“I mean, everyone is like, twenty-four, twenty-six,” I said, waving my hand. “It’s not a huge difference.”

She nodded.

“I’m kind of curious how you’re dealing with the cold war between Nadine and Adelaide,” she said. “I’m like, extremely tangential to the whole thing.”

For the first time, I looked her square in the face. It was a good face, I decided. Hollowed-out cheeks, residues of stubble dotting her chin and neck. Only her posture indicated that she was sure of anything. Her eyes were clear and steady on me. This was someone who was on my side, I realized.

“It’s exhausting,” I said.

“Yeah,” she said. “You know, between the two of us — when someone told me that the person moving in when Cody left was a trans girl, my first thought was, like, oh, poor thing.”

“That’s me,” I said. “I’m the poor thing.”

I laughed but it came out sounding sort of bitter. Behind her, Sarah and Veronica were kissing gently and steadily, their bodies indistinct in the half-light.

“As a retired poor thing,” she said, “I think Nadine has sort of a thing with trans girls.”

“Like she’s a chaser?”

Violet winced. “No, not a chaser. But I think she has a way of finding trans girls who are newly out, you know?”

I didn’t know. “Yeah,” I said.

“Nadine has this thing where she’s convinced that she’s like, a lone wolf, she’s very independent, she’s had this hard life, and she’s figured it all out now. But she’s actually very needy. She needs a lot more than she lets on, she needs maybe more than she realizes she needs.”

“Oh,” I said.

“I mean, don’t get me wrong, Adelaide is genuinely a piece of work. You couldn’t pay me to live with her. But the thing with Minna feels like it was, like, designed to make Nadine into the most vindictive version of herself. She’s sort of decided that she’s in the right, and that means she’s probably decidedthat you’re on her side, and she won’t take the necessary precautions to make sure you’re not caught in it.”

I looked up at her, and she was looking back at me, with a facial expression that was sort of hesitant, drawn into herself, and I realized that I probably looked the exact same way. Always tentative, unsure.

A feeling of perfect confidence suddenly flowed through me, like the warm breeze that was nudging strands of hair around the sides of her face. I leaned in and kissed her tentatively on the corner of her mouth. She kissed me back, cautiously and then more insistently.

“Okay, okay, okay,” she said, laughing. “I need to find out a few more things about you first. Do you wanna go downstairs?”

♒