A woman’s face smiled at me from the computer screen. She had strawberry blond hair that curled in too-natural waves down past her shoulders, the ends dyed caramel brown. A big pair of dorky glasses sat on her face and she was beaming, the biggest smile you’ve ever seen, sitting in front of a bay window filled with plants. The sunlight fell on her cheekbones in a such a perfect way and they made her eyes glitter. She was beautiful, just beautiful. “Three year anniversary of HRT! BEST decision of my life!” The caption read. I let out a long, silent sigh. The post was followed by dozens of comments espousing joy, excitement, and support, congratulating her on her progress and how great she looked. Another sigh. I took a moment to look at her, the way her smile reached all the way to her eyes, the casual way she sat in her perfect home, and then moved to click on the next post-

“Maxwell?”

I jumped slightly in my chair. The lecturer stood at the front of the class, holding the attendance sheet on a clipboard.

“Just Max,” I said, raising my hand and trying to keep my voice low. The last thing I needed right now was anyone’s eyes on me. He nodded in acknowledgment.

I had started my twenty-first birthday by waking up early for classes. The first classes of the semester in fact, which I felt was slightly unfair. I had my laptop open already for “note-taking,” perched in the back row of seats so no-one else would see that I was really scrolling through endless transgender forums. As the lecturer started, I would tab over to a Word doc periodically to keep up some semblance of academic rigor, though my mind was elsewhere. A picture of a woman, happy in her transition. I clicked through, another, another, a man asking advice on binders, a non-binary person asking how to come out to their parents, another another another. It was an endless stream of snippets of all of these lives. I felt less alone.

The day slogged on. I sat through another few lectures, hardly paying attention, the familiar hum of community college settling back into place in the crevices of my routine. Every so often I’d brush past someone I knew, and I’d keep up the semblance of a smile and a wave, ricocheting off social interactions as I had grown accustomed to do. Hell of a birthday.

Gabe got off work a little before four, so after my last class ended at three-thirty I hopped into my car and made the ten minute drive to the nondescript warehouse where he worked.

The parking lot was just dirt, kicked up slightly by the lazy afternoon wind, and as I shut my car off to wait a quiet settled down around me. It was a sunny day, though the air was a little watery in the way it can only be in winter, muting the intensity of everything just slightly, so minute that you’d have to be looking for it to see.

“Alright Max,” I found myself saying, if just to fill the silence. “It’s your birthday. Nice and simple birthday. Get hammered with your friends. Gender shit for later, isn’t that right?”

You can’t keep ignoring it, some deep part of myself said. I nearly jumped. I’d never heard that voice like that before. Christ, but it was louder than it had been the week before, wasn’t it.

“I’m not ignoring it,” I almost whispered. “But I can’t throw everything down and pretend like I can do whatever I like.” I had shit to do, people to care about. The quiet stretched out. I noticed that I had been shaking my leg, causing the car to vibrate ever so subtly.

I leaned forward. “And besides, I don’t even know what to do yet. I still have to figure it out, alright? This isn’t easy.”

What is there left to figure out?

I felt my head fall and bump into the top of my steering wheel. I-

There was a metallic knocking. Looking up sharply, I saw Gabe standing next to the passenger door with a goofy grin on his face.

“Yooooo,” he said.

“Yooooooooooo,” I said, letting his smile infect me. I unlocked the car door and he hopped in, wedging his backpack between his legs.

“Happy birthday, dude.” He casually reached over and rubbed my shoulder affectionately.

“Thanks,” I said with a slight chuckle. “So.”

He lightly drummed his fingers on the dashboard. “Liquor!” he said with a flourish.

“Yeah,” I said. “And the grocery store for dinner.”

“What are we having?”

“Vegetarian chili with ground beef,” I said, setting up the stupid inside joke we’d had for like five years at this point.

He finished it with perfection. “Good, I hate the normal stuff.” We chucked together for a moment before he turned to me. “For real though, you’re cooking? On your birthday? I-” His phone buzzed. “Hang on.” He reached into his pocket and pulled it out. I tilted my head with curiosity, but he casually kept the screen out of sight. As he tapped, it vibrated with another message. “Ah shit.”

“What is it?”

“Luis was gonna drive to your house and meet us there, right?”

“Yeah?”

“Well apparently, uh, h-his car won’t start, and dad’s out of town.”

“I can just pick him up, right?”

“No can do, because then Luis won’t be able to drive back and he was gonna be designated driver for tonight, remember?”

“Ah right.” I tapped my thumb on the wheel. “Well let’s just head over there now and I’ll see what’s wrong.”

“Oh Max, you don’t have-” Gabe started, but I held up a hand.

“Sure, but I might as well take a look right? If it’s just not starting that’s probably not something you need to go to a mechanic for.”

“Come on Max, its your birthday, I don’t want you to spend it elbow deep in engine grease. Plus you’re cooking!”

“Gabe,” I said slowly. “It’s completely fine. Nothing will make me feel better on my birthday than helping out my friends, and I know cars. Luis will be fine. Besides, I gotta repay you two for all the booze you’re gonna buy me tonight.” I gave him a smile as I started up the car and began to route to Luis’s house.

“That’s… not how birthdays work?”

I shushed Gabe as I pulled onto the main road and took off to Luis’s double-wide on the edge of town. As we rolled in, I saw his family’s battered old Buick sitting at a harsh angle in the driveway, Luis perched on the hood with his phone out. He looked up as my tires crunched on the gravel and gave us a sincere smile.

“Max, hey!” He said as I jumped out. Gabe got out of the other end and casually tried to lean on front of the car, but he just clipped the side and nearly fell over. The display of his flailing arms and face flushed with embarrassment was suitably hilarious, and when Luis rushed over to grab his arm in concern I guffawed.

“You two are too cute,” I joked, eying Luis’s hand on Gabe’s arm. For some reason that set a weird energy. Luis backed off immediately and Gabe’s face turned bright red, and he started nervously chewing on his cheek.

“Uhh,” I said, turning to Luis’s car and away from whatever that was. “So what’s the problem? Gabe, go grab my toolbox from the trunk.” I tossed him my keys and looked at the Buick appraisingly.

Luis stepped up next to me. “I dunno. I’m no good at this car stuff, so I all I can say is I put the key in and it doesn’t turn.”

“Sounds like an ignition problem. May I?” I said, holding out my hand. He put a fob in my hand and I jumped up into the driver’s seat, leaving the door open so he could see in. I stuck the key into the ignition and, just as he said, it didn’t turn. I narrowed my eyes, looking down intently.

“Luis…” I said.

“Yes?” He said.

“You’ve got the steering wheel turned almost one hundred and eighty degrees.”

“Yes?”

I turned to him. “If you park with your wheel turned this far, the ignition isn’t gonna work properly.” As if to prove my point, I wiggled the wheel back into its resting position, listening to the tires scrape the ground underneath me. Once it was close to zero degrees, I put the key in again. It slid all the way into the ignition and turned normally.

Luis blinked. “Huh.”

Then I noticed one more thing.

“Now, Luis.”

“Max I’m not sure I understand what you’re going for with this weird tone of voice.”

“I just turned the ignition all the way, right?”

He nodded. “Yeah, because you fixed the wheel.”

“Then why didn’t the car turn on.”

Another “Huh.”

At this point I noticed Gabe hovering awkwardly behind Luis, toolbox in hand. “Do you park like this a lot?” I asked.

He nodded. “Pretty regularly, yeah. The driveway’s at this angle, see, so sometimes if I don’t want to spend too much time on it I’ll just back in sharply.”

Now that he pointed it out, the driveway was at a tight angle with the road. I could easily see how someone would have to back in all wonky to get to where Luis parked.

I let out a breath. “Okay, well if you have the wheel like that too much it can damage the ignition switch.”

Gabe blanched. “That’s not good, my dad had to get one replaced a few years ago and it was like, a hundred fifty.”

“Oh that’s ridiculous,” I said. “I should be able to patch it up.” I leaned forward and started tapping at the plastic casing surrounding the wheel block.

“Are… are you sure?” Luis said.

I straightened up. “Yeah! Gabe, hand me the flathead. And the pliers. The big ones.”

Luis gulped.

I smiled.

 

---

It took me over an hour to safely remove the ignition, examine the connections, and rewire the switch to make up for the part that Luis’s reckless parking had worn down. At some point, Gabe said something about how I was “hopeless when I get like this” and dragged Luis back into the house to leave me to work alone. It felt good. It felt really good. This was stuff I knew. It was all wires and solder and casings and I could just think about that and not god-damn gender. And so I took my time, reveling in the act of helping, and letting that energy fuel my productivity. By the time I refitted the whole doodad into its place and was rewarded with a healthy engine hum, I was in such a good mood I cried out in jubilation.

Luis must have heard because he stuck his head out of the front door a few moments later. “Progress?”

I patted the car fondly. “Success!” I said.

He walked out. “Nice. I’ll never go to a mechanic again.”

I chuckled, shaking my head. “No no, this is definitely a temporary fix, I just prolonged the time before you’d have to honestly just replace the whole car.” I tapped it again. “It runs okay, but how old is this thing? And do you know how much rust is in the engine well??”

Luis and I bantered until Gabe reminded us we had the entire evening to plan, at which point we split ways to meet back up at my house once my parents had left. After a grocery run and the most law-abiding trip to the liquor store I’ve ever had, Gabe finally quit complaining that we were late and started talking about how much he loved my chili recipe. We pulled up to my place (where I noted with comfort that the rest of my family had already skedaddled) and while Gabe set up the living room to be college-student friendly I set to work on dinner. The buzz of my successful mechanical job was still carrying in my hands, and I let that carry me through this next task. Cooking and cars really weren’t that different, I would sometimes say to people. They were right answers for both. They had a good ending.

“Where is he?” I heard from the front of the house. “Where is he?”

I popped my head out of the kitchen to see Gabe trying in vain to reign in an Amber strung over his shoulder. She was wearing a tight tank top and had dropped her fluffy winter coat onto the ground by the door, which was still ajar and letting in a slight winter draft.

“Hey,” I said with a small wave. She locked eyes with me and wrenched away from the quite bemused Gabe, tackling me in a sloppy hug that nearly caused me to need to step back.

“It’s the birthday boyyyy!” She said, slurring the last word until it turned into little more than a gargle. “Happy birthday!”

“Jesus Amber,” I said, patting her back. “Are you already drunk?”

“I was pregaming!”

Gabe stepped up to us. “With what, everclear?”

“Why would you pregame for a birthday party?”

“Max.” She looked up at me and tilted our foreheads together. “Max. Max Max Max Max. This is not a normal birthday! You’re twenty one! You’re like, a big boy now.” She leaned back and looked me dead serious in the eyes. “We’re gonna get you fuuuuuuuuuuuucked up.”

I couldn’t help but chuckle. “One step at a time, tiger. I haven’t even made dinner yet.”

Her face twisted into what she probably thought was a readable emotion. “You’re cooking? For your own birthday?”

“Yes. Why do people keep getting worked up about that?”

“Because,” Gabe said. “You’re suppose to relax. You’re supposed to let your friends take care of you and have that be enough.”

“Cooking is relaxing. I want to enjoy myself, right? I enjoy cooking for you guys, it’s not even a problem. Ok?”

Amber had wandered off and I heard her gasp as she entered the kitchen. “Is that chili?”

Gabe just looked into my eyes for a second too long. “As long as it isn’t because you feel obligated.”

I chewed on those words for a moment. Obligated? No I didn’t feel obligated, I just felt like cooking and fixing cars and driving people and that sort of thing were what my place in a friendship was. It was a two way street, I couldn’t expect to get without giving myself. This was just how I did that. How I expressed my friendship, right? So why did Gabe seem disappointed in me?

“Yeah,” I said, turning away to return to the kitchen. “Whatever.”

Amber had found a bowl of Cheez-its somehow and was munching away, looking at my meal prep sprawled over the counter. “So your folks will be gone all night?”

Staring at the wall and only a little bit angry, I went back to chopping garlic, following the rocking of the knife over the cutting board. “Yep,” I said, concentrating. “My brother’s off at some LAN party, and my parents decided to head over to a friend’s ranch, doing whatever the fuck you do on a ranch. Don’t get too comfortable though. This’ll probably be the only time they let me do something like this. It’s to prove a point more than anything else.”

Amber tilted her head, which caused some of her hair to fall into her eyes. “What point?”

I let out a breath. The garlic was probably more minced than it needed to be, so I moved on to the onion. “That I’m grown up now.”

She wrinkled her nose. “Ew.”

I couldn’t help but laugh. I thought back to the morning, before I had gone to class. My father had handed me a spartan birthday card, vaguely cream colored and not even sealed shut in the envelope. "Happy birthday, kid. Get a job." Was all it said.

Oops I sliced the onions too small too. I really needed to focus on what was important.

“Hey Amber,” I said, thinking about billboards for some reason.

She looked up at me, popping a Cheez-it into her mouth.

I let out a weak smile. “Let’s get me fucked up.”