Edith woke throughout the night, studying the soft glow of Valerie’s skin, certain she’d turn immaterial as dust in the light. She would sit up, say, Time to stop being a pumpkin, and drive her car into the ocean.

Val stayed for two weeks. Edith went to class and taught. Val walked dogs and handed out fliers for a new kickboxing gym. A couple of times she posted on one of the sketchy sites that replaced Backpage and found tenured professors who’d pay to fuck her. Edith’s chief surprise was that this did not bother her. Don’t tell me if any of them are English faculty, she said. Valerie came back to Edith’s bed at night, half-drunk and slaphappy, murmuring, Judy, Judy, Judy. No one else called her by that name. If it was still wrong, it became blessedly less so in Valerie’s mouth.

They played cards at home. They drank in the rooftop bar of Tuscaloosa’s one decent hotel. Val returned from midday hikes covered in dirt and sweat and stripped in the middle of Edith’s living room.

Could we have been doing this before? Edith scanned the back of Valerie’s knees for ticks. She hadn’t intended to voice this.

Everything happened the way it happened.

Wow, so profound, is that Siddhartha Gautama?

When do you imagine we might have “done this,” Judy?

You mean because now I’m—whatever. Embarrassing that she couldn’t say trans.

No.

Valerie was right. In college it would have been a mess. If they’d somehow made it work, there would have been social drama, tedious parties, thesis drafts. Manmade horrors that they, in this godforsaken football town, found themselves insulated from.

If they’d dated, if they’d broken up, where would Edith have landed? Whose lives would they be living now?

Before Valerie left, she gave Edith a three-day warning.

Gotta go north for a checkup.

But you’ll be back.

Yes. Valerie kissed the corner of her mouth. I’ll be back in one month to the day. And like a miracle, she was. She stepped from her car and tossed an orange pill bottle through the air. Catch, she said, and Edith did. The rattle of blue-green pills. Valerie Green, the bottle announced. Estradiol. 2mg.

A gift, she said, for you.