He was in such deep denial of who I was. I guessed someone had to be if I wasn’t going to.

My dad left when I was too old to be shoved back in the closet. When I was too old, and had been insisting for too long that I was a boy. Too old for him to pretend I was a little kid who changed his mind about everything every five minutes and had no comprehension of gender. When my dad could no longer lie to himself about who I was, he no longer wanted anything to deal with me.

All this time I had thought only of my mom, thinking that Marco was just assuming the worst and being paranoid about his parents’ potential reactions. Now that I remembered my dad – it was really easy for me to forget that man existed at all; he was dead to me – I thought the impending doom Marco had feared was just on the horizon waiting. If their reactions were anywhere near the caliber that my dad’s reaction had been, Marco had a lot of hurt coming his way and it was my fault.

“You never had to hide from her,” Marco said, echoing what I’d said about my mom months ago. I bit my lip, feeling a pang of guilt in my gut.

“You don’t have to come out.” My tone was as serious and earnest as I could make it. Hopefully, my expression matched. I placed my hand on his shoulder. Anything to help convince him not to do this.

Marco smiled, but his eyes were distant. He looked hopeless. “I know I don’t have to.”

He was going to anyway though. I felt my heart sink right to my toes. The world blurred by as I drove away. Nothing could distract me from my thoughts. Marco asked me how my morning was, and if I’d studied for a test I forgot I had, and whether or not I wanted to stay at his place or mine this weekend, and if we went out anywhere whether or not it was okay with me to invite Connie and Sasha, etc, etc, etc. I nodded when I was supposed to. When he asked me a question, I gave him the answer he wanted to hear. Once he’d drawn a laugh out of me while telling me his thoughts on the book he was reading currently.

For the most part though, I was in a daze. I couldn’t even look at him. The streetlights and the cars poking in my periphery vision kept my mind occupied, and they were all I could afford to focus on.

He noticed that I was only half paying attention though. “Is something on your mind? You look tired.”

I flinched, recalling the night before and the sickening, aching, pleasure before running into my bathroom and taking a cold shower. Part of me wanted to tell Marco about it. If he wasn’t my boyfriend, and he was still just my best friend, maybe I would. But I had done it for him, preparing to someday have sex with him, and it had failed as horribly as I always thought it would. And now I couldn’t talk to him about it. I guessed something had to be lost in a friendship when becoming a couple. The need to protect the other’s feelings always outweighed the need to express your own.

And then there was this morning. Of course, my mom just had to remind me I had something to feel guilty about. Something I’d have to tell Marco about, and inevitably hurt him because of it.

I glanced at Marco. While he had cheered up during the drive to school, I could still see the lingering dread in his eyes and his posture. I knew he was still thinking about coming out. He was already afraid and upset. Right now, he needed me to be the best boyfriend I could be, especially because he was doing this for me.

As I pulled into the school parking lot, I shook my head, deciding I had to wait until he came out before I told him about Mikasa. “I’m just tired, that’s all. When are you going to tell your parents?”

He looked away from me, out the window at the herds of students dragging their feet toward the entrance of the school. He cleared his throat. “Friday.”

“Do you want me to be there?” I asked. Hopefully, he’d say yes. That way, I could be there for him if coming out didn’t go very well.

Marco glanced at me, before he leaned in and kissed me. “Okay.”

…

Friday arrived sooner than I had hoped for. While most people, including Sasha and Connie hadn’t noticed Marco was hiding something, I felt like I could see subtitles of his thoughts throughout the whole day. Marco was very good at smiling for other people. In fact, Marco was very good at doing stuff for other people in general. It was one of the many things I loved about him.

But as much as I loved this about him, it bothered me that he couldn’t for a moment sacrifice another’s comfort for his own. Throughout the whole day I asked him how he was doing, if he was nervous, if he had changed his mind about this. Of course, I was hoping he had, and of course, he hadn’t.

“It’s going to be fine, Jean,” he told me as we got out of our last class for the day. “They’ll probably think it’s a phase. They won’t even take it seriously.”

As we walked to my car, I pretended to believe what he had said.

At Marco’s house, we spent the afternoon in his room. Marco was going to come out to them at dinner, and right now he was so nervous he couldn’t even talk to them. He was fidgeting where he sat on his bed. He’d opened his history textbook to work on his homework, but he’d only managed to read a total of three pages in the last couple of hours.

I couldn’t even pretend anything else was on my mind. I hugged him from behind, looking over his shoulder at his hands. They were clammy, gripping on to his textbook too tightly. When I rested my hand against his chest, I could feel his heartbeat panicking.

“Do you know what you’re going to say?” I whispered.

He nodded.

When his mom called us out for dinner, Marco stood. He kept his posture straight and his chin high, and if he didn’t look like the living definition of confident and brave I didn’t know what would. He smiled at me before we stepped out of his bedroom. We sat at his kitchen table which was already set. Steaming food crowded the plates. His mom had made spaghetti. I noticed that she’d given Marco less than she’d given everyone else. I felt like tossing the plate at the wall, but settled for gripping on to my seat like I’d fall through the floor if I didn’t.

Marco sat to my right, and his dad sat right across from me. Marco’s mom sat in front of him. I’d heard Marco’s dad say all of ten words to Marco since I’d known him, and they were usually about him getting an education. Right now, he wore a business suit. I was pretty sure he was a lawyer. He had frown lines and thinning hair.

Marco’s mom had a much kinder expression, although whenever she looked at me she looked like she’d just tasted something awful. When she looked at Marco, her eyes were saddened, almost guilty. Her skin was much darker than Marco’s, but they both had freckles speckling their skin that I could never keep my eyes off of. She was very short. Her hands shook all the time, no matter what she was doing, like she was always hesitant to exist. I always wondered how someone with such shaky hands could be a dental assistant.

We ate. They asked me about my life, and how football season had gone, and whether or not I was a good student or had a girlfriend. I skimmed over my life, giving them the bare gist. They didn’t ask for more details because they didn’t actually want to know, they were just being polite. I didn’t even think they wanted me here tonight.

Marco’s dad cleared his plate first, and it was as if that was Marco’s cue. He set his fork down on his plate and faced his parents. He hadn’t hardly eaten anything. I didn’t know if it was because he was nervous about coming out, or if it was just his usual dislike of eating in front of his parents. It was probably a mixture of both. Neither of his parents noticed. Either that, or they didn’t mind that he hadn’t eaten. They were like that with him.

Underneath the table, I reached for his hand. Our fingers laced, and I squeezed.

“Before you leave, Dad,” he started, “I have something I want to tell you guys.”

His dad, who had already begun to stand, sighed and sat back in his chair. His mom at least looked like she might care about what he had to say.

“Can’t this wait?” his dad asked.

Marco’s mom gave his dad a glare that was clearly a warning of some kind. Marco ignored them both. He said, “I want you guys to know I love you, and that I know you love me. I know you want me to be happy.”

His mom was beaming like he was about to tell them he was getting married. Oh God, it was so hard to watch. It took some effort not to crawl under the table and hide.

“So, I know you’ll understand when I tell you that I’m gay. And Jean,” he said, looking at me now. I felt like I was about to get run over by a truck. “He makes me happier than anything else in the world.”

He pulled my hand up on to the table, so that his parents could see our fingers laced. Marco’s grasp was stronger than mine.

Five seconds of complete silence passed. It was the kind of silence I imagined people in war heard when a grenade had gone off right next to their ear, and then there’d be all of the ringing and the blurred vision and the explosions and the bodies and all that…

That was like what those five seconds were like. And then Marco’s dad narrowed his eyes at me, and Marco’s mom covered her mouth like she was going to throw up.

Marco’s dad was yelling, “Get out of my house!” and Marco’s mom was yelling, “But you’re too young, Marco. Too young. You have no idea what you want. You’re too young.”

And Marco responded, “You wouldn’t have said that if I’d brought home a girl.”

And his mom repeated, “You’re just too young for that kind of decision.”

“I’m eighteen!”

“Too young. Just too young.”

But I could barely focus on any of that because Marco’s dad was standing and getting in my face, leaning toward me, making me back up right into their front door. He yelled, “Just get out!” again while I bent down to grab my shoes. No less than a second after I’d slid through the opening, had Marco’s dad slammed the door behind me. My Jacket was still in Marco’s bedroom. So was my backpack. I should be thankful I’d kept my wallet, phone and keys on me.

I sat on Marco’s porch waiting for him. They yelled, but none of the words made it through the door. I only knew that Marco’s dad was mad, and Marco’s mom was wailing, and Marco was standing up for himself like I knew he would. The wind snuck into my clothes and I hugged my arms to my chest. I wouldn’t leave just because the sun was setting and the streetlights were flickering on.

After an hour passed the door swung open behind me. I leapt off the porch like it was on fire and swiveled around to face whoever it was.

Marco stood in the doorway carrying my stuff and a pillowcase packed with some of his shit. His eyes were dark, too dark for my boyfriend with eyes that shone like sunlight.

I cleared my throat, choking out, “They kicked you out?”

He shook his head. “I’m leaving.”

“Stay at my place?”

He nodded.

…

Marco had gotten himself situated on the couch at home. I’d handed him one of my pillows and my mom had grabbed him a comforter she stored in the closet. He changed in the bathroom and had curled up on the couch within minutes of us getting home.

Marco hadn’t spoken to me the whole way home. When I had reached for his hand, he’d tugged it away from me. He wouldn’t even look at me. Now that he was here, he only spoke enough to tell my mom thank you. For her, he cheered himself up and acted like everything was okay, just like he did for Sasha and Connie at school.

But he ignored me, and he didn’t try to hide it. When my mom asked me what was happening, all I could say was, “I fucked up. I – I just really fucked up.”

And my mom responded, “Well, you have to fix it. You’re all he has right now.”

“I promise.” That promise wasn’t for her.

Marco hadn’t told me what was wrong, but he didn’t need to. I had felt guilty about it before he had even invited me over today. I had thought about it for days.

Marco wouldn’t have come out if it wasn’t for me.

…

The next morning, earlier than even my mom woke up, I nudged Marco. His eyes cracked and he stared up at me. He sighed, but rolled over to face me anyway.

“What?” he asked.

“Let’s go for a drive.”

He groaned and glanced at the window. The light outside was still early morning, gray light. Not yet late enough to turn the sidewalks and houses gold and pink with the coming sunrise.

“It’s too early,” he said. “Whatever it is can wait.”

“Marco, please. We need to talk.”

That words we need to talk sobered Marco up a bit, especially because I was desperate enough to throw in a please. Any time I sacrificed my pride in favor of begging he knew to take seriously. He wiped his eyes. Ten minutes later we were in my truck and backing up out of the garage.

My favorite spot was the football field, but Marco’s was the lake. Normally a few bonfires would be lit and some partiers, but at this time not even the joggers were running the trails. It was my truck, Marco, me and a barren parking lot facing the beach. The lake itself wasn’t impressive. Littered along the shore. The water was murky and swimming with weeds. Not many people swam here. At this time of year, the water made even the air chilly.

But I loved being here early because the water became an iridescent mirror reflecting the sun’s light. The birds sang and the water lapped. A breeze blew through my clothes as we sat in the bed of my trunk facing the water.

Marco’s expression was calm. He didn’t look mad, but he wasn’t facing me or sitting near me either.

“I’m sorry about your parents,” I told him.

Marco shrugged. “I have to give them time. They’ll come around.”

I bit my lip. If it were my mom, would I have given her time? I couldn’t imagine myself being patient with anybody, not even my mom. Until I’d met Marco, I’d taken my mom for granted. She didn’t deserve that, and Marco didn’t deserve this.

“Listen, I know why you’re mad.” Marco’s expression was so exhausted. “I wanted you to come out. I wouldn’t let it go. And I didn’t even – I didn’t even think about your parents. I just thought about me, and us, and not having to hide it from them. I guess I thought –”

“You thought I was ashamed of you?” Marco asked, for the first time this morning, speaking as if he wasn’t upset.

I hesitated before replying. When I spoke again, my lip quivered. My voice cracked. “Well, yeah. I thought that was why you wouldn’t come out. I – I really should have thought it through.”

Marco smiled. “Why did you think I was ashamed of you? Because you’re a guy? Because you’re trans?”

I blushed, but nodded. Why else? Wasn’t that enough?

“No, Jean. I want the whole world to know you’re my boyfriend. I wish it was that easy.”

I tried to smile, but my eyes were brimming with tears and I had to clear my throat to hide a sob. “Well, for what it’s worth, I’m sorry. I get it if you, uh, if you don’t want to –”

Marco snorted and leaned into me, resting his head on my shoulder. “Jean, I just came out to my parents to be with you. I’m not going to turn around and break up with you now.”

A pressure in my gut dissipated and I let out a sigh of relief. A couple tears fell as my heart tripped over its next few beats. I wiped the tears away before he could see them.

The sun rose higher, turning the water every shade of gold. My whole world was glowing in that moment.

“Besides,” Marco sighed, feigning immense exasperation, “that’d make it too damn easy for them to pretend it didn’t happen.”

I snorted and curled into him, wrapping my arms around him and burying my nose in his hair. He wrapped his arms around my waist.

Then, out of nowhere, I inhaled and decided to be brave. “Marco,” I whispered. “I love you.”

He hummed into my shoulder before facing me. He kissed me so soft. “I love you too.” It was as if he’d been saying this to me for all his life, even though I had been afraid he wouldn’t even say it back.

The sun climbed toward the sky, shining brighter than it ever had.