She pulled my T-shirt off over my head, unfastened my bra. I reached for her blue T-shirt and tugged it up. She was wearing a black sports bra. Her stomach was pale and firm, dotted on the right side with three tiny black moles. She took off her shoes and we moved back on the bed. I wanted to feel her skin on mine. I slid my fingers beneath the straps of her sports bra and whispered, “Help me with this.” She looked hesitant again, and I wondered if she was shy. I moved my hand away and lay back. “Only if you want to,” I said.

I reached up and cupped her cheek in my hand, my thumb rubbing against the fullness of her lower lip. She looked at me for a long moment as if she were trying to decide what to do, and then she lowered her mouth to my throat while her hand slid along my body, down to my shorts, unbuttoning them.

“Wait,” I said. “I owe you one. Let me—”

“Ladies first,” she said. She shifted; her breath was a tickle on my breast. Her hand slipped between my legs and I couldn’t speak after that, not for a long time, not until she slid up my sweat-dampened body and nestled her head in the crook of my neck, her face smelling like me.

We lay together on the bed, breathing together. I was naked again and she was warm against my side, still wearing her shorts and sports bra. She pulled the sheet over us and wrapped her arm around me. I felt the rise and fall of her chest in a gentle rhythm against my body.

After a few minutes I asked, “What did you mean, ‘ladies first’? You don’t think of yourself as a lady?”

“I’m definitely not a lady.”

“You don’t think of yourself as—as a woman?”

She stiffened, and the comfortable intimacy that had cocooned us evaporated.

“I’m sorry,” I said immediately. “I don’t know how to talk about this.” She separated herself from me and I turned on my side to face her. She looked as if she were trying to decide whether or not to be offended. “I’m sorry,” I said again.

She closed her eyes as if not seeing me would help. “It’s complicated,” she said quietly. “Some people don’t get it.”

“I get it.”

“Do you?”

“Are you . . . genderqueer?” I had looked up the word after Tasha said it, but I didn’t fully understand it. Steph didn’t speak for a moment and I worried that I’d just made it worse. Then she opened her eyes and smiled at me.

“You sound like you’re speaking a foreign language,” she said.

I exhaled. “I guess I am. I’ve never had to think about this stuff before.”