It was another form of oppression. How else could people say that women only wanted to reform bad boys, if they didn’t set us up to do it all the fucking time? But in that moment, even as I prickled, I was grateful. Without Toni’s intervention, we might not have been able to get Jeff onto the plane.

That didn’t seem like such a good thing anymore. We were descending steadily, moving toward an uncertain and unfriendly future. Toni was still snoring away. That might be for the best. There was a chance, however small, that she could escape notice if she didn’t seem to be too unsettled.

Assuming David didn’t blow it for the both of them. He was looking increasingly agitated. As I watched, he moved to shake her shoulder. I caught his eye and shook my head, motioning for him to leave her alone. There was a pause as he realized what I meant, and he settled in his seat, waiting for the inevitable.

I sort of envied Toni. Neither Graham nor I had gotten much sleep. We hadn’t been talking or having sex or anything fun like that; we’d just been lying side by side, listening to the night pass by around us, neither of us sure how to start the conversation we needed to be having. He was dealing with the fact that I wasn’t human. That couldn’t have been easy. I was dealing with the same thing, but also with the fact that on some level, he’d never really believed I was what I said I was. I had never doubted him when he told me about himself, and he hadn’t believed me. Not entirely.

It wasn’t the same thing. It wasn’t even in the neighborhood of being the same thing. It felt like the same thing, and it ached like the same thing, and that made it close enough to hurt.

The plane kept descending, the discontented murmurs of our fellow passengers growing ever more pronounced. Graham gripped my hand, anchoring me in the moment.

“It’ll be okay,” he said. “I’m sure whatever this is, it’s just a misunderstanding. We’ll be able to clear it all up and get on our way.”

“Sure,” I said. I wasn’t sure, but if this was helping him, I wasn’t going to argue.

The sky outside the window disappeared, replaced first by a thick layer of clouds, and then by the rapidly looming Arizona desert. The airport was a gray concrete smear across the landscape, penned in by mountains and surrounded by the glittering glass of the city. I’d never been to Arizona before. As a Washington girl, I don’t like that kind of heat, and as a vegetable in human disguise, I don’t like that degree of dryness. It had never seemed like a good place for me.

How right I’d been.