Chapter 20: 20 ~ The Things That You Say That You Do

The knock on the door was soft, but enough to pull me out of my thoughts.

When I looked down, I was still gripping the sink so tightly that my knuckles were white. How long had I been in here?

“Gwen?” a voice said, muted by the bathroom door. I still recognized it instantly. I could tell from the way my heart skipped and then started in at double time. “Are you okay?” Bex said.

“Yes,” I lied.

And then, not really thinking, I opened the door, revealing her standing immediately on the other side. I didn’t expect her to just… be there, standing so close and looking at me with those eyes. Once again I was reminded that she was a few inches taller than me, and exactly how that meant I had to look up to meet her gaze. It was the kind of distracting difference that made my brain stutter and spin off in unhelpful directions where I imagined just what it would be like if she leaned down ever so slightly and…

Jesus. I knew I was practically holding my emotions together with scotch tape and twine, but I could not get hung up on this. It wasn’t fair to her. Even if it was totally and completely unfair for her to look at me like that while I was trying to play it cool.

Because she really was giving me a look now. 

I think?

There was a hint of life in her eyes again, a spark of something that I couldn’t quite read. I was trying to figure it out -- or, I don’t know, maybe just kind of breathlessly gazing into her eyes -- when she glanced over her shoulder back down the hall. And then she reached out and pushed me back into the bathroom, walking in too.

Let me be clear: it was not a large bathroom.

Bex was very close to me.

I simultaneously recognized that this might be my best opportunity to talk with her privately, and also that this was going to be hard since my higher brain functions had ceased to function.

“Gwen,” she whispered, leaning in even closer. “No. Grickett. Right?”

“H-hey,” I managed to get out. “How’s it going, Bex?”

“What are you doing here?” she asked in a sharp whisper.

I smiled weakly. “That should be obvious. I’m here to save you.” I spread out my hands, wiggling my fingers. “Ta-da.”

She stared at me, this time in a sort of confused disbelief. “What?”

“Mark figured something must have happened when you disappeared so suddenly. We’re all worried about you. So… we decided to put together a rescue mission. Our plan was to show up and find out what’s going on.”

Bex looked me up and down. “This was your plan?”

“Um.” I felt my face grow hot, as I reached down, fiddling with the fabric of the skirt. “No, this was all improvising. Your sister can be very, uh, creative in her approach to solving problems, did you know that?”

“I am aware,” Bex said, her lips drawn into a thin line.

“But it doesn’t really matter. Look. Let’s go. Let’s get out of here. Mark and Avery and Jenn are waiting outside with the car. For the time being you can stay at our place until we figure out where to go from here.”

She was silent for a long moment. But I could tell from the expression on her face, the way that any enthusiasm drained away into a bone-deep weariness before she could conceal it in resignation… I wasn’t going to like her answer.

“Grickett…” she said. “Gwen. I can’t.”

“No, but, you can. Like, the front door is right there. Let’s just slip out before they notice and—”

“Gwen!” she snapped, and I froze. “Weren’t you paying any attention at all during dinner? I can’t.”

I gritted my teeth. “It’s because I was paying attention that I know you have to. You can’t just let him treat you this way.”

“He’s my father,” she said. “I don’t have any choice.”

“Seriously?”

“Yes!”

I shook my head. “You don’t have any choice about whether or not he’s your family, but you have a choice of whether or not you let him ruin your life.”

“You don’t understand,” she said. “You couldn’t.”

“Bex…”

“That’s not my name!” she said, her voice sharp and brittle enough to make me flinch. A tear slipped down her cheek, then another. “That’s not my name, okay? Not my real name. My real name is—”

Now I was the one who cut her off. I couldn’t bear to see her doing this to herself. I could tell what she was doing now. I could see it: everything about the way she folded in on herself, the way she had to force each word out. This wasn’t her making a decision about who she wanted to be. This was her hurting herself. Whether it was because she was scared of losing her father, or because she felt she didn’t deserve to be Bex, or something else, I didn’t know. But I didn’t care, either. She was hurting herself and I couldn’t take it.

So I reached up with one hand to cup her cheek, and that contact alone caused her to go silent and still. She just stared at me with those round eyes, shivering slightly. And in sort of a trance, my thumb brushed across her cheek, wiping away her tears.

“Bex,” I said, my voice still subdued. “If I let you stay here, if I let him do this to you, I would never be able to forgive myself. I don’t have the answers. I don’t know how to fix this. But if you come with me, I promise you -- I promise you -- that no matter what happens, I’ll be there with you and we can figure it out together. Please. Just…” I took a breath. “Please.”

She looked back at me, and I could see her wavering, standing at the precipice but fearful of the last remaining step. But I also didn’t know what more I could say. How could I explain without confusing things more, without scaring her away? Sure, there was so much I wanted to say. So much I wanted to share with her, to explain in full about who I was and what I had done. But I didn’t have the words, and I was terrified that now my own failures and shitty behavior was catching up with me, only for her to be collateral damage.

All I could do was look into her eyes. I tried to project everything that I felt into my gaze. I wished that somehow, my feelings could reach her, even the ones that I had to bury and push down and put aside, because she deserved better than me. Even if I knew she couldn’t return those feelings, she needed to know that someone loved her, helplessly and unconditionally. 

Maybe in a perfect world we’d all have parents that could do that, who could be that person for their kids. But not in this life. We’d need to find our own people. And even if it felt beyond my capability to articulate, I hoped beyond hope that she could see that this was who she was to me.

And you know? Strangely enough, I felt like it worked.

She opened her mouth, but hesitated. And then the corners of her mouth quirked upwards.

“Gwen, I—”

“What on God’s green earth are you two doing in there?”

Bex’s father stood in the hallway, his eyebrows furrowed as he studied us. Behind him, Hannah fluttered, her expression a grimace. She mouthed me a sorry.

As if I were radioactive, Bex practically leapt out of the bathroom, scrambling across the hall to stand as far from me as possible. She stared directly at the floor.

“Sorry, Dad,” she murmured.

I was too busy trying to read her father’s reactions, desperately making and discarding emergency plans. He clearly looked torn between opposite emotions, on one hand disgusted and upset about Bex behaving ‘inappropriately,’ but on the other sort of relieved that his ‘son’ was showing closer to normal interest in the opposite sex.

It made me want to roll my eyes. Buddy, if you even knew how gay I would really have liked things to get if—

That thought ran headlong into confusion over what exactly it would be like to kiss Bex, plus a more logistical debate of whether that would be gay or not, since she was a girl and I was… Oh, and then back around to what would it be like to kiss Bex, um, actually? And then, of course, there was lingering disgust with myself, as once again I was being weird and shitty for thinking about Bex that way at all, given that my goal here was to rescue my friend, not be her girlfriend.

Thankfully, I think Bex’s dad was too preoccupied with his own internal turmoil to notice my own increasing panic.

But really, the unforgivable thing was that I felt that Bex was so genuinely close to making the decision to come with me. And now she had immediately closed off once again, everything seeming like feelings or vulnerability locked away. I hated Bex’s dad in that moment, so much more than ever before. Not for the hypocrisy of his religion or general gross attitudes about gender, but just in seeing what he had done to Bex, how she so clearly thought she had to kill all the vibrant and beautiful parts of herself for his sake.

“Son,” Bex’s dad said, and it was like he was doing it fucking deliberately to piss me off even further. 

But no: it was deliberate, wasn’t it? But not for me. For Bex. He was emphasizing masculine terms so often specifically to keep rubbing her face in it, wasn’t he? 

“Son,” he repeated, “that’s not how a man behaves around ladies. Not in this house.”

“Dad,” Hannah said, pulling at one of his arms. “Maybe we should—”

“Not now,” he announced. He narrowed his eyes, looking Bex over more closely. “Are you— Have you been crying?”

Bex didn’t respond. She just hung her head.

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I guess that was enough for her father to come to a decision on a reaction, and surprise, surprise: it was more disapproval. “This is just what we talked about. I don’t know just what you think you were doing, but no one is going to respect a man who breaks down into tears at the slightest thing.” He let out a sigh, shaking his head. 

I could see Bex barely managing to keep it together. She was shaking slightly. Her father had to know what he was doing. And yet, he didn’t stop.

“I’m only saying this because I love you,” he said. “All I want is to raise you to be a good man.”

You know that moment when you’re so angry that it all suddenly crystalizes and you have a moment of perfect serenity? 

Maybe that’s just me? Well. It’s a good moment.

“Oh, go fuck yourself,” I said.

The hush that immediately fell was supremely satisfying.

Bex’s dad was the first to speak. “Excuse me?” he said, voice faintly choked.

I smiled at him. “I said: Go fuck yourself. You treat your daughter like shit and it’s disgusting. You should be ashamed.”

There was a further moment of brief confusion. Hannah’s eyebrows shot up. Bex’s father turned in confusion to look at her, too. Even Bex glanced at her and then me.

I rolled my eyes. “No, not her.” I pointed across the hall, right at Bex. “Her.”

It took another five seconds for my meaning to actually click with Bex’s dad, but then his face started turning a rather dramatic shade of red. When he glared at me, it could have stripped paint off of a wall. I just kept smiling back at him.

“Listen, I don’t know who you think you are, but—” 

“I’m Gwen,” I said lightly. “Or Grickett. Not Greg though, I never liked that one.”

I wasn’t even looking at him anymore. I realized that I didn’t actually give a shit about what he thought about me. Who cares if he understood what I meant by that or not? I wasn’t trying to reveal anything about my gender to stick it to him. I was just speaking the truth for myself: I had used that name once, but I always hated it. And so I wasn’t going to use it anymore, because that was a decision I could make. Or that Bex could make, if she wanted.

But really, it was weirdly freeing to let go of the thought that I had to pretend to be someone for Bex’s dad. I wished there was some way to bottle that precise feeling for Bex. I knew now that no matter who her dad thought she was, he’d just find ways to impose his own uncomfortable standards. His narrow conceptions of proper masculinity or femininity only existed in order for him to set limitations and police them. Like a perfect sterilized greenhouse of potted flowers, and if some plant should have the audacity to try and grow in a new direction, he had shears at the ready.

But Bex wasn’t a fucking rhododendron.

“I think it’s time that you leave,” Bex’s father said, all pleasantness drained from his voice.

And yeah, maybe I was making a mistake here. He was still Bex’s family, and maybe in going off like this I was alienating her. But I was just so sick of contorting my actions and behavior and speech to suit the whims of this bigot when it was so clear that no matter what I did, there would be no way to make him actually satisfied. So I was going to do what I needed to for my sake. Maybe this would be the last chance I’d have to talk with Bex -- though I sure as hell wasn’t going to stop trying -- but if that was the case, I had to say the important things now.

“I used another name at one point,” I said, looking at Bex directly. “Nocturnia.”

Her dad was still talking, for some reason. Annoying. “Get out of my house or I’m going to call the police.” 

“Shh.” I waved him off dismissively, my attention on Bex. She looked positively shell shocked, and I wanted nothing more than to give her a hug, but I had to tell her this first. 

Because this was really it, wasn’t it? I only had one card left to play. But it was an awfully good one that I had been saving for when I decided to go all in.

“Cerise,” I said, “we had an agreement when we started talking. I would help you, and you would do something in return for me.” 

As if in a trance, she nodded slightly. 

“I’m calling in my favor.”

Her dad gave up on his blustering and stormed off, I suppose to find a phone and follow through on his threat. I didn’t really care. I was too busy staring at Bex. If this was going to be it, I wanted to memorize her face.

“What… what should I do?” she said, sounding utterly lost.

I knew what I should say next. I should tell her to come with me again, using her promise given to me as that last bit of leverage I needed. I felt like I knew her pretty well. I felt like it’d work.

But something about it seemed wrong, too. If it worked it’d be for the same reason that her father was able to keep her wrapped around his little finger. It’d play on her heart and take advantage of her kindness, her honesty and goodness. I’d just be another person making decisions for her, controlling her life. The thought of that made me sick.

I walked over to her, grasping her shoulders. I looked up into her eyes.

“Cerise,” I said, thrilling as she shivered when I said the name again. “Here’s my request: be selfish. Make the decision that you want. Not for my sake, and certainly not for your father’s. Live a life that makes you happy, no matter how difficult that is.”

“B-but…”

I smiled gently. “You can do it. I love you and believe in you.”

And then I did give her a hug, squeezing her fiercely. All of my feelings for her felt more overwhelming than ever in the moment, and I knew this was ultimately selfish on my own behalf, but I felt okay with that. Maybe we both needed that final contact.

And then I let go. Hannah was just standing at the center of the hall, watching the two of us, her eyes round. Behind her, I could see their father in the kitchen, phone to his ear.

“I think it’s time for me to go,” I murmured. I hesitated though, watching Bex. I knew I had dumped a lot on her all at once. She remained frozen, seemingly trying to process it all.

I let out a long breath. And tried to smile, though now it felt a lot harder. Because if I meant what I said, I had to walk out the door and let her make her own decisions.

“I’ll always be waiting for you,” I said.

And then I turned and walked down the hall. I kept my head up and my pace measured. If Bex’s dad actually did call the cops, that’d be a pain in the ass, but what would he say? This shitty teen broke into my house and transed my son and cursed at me? Whatever.

I allowed myself one moment of weakness. I looked over my shoulder, my heart straining in my chest at the hope that Bex would follow me. 

She hadn’t moved. But when she met my eyes, she blinked, and fled upstairs. And as quickly as that, my heart fell to my stomach.

And that was that, I guess. I opened the front door and stepped outside. There was a click as the door shut behind me. 

And then I was alone.

...It was an unfairly beautiful evening. The sun had slipped low enough to paint the sky in oranges, streaked here and there by clouds. It was a bit chilly -- especially in a skirt, as it turned out -- but I wrapped my arms around myself, pulling my hands up in the sleeves of the sweater. I guess I’d have to get Hannah her clothes back at some point. I’d worry about that later, though.

I stepped off the front porch and onto the sidewalk, looking down the street. Jenn and Avery and Mark were parked just around a corner, a bit out of eyeshot. I hoped they were fine, too. I wasn’t sure what I was going to tell them. The thought of explaining everything left me feeling already pre-exhausted.

So for a moment, I just waited, looking down the road as the street lights flickered to life, one by one. Night was almost here. 

Frustratingly, time continued to pass, just as it always did.

Behind me, the door to the house opened again.

I sighed. “I’ll leave,” I said, absentmindedly. “I’m just having a moment of reflection. Jeez.”

“Take as long as you need,” Bex said softly.

I spun around, and she was there, sheepishly holding a backpack.

“Took me a minute to get my stuff,” she explained. “Thanks for waiting.”

The grin on my face was equal parts joy and disbelief. “You — really?”

“Yeah,” she said. “Now let’s go, because I’m pretty certain my dad really is calling the police now.”

She held out a hand. I stared at her for a moment, and then reached out to take it.

And together, hand in hand, we laughed loudly as we ran down the street towards the sunset.

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