“Do you even have the science to back that up?” I ask.

He smiles at me. “Nope.”

He lets me play for a little bit longer, messing around with the strings. He teaches me the A chords and C chords, but I forget them almost immediately and just start strumming haphazardly.

“This is fun.”

“Clearly.” He laughs to himself. “Hey, I, um … I hope your brother didn’t make you too uncomfortable at dinner.”

“No, you’re fine. He just … he was drunk and being a jerk. Thanks for sticking up for me.”

“Josh too.”

“Yeah.” I pause, biting my tongue.

“He’s a good guy.”

“I don’t want to talk about Josh.”

“Fair enough.”

Wyatt leaves it at that. I can see this glow in his eyes and the slight dimples in his grin, the moles that dot his cheeks and forehead. There’s even one right beside his left eye, barely noticeable until you’re up close. The small, hooped earrings that I still can’t get over even though I see them every day.

“Could I … ? I mean, you don’t have to talk about it, but—”

“You want to know what he was talking about?”

I guess I should’ve seen this coming. At least I get the impression that Wyatt wasn’t scared by whatever Michael hinted at.

“It’s not bad. I didn’t rob anyone. Or, you know, murder.” I set the guitar down. “But yeah, things were kind of rough there for a bit. I don’t really know why I did what I did, why I felt the need to be as wild as I could be; it was like the itch I couldn’t scratch no matter what kind of balls-to-the-wall stuff I did. It was never anything explicitly illegal except for driving without a license. Mostly just sneaking out, working my way into clubs I was far too young to get into, crashing parties. My therapist told me it was because I wasn’t getting the positive attention I thought I deserved, so I acted out to get the negative kind instead.”

“Therapy?”

“It was a part of the whole coming-out, getting-on-testosterone thing.”

“Do you think that had anything to do with it?” he asks. “You being trans?”

“Probably.” It’s funny to think that coming out did give me the attention I so desperately craved from Mom. The good and the bad. I felt I’d moved past that weird time in my life, where I couldn’t stand to be around my family, when I didn’t even feel safe in my own body, let alone my bedroom. Sneaking out, getting into clubs I shouldn’t have been in because I knew the right people. I was fourteen and definitely looked it; no one was serving me alcohol; I never did any drugs. But, still, people noticed, and filmed videos of me, posting them. You really wouldn’t think videos of the son of a hotel mogul would be that scandalous, but tabloids and YouTube paparazzi channels used to love me.