After what feels like the longest minute of my life, he places his palm in mine, and a jolt of electricity surges up my arm, filling the rest of my body. Benji’s eyes travel up to meet my gaze and he smiles at me. The electricity melts away to a warm glow and his eyes are bluer than ever, like the sky on a sunny day.
“Do you feel it too?” he asks.
This heat? This attraction? This need to fuck your brain out through your ears? Yes, I feel it,I think. But I don’t say that. Instead, I narrow my eyes at him and wait for him to elaborate.
“I feel like I already know you,” he says, and then he stands, his body just an inch away from mine. Warmth from his body caresses mine and I make the mistake of looking up at him, into those cursed eyes again. “But that’s crazy, right?”
Fuck. Fuck, fuck, fuck,fuck.
FOURTEEN
DION
FIFTEEN YEARS AGO - JULY
Mirrors have never beenmy best friend. I used to think it was because I’m fat but I’ve had plenty of chances to try and lose weight, and honestly, I don’t want to. I like my big body. I like the way my thighs fill my jeans and my arms look solid and strong. I even like my stomach, despite what feels like the rest of the world telling me not to. My bigger body has been my constant reminder to take up space, to stand tall, to not shrink myself, which has felt like a protest in and of itself, what with the way the rest of my assumed appearance — a Black, curvy, young woman — seems to provoke so much in others.
But I have never loved my body more than I do right now.
It feels too basic, too easy, that a simple suit can have such a profound effect on me, but I guess my neural pathways are very attached to a blazer and tailored trousers combo because that’s exactly what is giving me thiseuphoric boost right now. Because in my reflection, I see a man.
Sure, the short hair helps too, but I’ve had shorter hair for a few weeks already and people barely batted an eye. Nobody started calling me he or him. Very few people even looked at me funny. Well, only a few more than usual. I guess that’s one benefit of being the weird, queer, alternative kid. Sporting a new cut with the short back and sides, along with my explosion of curls on top, isn’t going to turn heads.
But this suit. This suit is going to turn a few heads. I almost want it to turn a few heads.
I want it to turn Benji’s head.
The uninvited and totally unprompted thought stuns me out of what I think is my first moment of gender euphoria. Because, what the fuck?
I don’t want Benji to be impressed with me, or even notice me, and I definitely don’t want him to be attracted to me, as impossible as that is. So why would I think that? Am I really that pathetic that him being nice to me for the last few months since our Paris trip means that I start fancying him?
I shudder, albeit it with some force, and I focus my attention back on the mirror. I study how the cream linen suit hugs my frame neatly, but the shoulder pads help reduce any kind of hourglass-shape. I wish I could have worn a real men’s suit, but my chest is too big and my hips are too wide and I don’t have the budget for a tailor-made option. This woman’s suit — a few sizes too big — will have to do, and it does. It makes me stand straighter with squared shoulders and a lifted chin. The vintage Hawaiian shirt I have underneath is the pop of colour and style needed to avoid me looking like I’m going to a summer wedding, andmy thick-soled Doc Marten brogues are shined to perfection.
I look like a boy. No, I look like aman.
And it makes me feel happier than I have felt in months.
After one quick glance at my reflection, I check the time on my watch. Shit, I’m running late. Raquelle will be waiting for me.
When I suggested to Raquelle that we go together, she hadn’t exactly jumped at the chance. She’d been waiting, hoping for Miles to ask her, and I’d had to bite my tongue so I didn’t point out how he’d had half of the other girls in our year since he’d called things off with her. Then she ended up crying on my shoulder one day after French class, explaining how she never imagined she’d go to our Leavers’ Ball single and how tragic that was. I’d launched into a long spiel about how none of the people with dates will even remember who they went with in fifteen years’ time, and how embarrassing all their couples photos are going to be, but she wasn’t convinced. I tried to tell her we have our whole life to date idiots, but we’d only ever have one Leavers’ Ball and we should try and celebrate ourselves at it, not some random bloke off the football team who was a massive bell-end anyway. She’d only really calmed down when I’d said I’d take her as my date.
“Date, date?” she’d asked with a visible amount of scepticism.
“Well, not like romantic date,” I’d replied as we’d sat together in a corner of the library where we were supposed to be studying for our upcoming exams. “As gorgeous as I think you are, I’m not into you like that. Also, I know where you’ve been.”
“Oi!” She nudged me. “So what, we’d just be going as friends?”
“Yeah, but I’d take you as my date. So, I’ll pick you up. I’ll buy you a flower thing?—”
“A corsage,” she provided.
“Whatever. And we’ll arrive together. I’ll get you drinks. I’ll make you laugh. I’ll stop you from looking at Miles Dickwad all evening. We’ll have our photo taken together, and it will be a photo you actually like looking back on when you’re older, because we’ll still be friends.”
“We will,” she said, a smile in her voice. “You really want to do that? Isn’t there somebody you’d rather go with?”
I’d thought about Benji asking me to go with him. How cruel a joke that had been. How hard I’d laughed at the time, but how upset it had made me that he would have fucked with me like that.
“I want to go with you,” I told her, finding her hand with mine.
