Alex kissed me like it was his last chance, his tongue deep in my mouth, his body against mine, the buttons of his shirt rustling as they brushed against the plastic of my coat. His hand pressed against the small of my back, in that limbo between car and gas station, where I didn’t know what was darkness and what was light, or which of them I actually wanted. He must have sensed my arousal because his hand reached under my coat and rested on my bottom. I was momentarily lost in his solidity, somewhere far away I’d never been, until the distant sensation of skin on a swath of my bare inner thigh brought me back to myself, and I realized that his hand was under my dress, inching between my legs. I pressed my hand inside the crook of his elbow to stop him.

It didn’t last long, a few seconds at most. I felt him resist my pressure, his hand insistent. I saw my face bloodied in the dark, my body crumpled on the ground. I used all my strength to push his elbow so his hand would leave me, as surprise registered on his face from the power beneath my small frame, and I slid my body out of his grasp.

“I want you so much,” he whispered like it was an apology, before I turned around to walk back to the car, allowed Alex to talk and pretend we couldn’t find anything we liked so came back empty-handed. Lying with Lenora in her futon later that night, where I decided to sleep instead of getting dropped off at home, she told me she’d been afraid Alex had found out I was trans, that he might have wanted to leave me stranded at the gas station, or something else she didn’t want to think about. Lenora was relieved it had all turned out fine but agreed it was a good call for me to stay with her instead of driving alone with the two men.

“Yeah, I’m glad it worked out,” I said, as I lay on my side away from her and clutched a pillow, too dumb to say anything else.

—