Vera moved out of Bushwick and into a three-bedroom situation in Kensington with two low-key queers who worked in social services. The rent was higher, but she’d learned to get as numb to that as her paycheques would allow.

She had a romance that fall with a girl named Robyn, a blonde-haired drunk of a grad student. They met at a dance party playing Rihanna. The song they danced to was “Diamonds.” The relationship was hot and loving and they went out for months and Robyn held Vera through freezes and rages. She helped Vera process that night at the party with the green-haired boy, for one. “He wasn’t good to me, was he?” Vera had whispered. “No, no, my love,” Robyn said with Vera in her arms. “No, he wasn’t.” Helped her process stuff about Connie, for another. “That’s the thing,” Robyn had said softly. “After a certain age, bio family is chosen family, too. You choose to keep it up—or you don’t. Both kinds can be unhealthy. Both kinds can be good. And you’re never obligated to do a thing to someone who isn’t good to you. Ever. It gets to be on your terms, I promise, Vera. You get to set terms, too, now.”

For this Vera would forever be grateful. But the drinking. And it wasn’t just the nights when Robyn was sobbing indecipherably and inconsolably but also nights when Robyn was calmly sipping from a bottle as they had deep, touching, gutturally meaningful exchanges, exchanges that broken trans women sometimes have that provide a long-standing armour, adamantine in both sadness and understanding—and the next morning, Robyn wouldn’t remember a thing. This would make Vera feel impossibly lonely. It made her second-guess some things in a bad way. Like maybe Vera was imagining her own love, her own healing.

One night, after a double shift, Vera came home at five in the morning to find piss on the living room floor and a pot of boiling water on the kitchen stove as Robyn snored with a laptop open to Florence + the Machine videos. The next day, Vera said, “You either quit drinking or you don’t come back here. Go home and make your choice.” She was shaking when she said it, scared of the confidence in her voice, scared of the determination and power she held. Power that Vera did not know when she had acquired. And Robyn looked at her with an intense woundedness Vera had never seen, a stricken, betrayed look that for years would haunt Vera’s dreams. But after that, they were done.

Vera applied to nursing school, and she got in. High school teacher—no, Vera decided she couldn’t do that; that was an old fantasy. She couldn’t handle being someone who was responsible for youth. When the nursing school acceptance came, she emailed Connie with the heaviest of hearts to say, “I thought you’d want to know this was happening. You still inspire me. I miss you.” Connie, true to form, emailed back like they hadn’t only been speaking sporadically for years: “That is wonderful! I’m so proud of you. I miss you too and love you.”