May studied me in the mirror as she brushed out my hair.

  She’d been the one to pick me up in the morning, spending a few minutes with Pinky’s mom downstairs before texting me that it was time to go. Back home I’d watched Steph and done homework (history and math) and housework (my room and bathroom, my laundry, a bit of my back yard), and financial work (continuing the gradual offshoring of my liquid assets into numbered bank accounts). Dinner had been quiet, the only real conversation being about Aunt Sophie’s announced plan to leave tomorrow. Afterwards I’d played chess with Carl, mixing up some Hemingways for us to drink during the game using the adult gin and elderflower liqueur recipe to test my drink-and-play power. I’d cut the alcohol-to-drink ratio by half, I wasn’t stupid.

  Or maybe I was; after three Hemingways, even stretched out over more than an hour, Carl had beat me in a protracted endgame, his king and queen against my king, knight, and bishop.

  All day I’d barely said a word about the sleepover, and now in our nighttime ritual I was still being quiet. I’d showered and changed for bed and sat at my vanity table while May wielded the brush and at last she stopped, resting her hands on my shoulders.

  “Are you going to tell me what happened?” she asked gently.

  “I had sex with Pinky!” I blurted out.

  I’d fallen asleep last night feeling so, so good, and woke up in the morning feeling great. There’d been no awkwardness at all. But coming home and as the day had gone on, I’d felt more and more . . . confused. Worried. Guilty though I had no idea about what. I had no idea how I felt about it now, but sitting there I was inexplicably near tears again. And not last night’s good tears.

  May’s eyes widened but she didn’t say a thing, just tightened her hands on my shoulders as she watched my turns of expression in the mirror. “. . . And?”

  I threw up my hands. “And I don’t know! It was scary, and amazing, and last night it felt, just, right. Now . . . I feel like I’m at least three different people in my head and none of them know what to think.” My voice hitched on think and I pressed my lips together, breathing through my nose.

  “Okay. Okay,” she soothed softly, rubbing my arms when I didn’t go on. “Can we talk about it?” When I nodded, she put the brush down and pulled me up from my chair, giving me a quick hug and guiding me into bed. I grabbed Hads and hugged her to me as, settling beside me with our backs against the headboard, she put one arm around me and played with my hair. I lay my head on her shoulder as the sudden shivery tension drained out of me.

  “So, tell me what happened?” she whispered.

  Where could I begin when I didn’t understand? “Can’t you just . . . look? No, I know.” Even as I asked I knew the answer; we’d talked more about her telepathy during the week and it sounded like she wasn’t really much better at it than Grace. At best even with my cooperation she’d only get emotions I didn’t understand myself and jumbled flashes of thought and memory in no real order or context.

  After some thought and not looking at her, I started with my garden encounter at the party (omitting the detail that Pinky had been the girl I’d found sucking Lizard off), then told her about my horrific social-anxiety wet dream and waking to find that Pinky had heard a lot of it. And with a few false starts I told her about Pinky’s ‘sapphic sister’ proposition and what came after.

  May listened quietly to the whole rambling thing, just gently scratching my scalp and playing with my hair, which was sort of hypnotic. When it was obvious that I wasn’t going to say anything more, she sighed.

  “And here I thought I had nothing to worry about for a while.”

  “Excuse me?” And even crushed by my internal confusion I giggled over my unintended echo of last night’s conversation.

  “Well, I know I preached the ‘Be prepared,’ sermon this week and got you as ready as I could, but as freaked out as you’ve expressed yourself to be about the possibility of sex as a girl, I really did expect it to take longer. And I was very alright with that. But this isn’t about my expectations, this is about you. Can I ask a few questions, sweetheart?”

  “Please.” Maybe then I’d get some answers, too.

  My eagerness earned me a smile. “Good. First off, honey, did you want to do it?”

  “I— ” I hugged Hads and thought about it. I’d wanted everything while it was happening, as scary as it had been at the beginning. Had I wanted it at the beginning? “Yes?”

  “Mmmm, that doesn’t sound very convincing. Think back. When Pinky, your big sister and school mentor, sexually propositioned you, were you . . . excited? Freaked out?”

  Taking a moment to untangle everything I remembered I finally nodded, looking up at her. “When I understood what she was asking—what she meant—then I really wanted it. It was— I was scared but I wanted it.”

  May relaxed a little. “Absolutely nothing wrong with being scared your first time, so long as you didn’t do it because you were scared or, or pressured. So, do you feel that Pinky took advantage of you, of the state you were in after your dream?”

  “No! No.” With everything buzzing in my head now that thought hadn’t even occurred to me. “She checked that it was what I wanted lots of times. She was great. It was great.” God was it ever; as confused as I was, I fully expected a zero-anxiety sex dream tonight if anything.

  She relaxed a little more. “And now? Does what you did together give you different feelings about Pinky?”

  I gave that some thought. Even a lifetime past high school and college I vividly remembered the emotional rollercoaster of hopeless crushes and my one non-hopeless crush (until it turned out to be hopeless, too). I wasn’t presenting any of the signs of an incipient crush on my Hadley sister. No obsessive thinking about every interaction or need to call her to confirm her positive feelings, no worries—or crushing certainty—that she didn’t really like me, no anxious need to see her again as soon as possible. There was zero hint that I was rising to the top of the track and about to go over that long, long drop.

  Stolen content alert: this content belongs on Royal Road. Report any occurrences.

  “No,” I said finally. “I’ll be happy to see her again Monday—” After some vacillating I’d texted her Thank you for a great Sister’s Night! and said as much. “—but I feel the same about Gemma.” Over the past week my homeroom sister had become my second girlfriend, by some process I didn’t understand but who I also wasn’t lusting after in any way. And . . . could that be part of the problem?

  My lack of real sexual attraction to girls I knew to be objectively attractive still felt very, very weird, almost as weird though not as distressing as my sudden magnetic attraction to the boys. Like I was always waiting for an instinctual response to kick in that never did.

  “Good, excellent,” May replied. While I’d been examining that thought, she’d gone back to playing with my hair. “And do you feel like you took advantage of Pinky?”

  I froze. “I— I— ” I hadn’t even thought of that. Not once.

  She chuckled. “Well, if you’re that shocked by the thought then you couldn’t have been obsessing about it all day.”

  “But, but did I? I’m— She’s— What?”

  “Relax, honey.” Dropping my hair, she brushed my cheek with the back of her fingers. “I just needed to check your thinking. From everything you’ve told me, Pinky has all the advantages of experience and intention in your dynamic.”

  “But I’m the adult—”

  “Remember what I said last week about your lack of real social experience compared to your new peers. She’s eighteen or very close, and in terms of sexual and relational experience clearly older than you. If anything, she’s the one who took advantage, perhaps without knowing it and even if you don’t feel like she did.”

  “Oh.” That made sense, or at least I couldn’t poke any holes in it.

  “Well, I’m relieved,” May said softly, fingers going back to my hair. “Your first time seems to have been a good experience for you, with someone who took your emotional wellbeing into account. And I have a theory about your confusion, now.”

  I blinked. She did? How had anything I’d said clued her in?

  “If you want my opinion,” she went on, “I think that a couple of things are messing with your head right now. One is that your experience didn’t change how you feel about Pinky, didn’t change your budding friendship dynamic. Never having had sex, you feel it should be part of this super-deep connection, or make a super-deep connection. It hasn’t, here, so in your head you feel out of step. Friendship sex doesn’t fit your framework of how it can be.” She gave me a moment to think about it.

  “Okay . . . you said a couple of things?” I wasn’t sure I bought her theory, but I would be thinking about it. Probably a lot.

  “The other thing is, from what you’ve told me your fantasies of sex have, so far, not included penetration. You accepting a man’s penis.”

  I swallowed, suddenly very warm and uncomfortable. “N—no.” Chasing a man, yeah. Even skin-to-skin embracing one or—with the Lizard-inspired fantasies, being eaten out by one or watching it voyeuristically, but— “No, I haven’t, I— Can’t. I just, just the thought makes me panic.”

  “So, you’re finding yourself very attracted to boys, sexually attracted to them, but at the same time the thought of coitus, of, as a woman, being penetrated by a man, frightens you. You can’t accept it.”

  I nodded. I’m so messed up.

  She made a scoffing sound like she could see where my thoughts were going and disapproved. Which she probably did. “But with Pinky,” she went on, voice almost a whisper, “you felt nothing like that, did you?”

  I shook my head. “No. Not even a little bit.”

  “No. And I think that’s because before your change, in all your fantasies you were male. I think inside, in your mental image of yourself, you still are.”

  I chewed my lip, hugging Hads tighter. She was right. I was okay most of the time now, would think I was okay, and then I’d have a crushing moment when it felt like I was David wearing a Teen Girl Suit, like this small, slight body had somehow literally compressed and crushed me inside of it and I could hardly breathe. It had been less than two months and what was amazing was that it usually only happened at odd moments in front of mirrors now, but . . .

  “But what does that have to do with Pinky?”

  May had been gazing at me intently as she shared her theory, watching my thoughts parade behind my eyes as she did. She had to be “uncovered” as she put it, for this, to feel my emotional state, and I didn’t care at all; anything to help her understand me. “I think,” she said, “that last night was wonderful for you, and I’m glad. But I also think you experienced it all as April, as a young woman, and I can feel how intense it was for you. I think now that it’s in your memory, it’s changing your internal balance again, shaking your mental image of yourself. What you’re feeling is disorientation—you’re assimilating a new and intense experience that you never had as David.”

  “Oh,” I said again. That was . . . that made a lot of sense to me. Last night I’d felt confused, scared, excited, awed, and in the end oh so good. What I hadn’t felt was David at all. Pinky’s kisses and touches, her mouth on my pussy, her finger and tongue inside me, those things belonged only to April.

  “But what do I know?” May chuckled. “I’m not a psychiatrist and I’m sure the most experienced head-shrink would have a hard time making sense of all that’s in your head, it’s such a . . . unique situation. My final point is, it’s perfectly natural for you to feel all up in your head right now. Accept the feeling. You’ve been very brave, and with time and experience your confusion will pass and you’ll know yourself again. I promise.”

  “You promise? But what if I—” I was already aquaphobic now—was I phallophobic, too? Seeing Pinky sucking Lizard off I’d been . . . repulsed. Aroused, but repulsed to the point of feeling physical ill at the thought of even touching a boy’s penis, forget about letting a boy put his penis in me or taking it in my mouth. My fantasies had automatically drifted to the other end, what Lizard had done to Pinky. What Pinky had done for me last night.

  God, just thinking about it made me warm again and I knew tonight was going to end with me coming on my busy fingers to fantasies of someone’s tongue in me.

  I need all the therapy.

  Not because of what I was going to fantasize about, but because of what I couldn’t—how could I be so attracted to boys now but repulsed by their penises even in my thoughts? I’d had one for sixty years.

  “Hey,” May whispered in my ear. “Where did you go, just now?” I turned my head to find her studying me with concerned eyes.

  “You’re right.” I exhaled a shuddering sigh. “I’m all up in my head. But, yeah. It was good and I’ll figure it out.”

  She dropped a kiss on my forehead. “Of course you will, darling girl. And I’m always here to talk it out, no matter how embarrassing it is.” Scooting off the bed, she encouraged me to lie down so she could tuck me in. Giving me a last considering look, she smiled. “Goodnight, honey.” Turning out the lights, she closed the bedroom door to leave me in the dark.

  I hugged Hads, staring at the closed door before rolling onto my side to stare at the shadowed wall.

  I really did need all the therapy. Yeah, that’s not going to happen. There was no way I was going to trust another medical professional with my secret. But just thinking of last night and Pinky’s head between my legs and her mouth on me, heat rose in my face and I felt the flush move down to my chest as my nipples stiffened, rubbing against my nightshirt. Releasing Hads to squeeze my left breast, I felt the pulse of my blood between my legs. Reaching over I set the stuffed bear on my nightstand and faced her away. “You don’t need to see this, Hads.”

  So I was messed up. My fingers slipping beneath my night shorts, a grin stretching my cheeks as I rolled over to bury my face in my pillow. Messed up or not, I was going to enjoy it.