Page 45 of Best Woman

Her back is rigid. She looks so beautiful in the hazy blue twilight. “I hate that I was some prize to you. You used me for some kind of fucked-up validation.”

“Could we think of it as gender-affirming care?” I ask, trying to defuse the tension. If anything, it makes the vibe worse.

“I don’t exist to make you feel better about yourself or more secure in your womanhood or whatever. You can’t treat people like that.”

“I know. Well, clearly I didn’t know. But I get that now.”

She’s still facing away from me, so I can’t see her face, but her voice sounds different than I’ve ever heard it. Softer, more vulnerable. “Did you even like me? Or did you just have something to prove?”

“I liked you. So much. I have since I was sixteen. But the other stuff seemed more important.” I watch a family of ducks floating in a small pond beyond the next hole.

“I’ve spent the last couple of years being selfish out of necessity, as some kind of survival instinct.

I think transitioning might be kind of inherently selfish. ”

She takes a drag from her cigarette. “It’s not fair to make this a trans thing. That makes me feel like I can’t be mad about it or I’m like, toxic or problematic or transphobic.”

“Yeah,” I agree. “But that doesn’t make it any less true for me. It can be true for me and not be true for you.” I take a deep breath, summoning up my courage. “You just made it so easy, assuming I needed you to swoop in and save me.”

“I was just being nice,” she snaps back, nostrils flaring.

“No,” I shoot back, remembering what I’d felt underneath the rush of pleasure at her coming to my defense, both tonight and weeks ago at the fucking Cheesecake Factory.

“You went out of your way to come to my rescue when I never asked you to. You assumed that I was some poor little trans girl whose family didn’t love her, and I feel like shit for playing into it, but I also feel like shit that you thought it in the first place.

And now I feel like shit because you weren’t wrong. ”

Kim looks like she wants to say something, but holds it back. She nods, and I can see this information being filed away, incorporated into her. This is a lesson she’s learned, as surely as I’ve learned mine.

“That still doesn’t make any of it right, that I let it go so far.

I liked you so much. You’ve probably gathered by now, but I had a huge crush on you in high school.

That day you drove me home…I would have done anything .

But I knew you wouldn’t want me because you only liked girls.

And now I am a girl and you show up again and I think, there’s no way she’d be into me, but it seems like you are!

But I can’t trust that, because you knew me before, the odds were so stacked against me and I just wanted any extra help I could get.

I’ve spent the past few years trying to convince the world to see me this way that you seemed to finally see me, and it was everything I’d ever wanted.

But I shouldn’t have lied to you, because I don’t think the truth would have changed anything between us at the beginning.

I was too fucking scared and insecure to see that you just liked me, would have liked me even without my sob story. ”

Even now, I can’t help but hope she’ll tell me I’m right. The sad, pathetic part of me still licking my wounds from this evening lifts her head, eager for any small bit of absolution.

She drops the end of her cigarette into the open hole and turns to look at me, sad and serious. “We’ll never know.”

“Yeah,” I say, and that’s it. That’s all there is, and we both know it.

Even if she has real feelings for me, she could never forget that our relationship was founded on a lie.

And even if she forgave me, I’d always be wondering if any of it was real, or if I’d simply tricked her into falling for me.

We stand in silence as the stars twinkle down from a navy-blue sky.

“Can I give you a ride back?” I ask. “They’re probably gonna cut the cake soon.”

She shakes her head, pulling out a crumpled pack of cigarettes. “I’ll walk.”

I nod and walk back to the golf cart. The engine starts on the third try, and I give an awkward little wave. Kim, illuminated by the headlights, doesn’t wave back.

Aiden and Rachel are smushing cake into each other’s faces when I enter the reception hall, everyone cheering them on.

I stand in the crowd around them and laugh along with everyone else, though it doesn’t strike me as particularly funny.

Across the dance floor, I catch Mom’s eye.

She smiles happily at me, but it doesn’t reach her eyes.

I think of Kim walking across the hazy, moonlit golf course, smoking cigarette after cigarette.

Ben joins me in the line to pick up a slice of cake. His tie is loose, his top button unbuttoned, his hair wild from dancing. He’s very handsome and he gives me a little eyebrow waggle. “Care for a dance?” he asks.

It would be so easy to have my cake and eat it too, follow him out onto the dance floor, crowd up against him, and let him make me feel better, but I’m not sure easy always equates to good, or right .

I give him a little shove with my shoulder and grab a slice of marble cake with white frosting, hightailing it back to my table.

Brody and Brian have returned and look to already be three slices in.

Randy and Mom are slow dancing to an Elvis cover—much more firmly in the wedding singer’s range, actually quite a smooth baritone—and my dad is leading a few kids on some kind of scavenger hunt in the corner.

My grandparents are sitting together and chatting quietly over decaf coffee, sharing a single slice of cake, and laughing softly at some shared joke.

In the distance beyond them, Aiden and Rachel are doing the same thing.

My chest feels tight, my eyes are hot. None of them are perfect.

None of us are perfect. But we’re doing our best.