The stranger peered into the living room—what the hell was her name? It started with a D, didn’t it? She seemed half-waiting for Yaya to go, and also half-reluctant. “I was about to offer breakfast,” she said.

Yaya tugged on her bra and then her tank. “I’ll get it on the way.”

Starts-With-D hummed. “Suit yourself. You were hungry last night, tried to take a bite out of me.” She flashed two fingers that must have brushed against secret teeth.

Yaya cringed; she could almost feel them gnashing inside her. Fingernails scratched fingertips as she hastily buttoned her top and yanked leggings over her waist. She wasn’t the kind to hang around. The night was over, and so were they, never again would their ships cross in the night, all fish shall be set free in the sea, and so on.

The mattress creaked. “Did you bleed in my bed?” the stranger asked.

Yaya found her winter coat in a pile of shoes beside the door. She threw it on and looked back with a sheepish grimace. “Sorry.”

Starts-With-D shook her head, smile practically glowing. “It happens,” she said. “They’d ambush my ex, too.”

Yaya thanked the sex gods for exes. “Do you—” She tried to stop the question, but it tore loose anyway. “You ever find teeth inside when you get your period?”

The stranger cocked her head. “Periods have been odd the last few years, but no.”

Yaya couldn’t stay here any longer. Bad enough that her blood had to have

soaked through, ruining the sheets. Hopefully not the mattress, but she wasn’t going to stick around for Starts-With-D to find out.

She turned to leave, where her own reflection stared from a mirror clinging to the back of the apartment door. Her winter coat puffed over her, and black curls tangled around her face, flushed from running around, nose and cheeks already red with cold. The glasscutter jaw she’d inherited from her grandmother stuck out when she grinned, but that was her usual. Red vessels painted her blue and hazel eyes, also like any other day.

Perfect. She didn’t look like a woman with teeth up her vagina.

2

Yaya had never visited a private doctor’s office before. Other people with her condition sometimes went to the emergency room, but that had never happened to her. She stuck to AlphaBeta Pharmaceutical’s Sibs stations, easier that way.

The waiting room for Sunnyside Fertility was alien territory.

To the left, half a dozen people sat in plastic seats and tapped at their phones. To the right, a gorgeous brown pillar of a woman loomed behind a sunken countertop where she worked at a computer.

Yaya slinked toward the reception desk and said, “Excuse me?” A wooden nameplate said Jessie, but Yaya didn’t want to assume that was the receptionist’s name by saying it aloud. Her Jumpies nametag said Yolanda, after all.

Jessie smiled down at Yaya and slid a clipboard toward her. “Name, appointment time, and who you’re seeing.”