I place a hand over eirs and e stops talking. “You didn’t chase me away,” I say. “I just had some stuff to think about. I’m sorry. And I’m sorry I freaked out on you. None of this is your fault.”

E smiles. “It’s fine. I’m just glad everything’s back to normal with us.”

Yeah, normal, whatever that means.

I force my way through the rest of the day, and I think I pull it off rather well because Devin doesn’t seem too freaked out by me. But really, it’s hard to pretend that things haven’t changed between us, and it’s even harder to pretend that I’m not completely smitten by em between the way e talks to the kids to the way e laughs to the way e looks with that goddamn makeup on.

And I try to tell my body to just shut up for a second because Devin is my friend, and the last thing I want to do is jeopardize that, but it’s not listening.

“Did you talk to Drew?” Devin asks as e wipes down the craft table.

I freeze. Honestly, I’d pushed Drew as far out of my head as possible since our fight. Not only had I been preoccupied with realizing my feelings for Devin, but the whole thing made me feel kind of dirty and I wanted as little to do with it as possible.

I sigh. “No, I haven’t spoken to him.” And I kind of don’t want to. But then, is he going to reach out to me? Apologize? Stage some massive comeback of the year? After all, we should be at the Gesture step by now, and that means he could show up at any minute with a flash mob and a dozen dozen roses. If he tries to sweep me off my feet again, I might just fall, even though I know I shouldn’t. There’s a part of me that loves love, and I think that’s the part that thought I loved Drew.

“I’m really sorry about everything,” Devin says. “I hope it gets better.”

“I don’t,” I say, and Devin pauses, hand mid-swipe. “I mean, I want the stress and the anger and all that to go away, but I don’t want Drew back. I think dating him was a mistake.”

Well, maybe not entirely a mistake since it saved the Diary and reminded me of what the Diary is supposed to be—a haven for trans people, not some performance to boost my ego. And it brought me closer to Devin. I guess it’s really just a boo-boo—one of those accidental scrapes that change the direction of your life in the subtlest of ways. Like a meet cute, only one that’s way less straightforward than all those love stories led me to believe.