I sensed an opening in the way Dustin was looking at me. He was scanning me up and down. I decided to play a little dirty:

“One thing about Thomas is that he gives all the girls the same nose,” I said casually.

“What’s the nose?” Dustin said.

“You’ve seen it,” I said confidently. “Real Housewives, you know. A little button with a ski jump. No one is born with a nose like that.”

“I haven’t noticed,” Arabelle said coolly.

“Sure,” I said. I had to maintain plausible deniability. “I mean, I only notice it on trans women. It’s a tell, sort of. Too perfect. On you, though — ” I paused conspicuously “ — it could work.”

Her smirk stayed fixed in place but her eyebrows raised a little bit.

“Oh, yeah, I know what you’re talking about,” Dustin said. “‘Too perfect’ is a good way of putting it. The like, Long Island housewife look.”

“Exactly,” I said.

“I sort of feel like it’s really normal for rich women in New York to get FFS,” Dustin said. “Cis women, I mean.”

“There’s a difference between cosmetic surgery for cis people and facial reconstructive surgery for trans women,” Arabelle said coldly.

She was repeating slogans she had seen on Instagram, which meant I was winning. I decided to ignore her.

“I’m from Chicago and we call it North Shore face,” I said, directing the comment at Dustin. “The FFS surgeon there, I don’t even remember his name, I didn’t consider him for a second; he’s infamous for routinely making his trans patients look like that. It’s the same thing.”

“It’s always, y’know, at risk of sounding insensitive, the white ethnics who do it,” Dustin said. “Like the Italians and Eastern Europeans. Like, they don’t fit into conventional beauty standards either.”

“Right,” I agreed. I turned to Arabelle finally. “I don’t buy that it’s facial reconstruction. You just have to say that it’s medically necessary for insurance reasons. And, like, you’re gonna get a nose job, right?”

“I mean, to be clear, I think getting a nose job is cool,” Dustin said. “I would get one.”

I had cracked her confidence a little bit. She was looking out into the rainy night, fidgeting with a scrunchie, fidgeting with the zipper on her perfect jacket. She reached up to tie her hair back. She had beautiful hair, long and straight down with a thousand shades of brown and gold in it.

“I don’t appreciate the way you’re talking to me,” she finally said.

Dustin looked up at me with a facial expression I recognized from childhood — the amused gaze of the spectator. I noted that Arabelle didn’t direct any of her anger at him.

Now that she had her hair up, and because the topic was her face, I willed myself to look at her with the eyes of a surgeon.