Announcement Hello, lovelies! Don’t forget you can read 3 chapters ahead on this story and on Beginner's Guide to Catfishing by becoming a paid subscriber to my Patreon!

  Helena Heissner's Patreon

  And you can buy my books in paperback here:

  https:///dp/B0D8HCFFYH

  https:///dp/B0DK5C1T3F

  And you can follow all my socials here:

  https://linktr.ee/helenastacy

  Eli

  “... Bruh,” was all Kelsey said as I finished telling her everything that had happened at Christmas.

  “Well met,” I rolled my eyes. “Very articute as always, Kel.”

  We sat in the attic of her grandmother’s house, which technically meant we were in Kelsey’s apartment. She paid rent, and it came with a small kitchen and a bathroom in addition to the hammock she slept in and an old bck and white television positioned on the far wall. I sat on a bean bag chair across the blue carpeted floor from Kelsey as she swung back and forth in her hammock. We both nursed a finger of whiskey in our respective gsses as we stared up at the ceiling, a rerun of an old sitcom involving an astronaut and a genie involved in what was very clearly a BDSM retionship pying silently on the TV while we commiserated together. The pce was lit primarily by Kelsey’s generous collection of va mps, casting a glow over her massive bookshelf of Marvel and DC trades- I don’t think I’d ever seen a more extensive Wonder Woman collection in my life. Camera equipment was carefully shelved and organized at various points across the wide, low-ceilinged attic, both video and photo, along with tripods and microphones, while a desktop computer was wedged into the corner by Kelsey’s hammock. Posters decorated the walls, mostly of musicians like Brandi Carlisle and Megan Thee Stallion and Teagan & Sara.

  “They just… They seriously just straight up disowned you?” Kelsey said.

  “Yup,” I said, knocking back the remainder of my whiskey, letting the warm buzz fill my brain. Having to recount the events wasn’t exactly my favorite way to spend a Tuesday night, but Kelsey was probably my best ptonic friend, and I was reasonably sure this was what best friends did when shit got bad.

  “I can’t believe they would-”

  “Well I certainly can,” I cut her off.

  “And they-”

  “Yes,” I said.

  “You didn’t let me finish.”

  “They hit her. And me,” I said, cracking my neck. “Is there more whiskey?”

  “Fresh out.”

  “Damn.”

  “Yeahhh,” Kelsey said. “How are you holding up?”

  “Not great,” I admitted. “Kinda just been… Throwing myself into work. Samantha has been visiting Paul in the hospital a bunch, so I’ve had plenty of solo shifts at the shop. Plus, the new csses.”

  We’d actually just gotten back from those. Kelsey had offered me a drink on the way back, and I wasn’t exactly going to say no.

  “How are those going?” she asked.

  “Pretty good,” I said, leaning back in the bean bag and letting the spins take me for a ride. “Most of it is just math and memorizing various ws and codes and such. Though I’m still worried about my parents suing the school to get their money back.”

  “They’d do that?”

  “They’re doing that. At present,” I said. “Or at least they’re trying to.”

  “Jesus.”

  “Yeah. Also, I swung by the house to grab any of my stuff that I could before they changed the locks on me, and I saw them having a yard sale with all my shit. All of it. My clothes. My books. My ptop. Fucking everything. Even my bed.”

  “They can’t do that!”

  “And yet here we are,” I said.

  “I’m so fucking sorry, man.”

  “Thanks,” I sighed, raking a hand through my hair. It was starting to get shaggier than I liked, but I’d barely had the time and money to go grocery shopping tely, let alone go to the barber shop. “Can we not talk about me anymore, though? I’d kinda like to be able to think about, uh, literally anything else right now.”

  “Uh, sure, okay. What do you wanna talk about?”

  “Well, there is one thing that I’ve been wondering about for the past month,” I said.

  “What?”’

  “You’re not gonna like what I say.”

  “Oh, c’mon,” Kelsey said, sitting up in her hammock. “I’m a big girl, I can take it.”

  I sat up as well, weirdly enjoying the sense of half-drunk disorientation. “What the fuck is going on with you and Bethany?”

  Samantha

  “Bruh,” Bethany said from the other side of her living room couch. Which was pink. Most of her apartment was pink, to my complete ck of surprise: the carpet, the wallpaper, the furniture. Honestly, the color was growing on me: I’d never thought of myself as a ‘pink’ kind of girl, but Bethany wore it so well it was hard for me not to get a little curious.

  “What? It’s an honest question,” I replied. We both sat on her long futon couch, a hot pink quilt stretched over the both of us while we nursed our respective mugs of hot ginger tea with a spsh of rum thrown in for good measure. Bethany’s small but serviceable television sat across from us, pressed against the wall and pying an old sitcom about an astronaut and a genie cohabitating. I wonder if they realized at the time how kinky that whole thing came across as, what with her calling him ‘master’ and all that. Eh, I was probably reading too much into it.

  “It’s just.. IDK,” Bethany said before taking another sip of her boozy tea.

  “You said you wanted to girl-talk! That you wanted to dish!” I excimed. “And I already told you everything that was going on with me and Eli .”

  “But like, we can talk about that more-”

  “I’ve already iterated everything, Beth,” I said, cocking an eyebrow at her. “He and I are living together now that his parents have shown their teeth.”

  “Okay, but like, there’s more there. I thought you said his Tio Miguel was chill with you two dating-”

  “He is, but he’s also politely but firmly asked Eli to keep his distance for a while,” I sighed. “The rest of the family are taking Eli’s parents’ side. Miguel and Bianca are basically trying to do damage control.”

  “Well that sucks.”

  “Yeah, it does. And I’ve been living in that messy reality for the past month.”

  “But you two are good?” Bethany asked.

  In spite of my frustration, fueled by the mild intoxication offered by my beverage, I said, “Honestly? All things considered, yeah. I feel bad because this whole thing is my fault-”

  “No.”

  “Objectively, it is,” I said.

  “It’s really not.”

  “Eli lost his whole family because of his trans girlfriend,” I said. “As the trans girlfriend in question, I’m pretty sure that makes it my fault.”

  “His family would have still been a bunch of toxic, dysfunctional, codependent assholes with or without the involvement of a cute goth trans gf,” Bethany said.

  “I’m not cute,” I mumbled.

  “Do not make me throw this pillow at you,” Bethany said, holding up a hand-embroidered throw pillow with a mermaid on the white base.

  “Is not the point of a throw pillow to throw it?”

  “... I can’t tell if you’re serious or not.”

  “Bitch, I might be,” I chuckled. Ahhh, this rum was good. Hitting me hard, booze was, more and more as I lost weight. It was honestly a nice ancilry benefit to losing over forty pounds in seven months. I’d stopped telling people the exact number, though. For some reason, it was starting to freak them out. Even Eli had given me a side-eye when I’d done a happy-dance after scaling myself st week. So instead I just let the results of my tightening body speak for themselves. And speak they did (even if it was getting a little annoying that my clothes didn’t fit anymore). “Back on topic: you and Kelsey. Dish.”

  “Ugh, fine!” Bethany said. “Kelsey and I… We’ve kinda been not talking to each other the past couple weeks?”

  Eli

  “I’m sorry, what?” I shouted, standing up from my bean bag chair and then immediately regretting it. Holy crap, that was too much spinning, oh dear God.

  “Did I stutter?” Kelsey said in a ft, bitter tone.

  “I just… You two are practically joined at the hip. And now you’re avoiding each other?”

  “We’re not avoiding each other, we still work together, and I still film and edit her videos for her, but like, we don’t talk like we used to. It’s all business.”

  I sat back down, on the floor this time, tilting my head at her. “That’s somehow even more depressing.”

  “You’re being melodramatic-”

  “Kelsey, you’ve been in love with this woman for years. It was painfully obvious from the second I saw you two interact. You expect me to believe you’re okay with this?”

  “Of course I’m not okay with it!” Kelsey said, snapping slightly, then cringing as she realized how loud she’d been. “Not in the slightest. But I have to pretend to be. I mean what’s the alternative, bitch about how I’ve been shoved into the friendzone, start a podcast where I compin about how I’m entitled to a girlfriend? No fucking thank you, I am not gonna be that fvor of pathetic. She said no. That’s all there is to it.”

  “Okay, fair enough,” I said. “Just one question: did she say no because you asked, or because you didn’t ask until the issue got forced?”

  She blinked, then id back down in her hammock and covered her face with a pillow. Which she then screamed into.

  Footsteps petered up the wooden stairs to the attic, and an elderly voice reached us. “Everything alright here?” Kelsey’s grandmother, a tall, full-figured woman in her seventies with long gray braids streaming down her back and kind brown eyes accenting her face, said.

  “Go away, Gramma!” Kelsey whined.

  I failed to stifle a chuckle. “We’re good, Mrs. Peterson.”

  “Hey now, Elijah, I thought I told you to call me Kelsey Senior.”

  I ughed again. “Right. Sorry, Kelsey Senior.” I looked at my friend in her hammock and said, “Guess I should start calling you Kelsey Junior. Or KJ.”

  She removed the pillow from her face and gred at me, eyes full of ice. “Do not even.”

  “You kids need anything? More booze?” Kelsey Senior asked. “Weed?”

  “Yes please!” Kelsey Junior and I said in tandem.

  Samantha

  Bethany brought the bottle of rum out from her kitchen and added a fresh shot to her mug of tea, then did the same for mine. We clinked our mugs together, decorative ones with cartoon ponies on it, and both imbibed another swig of delicious booze.

  Bethany sighed, then began, “It’s not that I’m opposed to the idea of dating Kelsey, it’s that she waited so damn long to make a move. Actually, no, that’s not quite right: it’s the fact that she never actually made a move. She ran away into a literal rainstorm before doing a love confession. And she only came clean when you and Eli basically forced her to. Like, c’mon, that’s… That’s freaking cowardly! I can’t be with a coward. I just can’t do that to myself again.”

  “Again?” I said, leaning forward.

  “Yeah, my first girlfriend, Zoe. We started dating right when I began transitioning, and she… Well, she wanted to keep our retionship a secret, because she thought dating a trans girl would get her gold star taken away by the secret lesbian council or some bullshit like that.”

  “Jesus Christ!” I said.

  “Yeh, seriously,” Bethany said. “And when Kelsey ran and ran and ran from me before broaching the idea of us being together… It gave me some trauma fshbacks, not gonna lie.”

  “I can’t really say I bme you, there,” I said, putting a hand on her shoulder. She squeezed it, and gave me an appreciative smile. “Can I ask you something, though?”

  “I mean why the heck not, we’re already here, dishing,” Bethany said, the booze clearly starting to catch up with her.

  “If she had been more honest with you earlier, would you have said yes?” I asked. “If she’d asked you out like a normal person, I mean.”

  Bethany wrinkled her brow, pondering what I’d asked. “I’d have at least given it a shot. I mean, yeah, I’d have some apprehensions. We’ve been best friends forever since forever; part of me would be a little freaked out by changing anything about that, but like… One shitty date wouldn’t be enough to ruin that immediately.”

  “How do you feel about her?” I asked, fingering my hair as I spoke. Hm, I loved how long it was getting- down to my upper back nowadays. “Just… Putting all the other baggage aside. Are you attracted to her?”

  “I… I don’t know.”

  “Bethany, it’s a yes or no question.”

  “And I’m telling you I don’t have the answer for it.”

  “You don’t have it or you aren’t willing to dish it?”

  “Yes.”

  I stared at her ftly. She wound up polishing off her rum.

  “Okay, fine,” Bethany said. “I find her attractive, yes.”

  I gave her a gentle smile. “Then what’s the problem?”

  “The problem is that I don’t know if it goes any deeper than surface level attraction,” Bethany said. “And I do not want to jeopardize my retionship with my oldest, closest friend for something that’s basically just ‘hey, I’m hot, you’re hot, let’s be hot together.’”

  I traced my finger along the rim of my mug, the tactile feedback helping steady me in this very confusing, very frustrating conversation. “I just can’t believe you, of all people, are being so risk-averse.”

  “Why’s that hard to believe?”

  “Because you told me to go after Eli,” I said before downing another gulp of my rum.

  “Yeah, but wasn’t he the one who made the first move?”

  “Technically yes, but only after some gentle prodding from MOI, thank you very much,” I said, the booze filling my head with hammy confidence. “Look, I’m not saying you’re obligated to give her a shot, because of course you’re fucking not-”

  “Then what are you saying?”

  “Just…,” I started, then took another sip, finishing off the drink and letting the harshly sweet yet acidic taste peel away my filter. “Just that I want you to ask what you owe to yourself.”

  “In what regard?”

  “When was the st time you dated someone?”

  “Do one-night stands count?”

  “Sure.”

  “Then about three weeks ago. His name was Trevor and his hog was enormous,” she said, a dreamy filter overtaking her face and words.

  “Respect,” I said, raising my empty mug and chuckling slightly. “And when was the st time you had a real retionship?”

  “Uh… High school, probably. I guess there was this guy when I was in Japan, but we both knew that was never gonna go anywhere.”

  “Could you and Kelsey go somewhere? Like, in a perfect world, do you think there’s even a chance that you and her could be in a real retionship?”

  “I just… IDK. I’ve never even thought about it.”

  “Never?” I said.

  “I didn’t let myself,” Bethany said, pressing her knees against her massive chest. Not staring at those was becoming weirdly difficult. Would mine ever get that big? God I wished mine were that big. I bet they were so damn soft. “Kelsey came out as gay before I was a girl-”

  “You were always a-”

  “You know what I mean. I just… I’ve always thought she wouldn’t have considered me that way. That she looked at me and still saw… You know.”

  “You… You do realize that Eli knew me as a guy for years before I started transitioning, right?” I pointed out. “We met when I was thirteen and he was twelve.”

  “But you weren’t close until afterwards.”

  “Yeah, but he still saw me all the freaking time,” I said, remembering the countless silent hours we’d spend together in the breakroom at the shop, reading our books. He would look at me and I would… Well, I’d get flustered and I’d fail to say anything, but he was always the gentleman, never pushing me past my comfort zone. Only encouraging me, once we got there, to that fateful night where both of our lives changed forever. “He knew me as a guy for six years. I shouldn’t have to expin to you that once I changed, once I put on a dress and some makeup, started waving the fg, the way he saw me shifted immediately.”

  “Fair enough,” Bethany sighed. “I’m just not convinced Kelsey had the same reaction.”

  Eli

  “Oh God, the first time I saw her in a dress, my heart practically exploded,” Kelsey said. “We were freshmen in high school. I went over to her pce one afternoon to py video games, but she said she had something to show me. She had me wait downstairs, and when she came down, she was in a sundress- pink, obviously- and I just.. I never stood a chance.”

  I smiled, still sitting on the bean bag, while Kelsey Senior sat on the floor between us grinding weed and packing a bowl inside a bong. “Lemme guess,” I said, “You thought something to the effect of ‘holy crap, she’s cute! Am I allowed to think that? Am I allowed to find her cute?’”

  “‘But she’s a girl, that’s what this all means, so yeah, I can find her cute all I want as long as I don’t say anything weird,’” Kelsey said. “Hit the nail on the head. Guessing that’s how it was for you and Samantha?”

  “Yeah, exactly,” I said. “I just… It took me a second to recognize her. I’d seen her at least once a month consistently for six years, but it was like she’d finally snapped into focus. Like I could see her clearly. And what I saw was-”

  “The most beautiful girl in the whole fucking world?” Kelsey finished for me.

  “Language,” Kelsey Senior said as she lit the bowl of ground marijuana and took a long, deep inhale before passing it to me.

  I breathed in my own hit, letting the crossfade massage away any drunken frustration and carry me off to never-never-nd like the sad little lost boy I was.

  “Sorry,” Kelsey said as I passed her the bong and she took a long, deep hit. She coughed up a decent amount of it, but still, her posture rexed and that dorky smile of hers finally arrived at the party.

  “Just don’t tell your parents I gave you weed, they’ve been on my case to quit smoking,” Kelsey Senior said.

  “No, problem, Gramma,” Kelsey said, passing her namesake the pot.

  “So it was basically just love at first sight,” I said. “Maybe not literally, but given it was the first time you saw her as herself-”

  “It may as well have been, yeah,” Kelsey said. “And it wasn’t just how she looked: everything about her was just more: her smile, her ugh, the way she moved, the way she talked. God, I practically spent the whole day tongue-tied.”

  “So why didn’t you say anything?” I said.

  “Because I was an awkward teenager in the midst of a massive Useless Lesbian phase.”

  “Pfft, ‘phase’, yeah, sure,” Kelsey Senior snorted. “Because that was definitely something you grew out of.”

  “Shut uuuupppp,” Kelsey whined.

  A cackle erupted from deep within me. I came within inches of literally rolling on the floor ughing out loud.

  “Oh God, now you’ve got him started!” Kelsey said.

  “Sorry, sorry,” I said, rubbing my eyes and collecting myself before taking another hit. The sweet, acrid smoke burned in my chest and all my troubles got lost in the swirl of ashes. “You gotta admit, though: maybe you should’ve shot your shot before now? In a better way than the way in which you did?”

  “Yeah, I know,” Kelsey exhaled.

  “But if you know, then why didn’t you do anything about it?”

  “You’ve seen what she looks like, right? She’s gorgeous,” Kelsey said.

  “Oh yeah, she’s hot as fuck,” I said.

  “Sex on two legs,” Kelsey Senior affirmed.

  We both stared at the older woman bnkly for several moments.

  “Gramma,” Kelsey said reproachfully.

  “Respect,” I said, extending my hand for a fistbump, which Kelsey Senior readily returned.

  “Don’t encourage her!” Kelsey said.

  “I’m an encouraging person, what can I say,” I ughed. “The ultimate hype-man, Eli Luna is.”

  Kelsey just rolled her eyes and extended her hand, demanding the bong be deposited before her post-haste. She breathed out a rge puff of marijuana smoke before saying, “I really messed up, didn’t I?”

  “Yes,” both I and Kelsey’s grandmother replied in tandem.

  “Okay, but you gotta admit,” Kelsey said, “Even if I had womaned up all the way back in high school, asked her to senior prom or something, I don’t think she would have said yes.”

  Samantha

  “Oh, if she’d asked me to senior prom or something, I would have absolutely said yes,” Bethany said.

  “So why didn’t you ask her?” I said. “Cut through the bullshit? Why not just ask her?”

  “Because… Because… She can do better than a loser like me!” Bethany said. “She deserves a normal girl, someone who could actually be what she needs. Someone who has… What she needs to please her. I don’t have that. And until a few weeks ago, I had no reason to believe whatsoever that she felt that way about me!”

  I stared at her bnkly. My phone pinged, and I looked down and saw a text from Eli that read ‘the lesbians are not okay.’

  I snorted, then typed back, ‘the sapphics in general aren’t, it seems.’

  ‘I see you’re having a great bff hangout night too, then?’

  ‘Comme ci, comme ca,’ was my response. ‘I’m pretty drunk, though. You?’

  ‘Crossfaded af.’

  ‘Good for you.’

  ‘These two just need to talk to each other. Ffs.’

  ‘Agreed.’

  “Are you and your perfect boyfriend talking about me behind my back?” Bethany asked, pouting.

  “Not really talking about you behind your back when you’re right in front of me, facing me directly,” I responded.

  “... Touche.”

  “Eli’s with Kelsey right now, isn’t he?”

  “I’m not the type of woman to betray her man’s trust like that,” I snarked.

  “God, you have acquired so much more attitude the past few months.”

  “It’s due to your influence. Your toxic positivity has made me infinitely more confident,” I deadpanned.

  “Dammit. I’m just too powerful.”

  “I mean, I always assumed that was what you were storing in your giant bazongas.”

  “They are the source of my power, yes,” Bethany said, cupping her boobs and lifting them. I gulped at the sight of it. Dear God, woman, that’s just not fair!

  I cleared my throat and shook my head, attempting to push disturbing images out of my mind. “So, lemme see if I understand all this: you don’t think you’re good enough for Kelsey, and that’s why you never considered the idea of the two of you together. And because she never said anything, you assumed she wasn’t into you. And since she didn’t fess up until she was basically forced to, it just gave you a bad vibe and you didn’t want to risk it. Do I have all that right?”

  “That’s the long and short of it, yeah,” Bethany said, fingering her ptinum tresses with one hand while drumming her manicured nails on her leg with the other.

  “Interesting, interesting,” I said, typing out another text to Eli.

  Eli

  I stared down at my phone as I inhaled another hit, reading out Samantha’s words inside my head. ‘These two are both ridiculous, and it sounds like Bethany feels the same way as Kelsey but doesn’t wanna admit it.’

  ‘Yeah, that sounds about right,’ I responded.

  “Eli, I swear to God, if you’re texting your girlfriend about this conversation right now, I’ll… I don’t know what I’ll do, but you won’t like it!” Kelsey said, jabbing an accusatory index finger in my direction.

  “I can neither confirm nor deny the destination of any of the text messages in question,” I said, not looking up.

  “Goddammit, this is why I hate straight people,” Kelsey said, flopping back into her hammock and filing about in consternation.

  “Oh shut up, you gay coward,” Kelsey Senior said.

  Kelsey defted pretty spectacurly when she heard that.

  I ran a hand through my hair and said, “Okay, look, I’ll stop it with the onsught here. Just… Promise me you’ll actually talk to her about this soon? Try to clear the air, if nothing else?”

  Samantha

  “Okay, I promise,” Bethany said, hugging her knees against her chest.

  “Thank you,” I smiled, patting her head gently.

  ***

  The rest of the night was calmer after that, quieter. Eventually, I called an uber to get my drunk ass home, and when I got there, Eli was already on the front steps, unlocking the door.

  Carefully hobbling over to him, I leaned on my boyfriend. Oh goodness, he smelled like weed. I could feel a contact high creeping up on me just from the hug. Ohh, that was nice. I didn’t want to risk fucking up my voice with a smoking habit, but the buzz here was welcomed and appreciated. “Hey, you,” I said into his ear.

  “Hiiiii,” Eli replied as he twisted the lock open.

  “Yes, you clearly are,” I said as he opened the door and led me inside.

  I was barely in before he pinned me against the wall and started making out with me, all the smells bringing my dirtiest thoughts to the surface of my conscious mind. “Someone’s feeling frisky,” I purred as he began kissing my neck.

  “Turns out getting crossfaded makes me super horny,” Eli said, kicking the door shut behind him.

  “I can see that,” I said. “I’m really drunk, though, so I do not know how much longer I’ll be able to stay awake.”

  Eli, gentleman that he was, immediately pulled away and simply gave me a big hug. “I understand.”

  “Hmm. I know you do.”

  “Can we at least spoon?” he asked.

  “Always,” I nodded.

  “Can we be naked while we spoon?”

  “Pfft, sure, why not?” I said. “Just lemme brush my teeth first.”

  “Mmm, good idea,” he said.

  We got ready for bed, and we both stripped and climbed under the covers together. Eli’s body was long and lean, and I loved the way it felt when he was wrapped around me, even if I wished I was a bit less… Squishy. My boobs were getting bigger, which was nice, and my stomach was getting smaller, which was also nice, but still… I could stand to drop another dress size or five.

  “Our friends are ridiculous,” Eli said. his fingers tracing the outline of my breast while I rested my head on his hard chest.

  “They really are,” I said. “But I’m gd we have them.”

  “Oh God, same,” he said. “I just… I hope they cut the crap eventually. They’d make a great couple.”

  “Absolutely they would,” I said. “But they’re adults and we can’t force them to do anything.”

  “But we can make fun of them for being ridiculous, right?”

  “Oh fuck yeah,” I said, smiling at the warm tingling offered by Eli’s caressing of my nipple. “Bethany is one of those bi disasters I’ve heard so much about, it’s hirious.”

  Eli chortled. “Kelsey is so useless, even her grandmother clowns on her for it. It’s amazing.”

  “Now that I’ve got to see.”

  “Come to the next book club meeting, then,” he said.

  “Good idea,” I smiled. “Still… I can’t believe Bethany is jealous of us. Thinks we’re a perfect couple.”

  Eli raised my head by putting his hand under my chin, looked me square in the face, and said, “I mean, perfect is a strong word, but I think we’re pretty great.”

  “Even though I ruined your life?”

  “Don’t talk like that,” he said firmly. “Don’t ever talk like that. You’ve made my life so much better than I ever thought it could be. I don’t know who I would be if I didn’t have you.”

  Someone who still has a family, I thought, but I managed not to say it. For tonight, I let him be happy. For tonight, I’d let him have this. For tonight, this was okay: I was a hideous, fat, drunken wreck and a paltry excuse for a woman, but… In the arms of the man I loved, with a pleasant evening behind me and another day with him ahead of me, I almost felt like I deserved it. I almost felt like I deserved to be happy. Part of me, a very rge and very loud part of me, was worried about what would happen once the shine wore off, worried for the moment he saw how truly pitiful and worthless I was, but… But that wasn’t today. That wasn’t now.

  Right now, I was happy.

  Eli’s eyes began to close as he drifted off to sleep, and I joined him in slumbernd soon thereafter. I was garbage, but I had a loving boyfriend and great (if absurd) friends.

  As I drifted off, the st thing I thought was ‘Thank you, God.’