Chapter Nate
Nate
I’m all alone with the silence, and the smell of coffee too early in the morning.
I gave up trying to sleep a long time ago. The Christmas tree is still on, warm colors filling an empty living room, tainted by last night, while I’m on the couch staring down at my mama’s locket.
The one I was supposed to give to Iris.
I can’t stop going over our conversation, every word, every tear that fell down her face. The way she backed away from me and wouldn’t let me touch her, like she thought I’d hurt her.
Hell, I think maybe I did.
She told me she’s transgender.
Those words keep echoing in my mind, over and over, and I can’t make them mean something different. Iris was born a boy.
I can’t get the image of her face when she told me that out of my head. Terrified, ashamed, like she was telling me something awful.
And it ain’t like I reacted in any way to make her think differently.
I asked her.
God.
I bury my head in my hands with a groan. I asked Iris, the woman I love, who was already upset, if she had a dick.
What the fuck is wrong with me?
Why would I think I had the right to ask her that?
It was god damn disrespectful, bringing up her body like that when we haven’t even slept together. If anybody else said what I said to her last night, I’d knock their lights out. And I went on and did it like I wasn’t raised to think before I speak.
After that, she shut down. I could see it. I broke her heart.
When she left, I googled shit on my phone, feeling like the world’s most clueless asshole. What does transgender mean? Are trans women really women? Am I gay if I date a trans woman?
Typing those words felt like a betrayal. She wanted me to understand, to accept her.
The worst part is, I have no idea what I’m supposed to do from here.
Part of me is angry, ‘cause how could she not tell me? She’s my girlfriend. I told her I saw myself marrying her, and she’s been keeping this from me the entire time.
But my mind always circles back to how scared she looked. How she wouldn’t go out with me at the start of the school year. How she apologized for dating me.
Maybe she didn’t think she could tell me.
It feels like I should care about all this, that I should see her different now, but I don’t. No matter how hard I try not to, I still love her as much as I did before she told me.
But I don’t know if that’s enough.
I don’t know if, when things get down to it, I’ll be able to—
How would it even work between us? I try to picture it, even though that’s the last thing I should be doing right now. Me and her, in bed, but all I can see is Iris underneath me, face screwed up in pleasure, and the rest of it—
Just details.
I rub my hands over my face, trying to scrub the image from my mind. I shouldn’t be thinking about this. Iris is probably sitting at home, heartbroken right now, and I’m thinking about sex.
I look back down at the locket in my hand, at the picture of us, smiling, her head leaning on my shoulder. My thumb brushes over her face, and my heart aches with want.
I miss her already.
I haven’t seen Iris since Christmas.
And that doesn’t mean I haven’t been bothering her like crazy, trying to get her to talk to me.
I scroll through our last messages while I wait for Alex to finish getting ready. I’ve texted her every day, checking in, talking about the weather, telling her about what I did, complaining about Alex, doing anything I can to get her to respond.
To talk to me. Even just to tell me she’s okay.
I don’t understand all of this, and I’m still not sure what’s going to happen between us, if there can even be an us, but never talking to her again?
That ain’t an option.
But I’ve got no idea where she stands on the whole thing. If she’s upset, if she’s mad at me. She hasn’t reached out, and she barely responds to my texts.
All I know is, it makes something ugly twist in my stomach every time she responds with that cold indifference.
It’s the first day back after Christmas break, and I’m hoping that maybe we can talk about this. That maybe I’ll know what to say. When the floor creaks, I glance up, and Alex is standing in the doorway. “Dude, what happened?”
“What do you mean?”
He grabs a banana from the fruit bowl, making a face at it, but eating it anyway. “Come on, Nate. You look like shit. And you’ve been weird since Christmas. What happened with Iris?”
“Uh…”
I can’t even begin to explain this, not to Alex. Would Iris even want me to? I get the feeling this is something I shouldn’t be going around telling people. So I settle for, “We got into an argument.”
Alex raises an eyebrow, “Are you breaking up?”
I shrug, hating every second of it. “I don’t know.”
“Man, that sucks,” he mutters, shaking his head with a frustrated breath.
“It sucks?”
“Yeah, fuckin’ sucks,” Alex says, sounding annoyed that I even asked. “Iris is nice. She talked to me, you know? Felt like she actually cared about us.” I look down at my phone, her one-word responses, all I’ve heard from her in two weeks.
“I know,” I mutter. “She did.”
“So fix it.”
“It ain’t that simple,” I tell him, but he just crosses his arms. Uh oh.
“What?”
“This isn’t about Savannah, is it?” he asks, his expression daring me to say yes.
“Savannah? No way.”
“So, things going wrong between you two right when Savannah started working at the school is a coincidence? If you screw this up over her, I swear to God, Nate…” He trails off, but the threat hangs there, half-formed.
And I don’t blame him.
Savannah made it clear that she considered him a burden. I was stupid for not breaking up with her back then.
“Alex, it’s not about Savannah. I promise you that.” I tell him, and it’s the god’s honest truth. She hasn’t even crossed my mind.
He holds my gaze a second longer, searching my face like he’s trying to read my damn mind. Finally, his shoulders drop. “Good,” he says, looking away, scuffing his sneaker on the kitchen tile. “Because Iris is better.”
“I know she is.”
“And you love her,” Alex adds, still in that accusing tone.
“I do.”
He doesn’t say anything at first, picking at the black nail polish on his fingers. “Then why are you fighting? Just apologize.”
“It’s complicated, bud. Sometimes loving somebody isn’t enough. There’s stuff going on you don’t know about, and it ain’t my place to tell you.”
His brows furrow. “Does she know you’re an idiot?”
“Yeah, I think she knows, especially after the other night.”
I frown down at the floor until Alex sighs, stopping in front of me. When I look up, he gives me a small smile. “She’ll forgive you. She’d miss me too much if she didn’t.”
That drags a laugh from me, even if it’s twinged with the heartache I can’t shake.
I haven’t seen her all morning.
She wasn’t waiting for me like she usually does when she gets here before me, but I saw her car in the staff parking lot, so at least I know she’s here.
The wait for lunch feels like it drags on for an eternity. By the time the bell rings and I can go through the line, I’m grabbing random shit, filling my tray with whatever I can get to the fastest.
When I make it to the teacher’s lounge, I spot her instantly.
She’s sitting at the end of the long table, her hair loose over her shoulders, staring down at a salad, dragging her fork through it. Layla’s across from her, saying something that makes the corner of her mouth tug up.
God, she’s beautiful.
Almost two weeks without seeing her, I almost forgot. How am I supposed to think clearly when she looks like that?
I square my shoulders, take a deep breath, and walk over like nothing’s wrong, and my heart didn’t crack at the sight of her.
“Hey.” I sit down beside her in my usual chair. She startles, looking up at me and then quickly stares back down at her food, angling her body away from me enough that we’re not in any danger of touching.
Layla looks between us. “Um. You guys good?”
Iris stabs at a tomato. “We broke up.”
“What? No, we didn’t,” I challenge, the crack spreading with every word.
“Yes, we did,” she says, matter of fact, already deciding how this ends without giving me a say. I want to argue, to fight for her. But I don’t know what I’m supposed to do here.
I just wish she wouldn’t say it like that.
So final.
Layla turns toward me with a glare. “What did you do?”
I freeze in my chair because what do I even say? I don’t understand all this? Every time I think about it, my mind goes blank? I shrug, looking down at my cafeteria pizza that’s lost all of its appeal.
Layla ignores me, taking Iris’ hand, “You okay, hon?”
Iris nods, but she’s completely curled in on herself. I’ve seen her like this before. When she first got here. When I tried to talk to her, she would get all shy and awkward. But it was cute back then, and she eventually came out of her shell. Decided to trust me.
And look what I did with that trust.
The silence stretches between us as I look around the room, trying to think of something to say. She’s completely stiff, like she’s bracing herself for something.
“Iris.” I start, resting my hand on her back, trying to get her to relax, but she flinches hard.
“I have to go,” she mumbles, the same thing she said before, leaving the room without even taking her uneaten salad.
I stay exactly where I am, my hand still outstretched, touching nothing but air where she used to sit. When I look up, Layla’s glaring at me, sharp enough to cut glass. “What the hell, Nate?”
“I don’t…” My voice breaks. I clear my throat, trying again. “I don’t know.”
“God, I knew you would do this!”
“What’s that supposed to mean?”
She scoffs. “Don’t play dumb. Iris is different, okay? She’s sensitive and—” She pauses, getting too worked up over whatever she thinks I did to finish her sentence. “You can’t fuck around with her and leave the way you do with everybody else!”
“That’s not what this is!” I snap back, too loud, making a couple of teachers glance over. “It’s not like that, Layla.”