“What’s causing this?” McKenna asked. “Is it related to Gabe? Did he say something about you not being feminine enough?”

“No,” Jamie said. “Gabe... He doesn’t care. But I want... I want to look like that woman that he would’ve crossed the bar to see. He knows me. And he...” Her face felt hot. “I don’t know why, but he wants me. And that’s kind of amazing. But I’m definitely not anything like that woman he was trying to pick up that night.”

Bea blinked. “So he... Have you slept with him?”

“Yes,” Jamie said, squirming a little bit.

“I knew it,” McKenna responded.

Bea just squealed.

“Details!” McKenna crowed.

Jamie could not share details. What she and Gabe did together was...raw and personal and she wasn’t ashamed of any of it. But it was hers.

His body was hers. And what it made her feel.

She didn’t want anyone having details.

“Don’t get excited,” Jamie said. “It’s not like it’s...anything big. He’s working on this new endeavor, and I’m helping. And then I’m going to go pro next year. It’s not... It’s not serious.”

“You want a makeover.”

“I always thought that I chose to be what I am,” Jamie said. “But I’ve been realizing the past few weeks that I am what I am by default. I never wanted my dad to feel guilty that there wasn’t a woman in the house. I never wanted to seem like I wasn’t every bit as tough as the boys. But I had to go buy myself my first bra when one of the boys at school said something about how my T-shirt looked when I was about eleven, so I went and found myself a sports bra at Big R and smashed everything down as flat as I could.”

She ignored how large Bea’s eyes had gotten. And how protective McKenna’s stance had become. She didn’t like people feeling sorry for her and sometimes that was a barrier to her talking about her life.

But they were her friends.

She had told them she was sleeping with Gabe.

She was asking them to help her do makeup.

They could hear this story.

“Thank God for school health class,” she continued, “because if not for that, I don’t think I would’ve known what was happening when my period started for the first time. There was nobody to talk to about that. Not ever. And it’s not really their fault. Because I didn’t say that I needed help. I just decided I didn’t. And that if I didn’t care about it... If I didn’t care that no one was around to talk to me about those things, that no one was around to give me makeup tips, or anything like that...then I wouldn’t miss her.”

Beatrix wiped a tear off her cheek. “Oh, Jamie.”

“I don’t have the right to miss her,” Jamie said. “Not the way the boys do.”

“You have every right to feel the way you do,” McKenna said. “Nobody can decide that or change it.”