I put my head in your neck when you lay back down.

“Hazel,” you said.

“Christopher.” I folded my legs over yours. Your phone rang. I saw it was your dad. You said you didn’t want to speak with him.

I only found out later that you told me second. I was always grateful for that. I was grateful you didn’t tell me first.

When you did tell me, I hated you instantly. Because I knew my hurt would need immediate sealing. That I would need to fold my pain, stow it somewhere to shrivel and grow pale. This is the order these things go. Someday, a girl might do the same thing to you.

You told me how you knew from when we were little, how you admired me from afar, how you thought, when we got together, that maybe you didn’t want to be a girl, that maybe just being with a trans girl would soothe this part of your mind. Do you know what it’s like to so completely understand the force about to blow up your life?—well. I barely remember what you said after that. You were vacating your guts, and I was listening and nodding, but I could only think, I don’t want you to transition. I don’t want you to be a girl. You were the sweetest boy to me, and I loved you, and I still love you, but now I have to help you. I have to guide you through clothes and bras, and I have to watch your eyes grow heavy. To see you grow out your hair—oh God, you’re going to dye it, aren’t you? Of course you are. You’ll dye it something besides that pretty, pretty red. That pretty red hair.

It only took me two weeks to break up with you. Isn’t that awful? I couldn’t—I don’t know. I couldn’t do it. You didn’t know what was coming and I did. I know you wanted to try, but I promise you, we wouldn’t have made it.

For the first few months, I’d get off work and I’d feel it in my body. I mean a heavy shroud would emerge from my arms and vibrate through my skin. I mean it was a physical feeling. If I hadn’t known that feeling, been able to name it, known exactly why it was happening and that eventually it would end, I probably would have ended up dead. You probably don’t want to hear that. But, well, I’m not dead.

I didn’t stay sober long after I left you. I knew that was only a matter of time, too. I don’t feel awful that I started drinking again. I was sober for long enough, and if alcoholics are always alcoholics, then can’t that logic apply to sobriety, too? I can feel sobriety still there, those years of clarity and re-sprung desire still alive and sleeping in my bones. Like a lover forgiving me more than she should, waiting to come back when I’m ready.