I didn’t want a lover, I wanted someone I could talk to, and I had that in you. But the bed with the blue quilt looked forbiddingly cold.

All week it was overcast and fifty degrees. The house was surrounded by brambly, gray woods. We did homework around the big, empty house and went on walks by the shore. I spent most of my time on the back deck, trying to write a story for my fiction class and chain-smoking. Elena would come chat with me or offer me tea, then she’d go back inside to where Kira was sitting next to the fireplace puzzling over physics equations. At night, two or three of us would cook dinner and you would pick out chords on the deck or sing songs with Kira while the rest of us read inside. At night I opened the window so the lake would partially drown out the sound of Elena and Kira having sex.

The fiction class was my main source of vexation that semester. Trying to create characters on the page while the characters in front of me all crowded out my ability to think clearly. I started to think that it was stupid to encourage people my age to write. I should have been like you — you can write good songs when you’re twenty-one, because songs are just feelings. Feelings were really all I had.

I woke up the day before we left and realized that I was nearly a week late on my estrogen shot. In the kitchen, I asked you if you brought yours and you said yes, go ahead.

When I drew it up in the bathroom, I realized I just couldn’t do it. Something in me was preventing me from sticking the needle in my thigh, like I had maybe two dozen times before. I stared at it, willing myself to muster up the courage, and it didn’t come.

“Hey, we’re going on a walk,” Kira said through the door, maybe fifteen minutes into this ordeal. “Do you wanna come?”

“No,” I said. The screen door banged.

I sat there for maybe half an hour. I came close to calling you, asking you to come back and do it for me, but I didn’t. I eventually gave up and just sat there, holding the syringe outward from me, vibrating with anxiety and self-pity.

When I heard the screen door open, I briefly tried again, but couldn’t get myself to do it. I finally just pulled my pants back up and walked out into the kitchen, where you were chopping something.

“Hey Gen?” I asked. I realized there was a little bit of crying in my voice.

“Are you okay?”

“Yeah, uh, can you do my shot for me?”

Your eyes widened a bit. You held the knife out from your body like you weren’t sure what to do with it.

“I’m in the middle of this,” you finally said. “But, uh — James?”