“You’re coming out tonight,” Amber says.

                Five pm Friday, one week after his one-month performance review. He’d been busily tweaking a PowerPoint, sizing and resizing text boxes and on-brand bits of imagery, when Amber pulled up a chair next to him. Then, Amber poked him in the shoulder. Hey, she said, and he ignored her and she poked him again, hey, and again, hey, and again, until finally he couldn’t hold it back, and giggled. Smiling, Alex faced his tormentor.

                “My treat,” she continues, “a proper celebration. You crushed it last week. You’re amazing, I knew you were amazing the first time we met.” She takes his hand—Blake’s hand—in hers and smiles. “Remember, when you came for your interview? You were so cute, so nervous.” God, her smile, so disarming, eyes beautiful as she sweeps blonde bangs back from her face. “And I’m not taking no for an answer. It’s Friday,” and the way she says it, it’s like the pronouncement of an inviolable rule, a sacred ritual of weekend worship.

                Alex tells himself to defer again, with deep and meaningful plans to shove Blake back into the closet for the weekend, to peel off fake nails and scrub his face clean, quite literally wipe her away and become one with the sofa for the evening. He wants nothing more than to escape who he is and who he pretends to be all week long, to enjoy his two short days of respite. Better yet, to throw on jeans and a t-shirt and leave the fake tits behind and head to the pub and sit anonymously amongst the chatter of men, of other men who see him as one of their own—or who don’t, who never even noticed him, because why would they? and that was good, too—and maybe, just maybe, try his luck with a girl, if he met one, and buy her a drink, as men have bought him all too recently, and enjoy a chat, in the way that men too often now speak to him.

                “I’ve honestly got nothing to wear,” he says.

                “Don’t you worry about that.” Amber was literally impossible to refuse, a powerhouse of persuasion with the mock-serious look, the arched brow and what was it that Peterson said, make friends with people who want the best for you? Amber always seems to want the best for him, for reasons that entirely escape him. Besides, wasn’t this what he wanted, Friday night after work drinks, that London weekend lifestyle? Not like this, maybe, pints down the pub rather than white wine spritzers, suit and tie instead of skirt and heels. And yet. He was young. He’d be in the company of a beautiful girl, at the centre of one the greatest cities on Earth, and wasn’t that the dream, the fucking point of it all? Even if she already had a serious boyfriend. And was more likely to swap lipstick tips than kisses with him. But still. She was sexy and clever and fun and he enjoyed being in her company, painful as it could be.

                He saves his work, shuts the office down for the weekend. Then, he pokes his head into Ms. St-Clair’s office down the hall, where she sits behind a heavy wooden desk, peering through thick-framed glasses at her screen, lips curled into something like a sneer of contempt. She glances up, and the harder lines of her face soften very slightly at the sight of Blake.

                “Have a good weekend, Ms. St-Clair,” Alex says. “Amber and I are heading off.”

                Ms. St-Clair removes her glasses, pinches the bridge of her nose and sighs. “This is shit,” she says, waving one hand at her laptop. “I knew it would be shit, and I hoped it wouldn’t be shit, but it’s shit.”

                Alex hesitates at the doorway, takes a step into her office. “Harry’s deck?”

                “Harry’s deck,” St-Clair says.

                “You want me to have a look at it?” He says this with a sinking feeling and the knowledge that it would be hours out of his weekend; but also, a warm sense of pride in the knowledge that she will say yes, that she trusts him with this kind of work.

                Ms. St-Clair smiles, thin-lipped but genuinely pleased, and says, “yes, please, Blake, I would appreciate that very much,” and that makes him feel warm, too.  And when Alex turns to leave, she calls out to him, “Blake,” and there’s a firmness to her voice that freezes him in his spot.

                Standing at the threshold, he turns back. She steps out from behind her desk and crosses over to him, each step precise, the click of heel against hardwood flooring.  Ms. St-Clair looks him over as she approaches and some of the sternness returns though the pleasure remains in her eyes, and her gaze sweeps over him with all the heat of a searching spotlight, moving slowly from head to toe. With the spin of a single raised finger, she indicates that Alex should turn a slow circle. It is not the first time she has inspected his outfit, though the first since his performance review.

                A tingle races down his spine. The back of his neck suddenly feels hot, sweat beading beneath the soft silk collar of his blouse. Yet, he does as he is told; how could he not? With light-footed steps he turns a careful circle in his Kurt Geiger’s and feels the very slight flare of his skirt, the breath of air against his tights. Just once and then he stands straight and shoulders back, hands clasped behind his back as she’s taught him and he feels acutely aware of how turned on he is, performing this little dance for her, the strain against his tuck and the tightness in his chest as she scrutinises his look, his performance.

                Emily St-Clair’s face was naturally very pale and today her lips a contrast in rich, deep reds. She wears a silk-satin burgundy blouse with the top two buttons undone, and matching trousers, wide-legged with sharp creases. Though they both wear heels, she is taller and now stands close and over him. A flash of white teeth, a tight-lipped smile and a slight nod, yes.

                “As I said last week,” she says. “You continue to impress, Blake. You’ve come such a long way since your first week here. So much more confident and well put together.”

                “Thank you,” Alex murmurs diffidently. Then, he bites back a gasp, or a flinch, as she reaches up, finely manicured fingernails painted to match her lips, and he thinks she’s about to touch him, nearly leans into that touch, realises that he’s hoped she would, in fact, touch him, inappropriate as that would be, and has wished this since the day he first met her.

                But no. At least, not directly. She touches the silk scarf wrapped around his neck, and nods, finger resting against the embroidered Hermes logo. She seems pleased, then her attention focuses on his earrings. The back of her hand brushes his cheek as she gently taps his simple gold studs. He feels the back of her hand against his skin as a shiver down his spine.

                “These, however,” Mr. St-Clair says, and makes a small tsking sound, “are no good,” and her voice is gentler now, reproachful yet patient.  “Disappointing, a poor match for the rest. I think you can do better than this, Blake.”

                Not trusting himself to speak, he simply nods.

                “Good,” she says, then returning to her desk, leans against it without ever taking her eyes off him. The way she looks at him feels predatory, makes him nervous, and in her gaze he can see himself and he sees himself as poised and feminine, and in imagining himself as such feels the blush spread across his chest and flow upwards, the rising heat hidden beneath the light silk scarf. Now, he isn’t sure whether he should leave or stay, or whether he wants to leave or stay. There is a lengthy pause in which she seems to consider whether there is more to say.

                “The scarf,” she says. “A gift?”

                Biting his bottom lip, he nods.

                “Then there is one more matter to discuss,” she says.

                Not long after, he returns to reception where Amber has waited patiently. She raises an inquiring eyebrow. He forces a grin—later, he insists, I’ll tell you later. They swap into flats and carry their shoes with them and walk to Holborn station. They catch the Central Line six stops to Mile End. In the crush of people and the heat of the Tube and noise of the Underground, there is little opportunity to talk. But it is a relief to have her there with him. In her company in public, it feels easier to maintain the illusion that he is, like her, just another girl. Other women ignore them; and men look at Amber, not him.

                Amber’s place is a tall, Victorian terrace on a leafy garden square a few streets up from the station. Over the tall buildings, a deeper shade of blue, and between them, the sun slices bright swaths of ruby red. Alex can’t help but peer through the windows of wealthy homes as they pass, glimpses an expansive kitchen in gleaming stainless steel, a downstairs living room dominated by a complex arrangement of cat towers; a woman sits a suspended wicker chair, reading a book. Then, they’re trotting up the stairs to Amber’s home and it’s his first visit to her home and the nervousness he’s carried with him from work has him feeling nauseous. Part of him wishes he’d refused and just got home tonight. Another part of him wishes he was visiting under very different circumstances.

                “Oh, I can’t wait,” Amber says. “For you to meet the girls, they’re going to love you!” And his stomach lurches, as it does whenever Blake meets a girl for the first time. This time, surely, he thinks, they’ll see through me, of course they will. One look and they’ll know Blake’s a farce, they’ll scream or laugh and Amber will look at me with those beautiful brown eyes, they’ll be full of betrayal and hurt, and for a moment he can’t breathe, he imagines it so vividly.

                “You okay?” Amber says, eyes full of concern.

                “Yeah. Yes, I think so. Just a bit winded, I guess.”

                She gives him a light swat to the bum. “Girl, we’ve got to get you to the gym.”

                With a heady mix of trepidation and hope, he follows her through to a large common area with tiled flooring and chintzy wallpaper, once a dining room and now lined with sofas, rugs, a long table and dominated at one end by a large, mounted screen. Manchild plays on a Bluetooth speaker in one corner, Le Chat Noir, framed hangs over an ornate wooden mantlepiece. Large windows and a pair of patio doors make up the far wall, and through them a small back garden, lush with flowers and greenery, with solar lamps beginning to glimmer in the early evening light.

“Pretty cool, right?” Amber says, “we got so lucky finding this place.” Taking Alex by the hand, she leads him over to two women sitting on the sofa. “This is Natsuki and Olivia,” she says. Both are playing Super Smash Bros on the big screen. Alex feels a moment of intense panic. This was a proper house full of girls and the stuff of fucking dreams, but also nightmares. In the instant, these two girls and Amber all strike him as incredibly confident and attractive and cool, intimidating even, and Alex barely stammered out a greeting. He hides his hands behind his back, his chin feels huge, his shoulders too wide and he thanks God the lights in the room are turned down low.

                “Girls, say hi,” Amber says.

                “Hi,” Olivia says, and “hello,” Natsuki adds, both without peeling eyes from the screen, and Amber says, “this is Blake!” and Olivia grunts. “One sec, let me pound this bitch into the ground,” and Natsuki shakes her head as if, no, I don’t think so.

                She’s Japanese and tall and slender, with long black hair in a high ponytail, woven through with colourful ribbons. She wears a light floral print dress and cork sandal heels and is very prettily made up, glossy lips pursed with concentration as fingers fly across controller buttons. Meanwhile, Olivia is short, maybe five-two at most, and curvy, with spiky brown hair, shaved around the sides and back and dyed vivid pink. A half-dozen piercing across ears, nose and lip, denim overalls and a worn, black shirt for a band Alex doesn’t recognize.

                A half-dozen brightly coloured bottles of WKD in blue and red lie scattered across the table, along with open polystyrene containers of vivid red chicken and rice, a pair of chopsticks lying lengthwise across the rice. On the big screen, Link hacks at Peach in a flurry of flashes. A dozen CPU players bounce erratically around the two human players. Alex feels an intense urge to join the game and show them how it’s done. His fingers twitch, but after a moment Amber gives a little huff of annoyance. “Dorks,” she mutters. She takes his hand, leads him across the room where another woman sits on the floor, cross-legged at a low table.

                “Hey, this is—” Amber begins, and the way she said it, there’s something new in her voice, he’s never heard that tone from her before. This other girl wears loose jeans spattered with paint, and a plaid button-down shirt with the sleeves rolled up to her elbow. She’s got tattoos coiling along her forearms, shirt unbuttoned to just above her bra line. Standing over her, he enjoys a peek of large breasts in purple lacy cups, where a small tattoo of yellow bird nestles in her cleavage.

                “Freya.” The girl glances up, dark eyes and razor-sharp brows, winks at his open stare down her shirt. Alex blushes furiously. Amber doesn’t notice. He looks away, looks back. She’s still watching him, smiling. There’s a dusting of tobacco across the table, open dime bag and curls of green buds. Deft fingers crumble, mix and roll, and in her unwavering gaze he imagines something akin to recognition that sends a sharp thrill like fear stabbing through his gut. “You must be Blake.” Freya smiles, tip of tongue trailing an edge of Rizzler. “Yeah. Amber’s told me all about you.”

                With a sensation of heat prickling his chest, fingers twisting into his skirt, Alex looks to his colleague. “There can’t be much to say?”

                “See?” Amber boops Alex on the tip of the nose and grins. “Pretty and modest.”

                “I’m not that modest”

                “So, you are pretty, then?”

                “No, I’m—” flustered, Alex cuts off, looks to Freya. “She’s not like this at work.”

                “You have no idea. She’s only said good shit.” Freya tucks the finished spliff in her shirt pocket, starts on the next. “Which is totally fucking boring and disappointing and boring.”

                “There’s nothing bad to say,” Amber insists.

                “You’re saying I’m boring?” Alex pouts, hands on hips.

                “So boring,” Amber says. “And perfect and clever and pretty.”

                “Get a room,” Freya says, rolling her eyes.

                Amber sticks her tongue out, a little flash of pink between perfect lips. “That’s the plan,” she says and smiles at Alex, and the flash of her lips, the glint in her eyes, he suddenly painfully aware of his tuck again. “This way.” Olivia and Natsuki call out goodbye, eyes still locked to the screen. “I was hoping you’d meet Alisha and Amelia,” Amber says. The other two girls, she explains, were a couple. They liked to do their own thing. “But I think you’ll see them tonight. Maybe. They’re so cute.”

                And with the three he’d just met and the two he hadn’t and then with Amber, that made six, and just before leaving the room, he hesitates, looks back and imagines what it must be like for them, all six of them together sitting around this room on a Saturday night, TV and video games, takeaway and drinks from the off-license and—and—and whatever it was that a group of girls sharing a house together do, he has no idea but was suddenly gripped by a pang of jealousy so intense it nearly brings tears to his eyes. This—exactly this—is what he’d wanted and expected and totally failed to achieve, instead trapped at his sister’s under the constant threat of eviction, living in a space that was not and could never be his own. He loves his sister. But he doesn’t want to live with her. Some kind of flat share, that’s what he’d expected. He’s even started looking, needs to find a place. It’s complicated, of course. There’s bound to be some overlap between Alex moving into a new place and Blake still working her job. He’s not sure how he’ll manage. But he will, he’ll find a way to make it work. But Christ, London prices were insane! And yet, here was Amber in this amazing old house dripping with character, with these super cool girls, and it just wasn’t fucking fair that it’d all gone so wrong for him.

                Amber leads Alex away, first through the kitchen to grab a pair of cans from the fridge, and some glasses from a cupboard. Then upstairs, to her room at the top of the house, up the mains stairs and then a second narrow staircase. “It’s tiny,” she says, “fucking sweltering in the summer and too cold in the winter and—” she pauses, trying to think of something good to say, one glossy nail held to her lips: “well, it’s private, at least, everyone’s downstairs so it’s great when Jacob spends the night, I’ve even got my own toilet up here. No shower though, you should see the fight in the morning, like fucking gladiators if you believe it.”

                Her room is small, with barely room for a wardrobe, dresser, and small writing desk, and her bed tucked under the slanting ceiling. Yet her room is also enviable and cute, and standing there Alex feels as though he’s been invited into some portion of herself and feels momentarily overwhelmed by the trust. This was her own space, decorated with string lights and photos of friends and family pinned to the wall, with an oculus window by the bed in coloured glass that glows with the light of early evening across her bed, and looks over the garden below. To Alex, this seems like the kind of garret in which sickly writers sat in a glow wavering moonlight and crafted great poetry or their life-defining novel, and he can imagine himself, sat at that small writing desk, with his laptop open and a tall drink beading with perspiration as he hunches over the keyboard, typing, and a strange, fluttery feeling fills his tummy.

                Meanwhile, Amber digs through her wardrobe, tugs out tops and skirt, holds them up to Blake. “Nope,” she says, and “nope,” and then, “oh, yes. This is totally you,” she decides, “see, no excuse not to come out tonight,” and shoves a bundle of fabric into his unresisting arms. “Try it on,” Amber insists, “loo’s down the hall,” and how can he refuse?

                The narrow passage outside her room runs beneath the eaves, slanted ceiling on one side, a long, low bookshelf embedded into the wall on the other, crammed full of old paperback novels. He yearns to stop and see what’s there but there’s not enough light to see, and Amber is waiting.

                In the cramped toilet, Alex strips out of his work clothes. First, he locks the door and then takes a piss and adjusts his tuck and checks his shapewear. He hadn’t planned on going out tonight but now realises that he dressed this morning for precisely that eventuality, with tape and a proper tuck and the adhesive breasts instead of half-assing it, he’s even worn the girdle with the padded hip inserts. Fucking uncomfortable all day but wasn’t he happy now that he’d gone through the trouble of it all? And with his stomach churning with the knowledge of the wrongness of wearing these women’s clothes, he lifts the dress over his head and slips his arms through the long, clinging sleeves and wiggles it down over his breast forms and then with a few tugs and tweaks, he’s wearing Amber’s dress, and it hangs off him perfectly. Fuck.

                The minidress is a midnight black thing sparkling with sequins. The neckline is high and the sleeves are long and fall halfway down the back of his hands. The stretchy skirt grips his upper thigh. Fuck me, he thinks, good thing I shaved this morning, exfoliated, moisturized: his bare skin gleams and his legs look long and entirely too sexy. Thin straps criss-cross his upper back, leaving it mostly bare. Can he wear it with a bra? Alex doesn’t think so, he’s never dared wear anything backless before, why would he? He turns this way and that in the tiny toilet, looks over his shoulder and sees how the dress accentuates his shoulder blades, the line down his back, the contrast of pale skin with sparkling black fabric. He bites his lower lip. Christ, it really does look good. And he thinks, yeah, I can pull this off. The adhesive’s strong, maybe a bit of tape, and his boobs won’t slip, and yeah, it’s got a high collar, too. Amber couldn’t have picked a more perfect dress for him. He poses with one hand on his hip and tries a smile and it comes out funny and he tries again and this time it looks right. Yes, he grudgingly admits, she has a great eye for clothes and sizing.

                “You bitch,” Amber laughs when he gets back, “fuck you, you look better in it than I do,” which was an obvious lie but still brings a warm glow to his neck and cheeks. While he’d been changing, Amber put on some music, an endless streaming mix that rolls into something he recognizes, Goldfrapp, wouldn’t have taken her as a fan but there it is. She’s also poured out two cans of M&S mojitos over ice. “Cheers,” she says, passing him a glass.

                Alex nearly drains it in one gulp to calm his nerves. Then he perches on the side of the bed, cradling the glass between both hands. Okay, yeah, he thinks. This is fun. Come to think of it, he’d never really been up to a girl’s room like this before. Maybe Sophie’s, but sisters didn’t count. There’s something very cozy about Amber’s room, though he can’t pinpoint precisely what it is. They clink glasses, take another pensive drink.

                “Okay, my turn,” she says and starts digging through her wardrobe again. “What do you think?” Out comes a flashy red halter-top minidress, and a lacy red bra to go with it, and she holds them up, and Alex blushes and shrugs awkwardly. Amber laughs, “yeah, you’re right, it’s a bit much. Let’s save that for clubbing.” Then she proceeds to try it on anyways, and then two more outfits after that.

                Alex sits there feeling acutely aware of the short dress that feels tight around his thighs and chest and he squirms a little, fearful that his tuck might slip, knowing the dress would reveal the slightest of bulges. Just pick something, he thinks, Jesus Christ, just… anything, but he also knows it’s not that easy, he’d had mornings like this, when he just couldn’t decide. And he knows it’s wrong to watch and that he should look away but also that he can’t, that’d be weird, right, they all girls here, in theory at least, and fucking hell but isn’t she drop-dead gorgeous?

                After the red minidress, a pleated plaid miniskirt and midriff-bearing, off-the-shoulder halter top that ends just below her bust line, with a sweetheart neckline and peplum ruffle. She looks amazing, he tells her she looks amazing, but after a brief contemplation in the mirror Amber shakes her head firmly, no, and settles on a pair of tight ripped jeans that were more rip than jeans, with sheer black tights and a sleeveless mesh body over a white-and-lavender bra, printed with flowers. She pairs it with an abbreviated bolero jacket and poses in the mirror and smiles, nods, yes.

                And she has an incredible body, Alex can’t help but feel the slightest twinge of jealousy at how good she looks. There’s something enviable in the comfort and ease with which she wears these clothes. There’s no way he could wear what she’s wearing, he’d never look that good, or confident. Rather, he feels constantly aware of everything Blake wears and experiences it with a persistent sense of—well, discomfort, though after six weeks the sense of wrongness had diminished, leaving only the pinch, poke of underwear, the frustrating restrictiveness of tight clothing. Rather, it’s the dishonesty that gets to him, an ambient awareness of his own performance and the clothes that make it possible, haunting him throughout his days.

                Meanwhile, Amber wears her clothes with a lifetime’s ease of belonging. And when she stands between outfits in just her knickers, her ass, Christ, to be in this room with her is torture and he wishes he was her boyfriend rather than—whatever the hell he is right now—and the guilt and desire wars inside of him and leaves him almost dizzy with confusion and nebulous desire.

                Now, Amber sits at her tiny vanity peering into the mirror. She’s wiped the day’s makeup clean and then started again. At first, he watches expectantly. Of course, he’s seen her touch up at work throughout the day. But this was the first he’s sat and watched a girl do her makeup from the start without it being edited through a TikTok video. He feels a wholly unexpected intimacy, watching as she first cleanses and then begins. She works quickly and with confidence but in this he doesn’t envy her as to his surprise she wasn’t doing anything he didn’t already know. In fact, at times he has to bite back an urge to offer suggestions. Until she starts on her eyes; he still struggles with doing his eyes. He watches, until she pauses, pencil poised at her brow. Her smile, in reflection: curious, expectant.

                “You’ve got such beautiful eyes,” he blurts, blushes with the realization that she’s caught him staring. His blush intensifies when he mentally rolls back to what he’d just said. “I mean—” he stops, takes a breath, shrugs and smiles ruefully. “I mean, you’ve got beautiful eyes.”

                She returns to her brow. “Aw, thank you.”

                “You always do them so well. I can’t do my eyes like that. I wish I had half your skill.”

                Amber puts the pencil down, facing him with a mild frown. “Are you being serious here right now? You’ve got gorgeous eyes, Blake. Like, for real.”

                He forces a wan smile. “Not like you.”

                “Get your ass over here,” she says, and shifts over a bit by the mirror.

                What follows was twenty minutes of jostling for space at Amber’s tiny mirror, escalating giggles and the back and forth of cleanser and wipes, lipstick and mascara. Alex felt momentary panic as Amber first reached for micellar water, cotton swabs. He can’t let her do his face, he knows this, to allow her to wipe away his makeup is to efface his Blake-face and so reveal the boy beneath, his Alex-face. He imagines her reaction to discovering it’s a man sitting next to her, albeit not much of one, and his stomach curdles. He’s just seen her mostly naked and watched her change and has sat opposite her several nights over the past month and listened, attentively, eyes wide, to her stories about her new boyfriend, Jacob and his funny circumcised cock, the story of their first kiss and the first time she went down on him, and who knew girls were so explicit in talking about this stuff?

                He starts back, palms raised to ward her off as she approaches with a moist cosmetic pad. “No, it’s fine, really,” and when she seems undeterred, “I don’t want to redo my whole face,” and she soothes his nerves, saying, “good, ‘cus I just want to do your eyes.”

                He relents, closes his eyes when she tells him to, and feels the cool, damp cotton disc across his lids. “You can do that?”

                “How can you be so good at this?” she says, indicating his full face of makeup with a circular wave of a hand. “And not know that?”

                He shrugs, sits patiently as she first wipes his face, dampens a cotton swap, clears the eye makeup along the crease, then uses a damp spoolie for the day’s mascara.

                “You really don’t like people seeing you without your face on, do you?”

                Alex bits his lip, shakes his head.

                “Why?”

                He doesn’t answer.

                “Blake?”

                “I don’t know,” he says, though he knows, knows very well that adhesive tits and fake hips were only one small part of what made him Blake, that makeup was an essential part of it, the most visible expression of his feminine performance. “I guess I don’t want people to see the real me.”

                She nods, deposits cotton discs heavy with bronze and copper into a waiting wastebasket, then quietly asks, “why?”

                “I guess—thanks,” he says, taking the eyelash crimper she passes him. He leans in closer to the mirror, clamps his lashes into dramatic curls. Once this thing terrified him, it looks like some kind of medieval torture device. Now, he’s a pro and handles it with ease. “I worry that people won’t like what’s underneath all the makeup.”

                Amber doesn’t answer.

                “And I worry I’m not pretty enough, maybe.”

                “You’re very pretty, Blake,” Amber says.

                He glances sideways at her. “Not like you,” he says. “Not naturally,” he says. Then, he smiles ruefully. “And definitely not in the way St-Clair wants.”

                “Oh, she likes you,” she says. “You poor bastard.”

                Then Amber starts on his eyelids with a gentle application of primer, a delicate touch of damp fingertip against his eyelids. Then, eyeshadow, a tickling sweep of the little brush. A short silence, and then Alex admits, in a soft voice, “You know, I’ve never done this before.”

                “Done what?”

                “This. You, the makeup.” He holds up his empty glass, ice cubes clinking, rim stained with lip prints. “Um, drinks and—um, girly. You know.”  Alex shrugs. “This.”

                “Not even with your sister?” She speaks quietly as she feathers and blends, switches to liquid eyeliner. He’d told her about Sophie before, in a sort of abstract, vague references devoid of anything that might gender his past.

                “We don’t have that kind of relationship.”

                “At uni?”

                “Not really.” He pauses. “I mostly kept to myself,” which is true, especially post-grad. “I didn’t really know many girls.” Which is also true, painfully so. “Other girls, I mean.”

                “Poor you,” Amber murmurs. Now, short, confident strokes of the pencil along his lower eyelid, nimble switch to the next tube, then an enviably easy flick of winged liner. “Try lighter colours,” she says. “You’ve got such pretty eyes, you really should highlight them, open them up a little.”

                “I really don’t,” Alex says.

                “You really do,” Amber says.

                And Christ, he thinks, of all the ways to be a girl, I’ve chosen to be such a cliché. Next thing you know, I’ll be complaining about my nose or the size of my boobs, does my ass look big in this?

                (His nose is big for his face, he’s always thought that, even before Blake came along. And he’d rather not think about his boobs. And his ass looks great, just like his legs, not as sexy as Amber’s but a close second, he thinks, which is a weird thing to think and take pride in but it’s true, he knows it to be true.) 

                What next, are they going to watch Mean Girls together, braid each other’s hair? But then, why not? A cliché’s just an accepted way to do or be something, so part of ordinary life that people feel the need to mock it, like unironically being a fan of Taylor Swift. But at the end of the day, isn’t that what he, what most people want: acceptance? Why can’t he simply ‘be’ Blake and be accepted as her, at least for now, until he no longer had need of her? And yet to accept her, or accept her as part of who he is, it’s just too much, a surrender, a giving in to weakness. Better to enjoy the moment buffered by ironic distance, a hidden sense of his own mockery of the absurdity of the situation.

                But when Amber is done—“blink,” she orders, and he blinks into the mascara wand, and sits for a final impatient moment as she touches up his eyebrows with the pencil—he looks into the mirror and his little gasp of shock is entirely real, to see himself with eyes done is such subtle shades of colour, layered and the pale sparkle in the corners, and “wow,” he says, and means it.

                Eyes wide open, he stares and sees reflected with luminous expressiveness a look he never would have thought possible, captured in the golden glow of the setting sun filtered through the round window over her bed.