Another sacrifice that came with outing myself to my killjoy parents was losing my wheels. Asher and I had shared a Jaguar F-type coupe that our dad had bought for us on our seventeenth birthday. Now it was all my brother’s. Every sleek and silver square inch of her. It had been a cold-ass month walking to work since I refused to cave in and take public transportation. There were only so many lines I was willing to cross. Ramen noodles were as low as I was willing to stoop. The city bus? Not gonna happen.

God, I missed heated leather seats in the winter.

I walked the six blocks to West End Pumps with my jacket zipped as high as it would go and my wool hat pulled down over my ears. Next time I decided to fly out of the closet, I’d ensure it was summertime.

The icy wind stung my face, and I grumbled with each step I took, knowing this shift would suck all kinds of donkey balls. All the winter gear in the world didn’t do any good when a full-sized F-150 pulled in with an empty tank that held over a hundred gallons of gas. Sure, we had a self-serve section, but in this weather, no one used it. Of course, I could set the pump and walk away, but my boss insisted the customer get the full-service treatment they were paying for if they chose to use the full-service pumps, which meant I stood in the cold, filled their tanks, and cleaned windshields—arctic conditions notwithstanding. February could die a miserable death for all I cared.

There’d been one night last week where I was sure I’d lost my balls because I couldn’t feel them anymore. Turned out, they’d hibernated deep inside my body somewhere next to my kidneys and didn’t come out of hiding until I was in a hot shower later that evening. The customers must have thought I was some kind of freak because I kept grabbing between my legs, convinced they were gone for good.

My Saturday afternoon shift wasn’t any better. A bitter wind blew in from the north, numbing my thighs under my jeans and threatening to make my teeth crack because I couldn’t stop shivering. I reminded myself it was worse in other provinces. Southern Ontario winters were supposedly mild.

Bull-fucking-shit.

Mild my ass. I lost all feeling in my fingers twenty minutes into my shift.