The rain waited to return until Edith was at Adam and Michael’s. The rush and roar filled the evening air as she stepped inside, and Adam looked up from the couch, startled.

She told you, he said. You wanna talk about it?

Edith crumpled onto the couch beside him. Adam set aside his computer and put his arms around her. She wished she were smaller. The boy-smell of his shirt, the soft hair of his arms. It was good to be enveloped.

Do you still have feelings for her?

Not like that.

But?

I feel so stupid. Edith shook her head. Why the fuck did I leave, Adam?

If you stayed, you’d always wonder what would’ve happened if you’d gone.

That’s a bad reason.

Doors close, Edie. That’s part of getting older. Do you want some tea?

Don’t get up.

Okay. Each pressed harder against the other. Old bones scraping inside them. Edith wished Val were here, were anywhere besides buried in the dry Texas ground. The breezy affect when she answered the phone. The way she’d say No fucking way when Edith told her that Tessa was with a guy. They’d crack jokes about him being another closeted trans girl. It would lose its importance. Their collective history would be sieved for relevant anecdotes and they’d talk until one of them saw the sun rise, and then they’d leave it all behind.

If she answered her fucking phone, of course.

Adam said, You know how shitbag transphobes always talk about transition being “irreversible damage”?

We’re the transgender craze seducing their daughters.

I mean obviously I want to go Judith-and-Holofernes on them but I think they’re essentially right about it being irreversible. Even detransitioning only layers a new life over the old. You carry traces of every earlier self. It’s not a bad thing, though. It’s life.

You only say that ’cause you pass.

Maybe. If you could be cis, would you?

Of course not.

They stayed wrapped together. There’d been too few of these moments in their friendship. How much closer they’d come in the years they lived a thousand miles apart.

If that doesn’t work for you, how’s this: remember the girl I dated at the end of college? Emily? Edith did. She’d almost taken the girl’s name when picking a new one. I thought I was going to marry her. I had this whole image of our life together, living in Park Slope with a Westie and matching jobs at CUNY. We’d be the cool dyke professors who’d have all our gay students over for dinner and light gossip.

Why did you break up? I’m not sure I ever knew.

Why else? Something was wrong. Edith had left a dark stain on Adam’s clothes. Sparse tears and the rain she’d carried in. We mostly make the choices we need to. I don’t care if that sounds stupid, because it’s the truth. He squeezed her, hard, and stood. I’m making tea either way, are you sure you won’t have some?

Edith closed her eyes and curled into the warm place Adam left behind. This couch that was her temporary home. Sure, she said. That’d be nice.