And I really, really wish I had another pair of pants right now.

I finally go upstairs and leave my sneakers outside the door. I almost slide across her hallway in my wet socks but she holds my hand and keeps me steady. I almost come up with a bullshit excuse about how we should stay out in the living room so I don’t get her bed wet, when I actually have other reasons not to go in there, but she leads and I follow.

“The flea market is totally closed today,” Genevieve says. She helps me out of my hoodie and pinches my nipple through my white shirt. It tickles but I barely laugh. “Bright side of having a terrible father is he’s never around.” We sit on her bed. She kisses me and I know I should push her off but I don’t. “I love you,” she says, and before there’s an awkward silence where I don’t say it back, she adds, “Remember that time your soaking-wet jeans ruined my bed?”

The game has lost its spark, and maybe it’s because of my low spirits, but it’s also very likely because it’s kind of, sort of, definitely ridiculous to ask me to remember something that is happening right now.

I’m being unfair.

I sit up, cross my legs, hold her hands, and play along. “Remember that time we bought water guns last summer and I chased you around Fort Wille Park? And you kept calling time out and sprayed me whenever I stopped?”

She sits up and tangles her legs in mine. “Remember when we kept riding the subway back and forth last February because it was too cold to go outside?”

“Which was stupid because it was even colder when we finally got off at one in the morning,” I say, recalling how the cold was killing us, me especially since I had wrapped my jacket around her. “Remember that time we were writing each other messages in a crossword puzzle during study hall and it got taken away? I lost the evidence on how you misspelled tornado with an e.”

Genevieve punches me. “Remember that time we texted each other using only song titles?”

“And how about that time it started raining when we were rowing the boat in Central Park and I started panicking?”

Genevieve laughs. While playing this game might be even worse than being intimate with her, it’s both the right and wrong time to stroll down memory lane. “Remember that time we time-traveled together on my birthday and you told me you love me?” She climbs into my lap and feels up my arms.

We look into each other’s eyes and when she leans in to kiss me, I let her because this will be the last kiss we share whether she knows it or not. Then she rests her chin on my shoulder and I hold her, hard.

“Remember that time I was a better boyfriend who gave you happy memories like these?” I feel her try to pull back, so she can meet my eyes again and tell me that I’m a good boyfriend, but I continue holding her because I can’t look her in the face and do this. “I’m not the guy we’re remembering anymore.”

She stops resisting. She holds me tighter too, her nails digging into my arms. “Are you . . . ? You are. Aren’t you?”

She’s gotta be asking me if I’m breaking up with her, but I consider the chance that she’s asking me if I’m a dude-liker.

I know this: the part of me that was playing straight for so long wants to lie and tell her that I can transform back into the person she needs me to be, except that’s not who I am anymore or who I ever should’ve been. So I just nod and say, “Yeah.” I’m about to apologize and try to explain why, but she breaks free from my hug and sits at the edge of her bed with her back to me.

Genevieve was the girl who brought me home after my dad killed himself and let me cry in a way I never would’ve in front of my friends. She tutored me in chemistry when I was failing, even though I was always too absorbed by her to actually pay attention. When her father started bringing home younger girls for the first time since her mother died, I distracted her with weekend outings, like a trip across the Brooklyn Bridge and people watching in Fort Wille Park. And now she’s the girl who won’t let me hug her.

“It’s because of him,” she says.

I bullshit her: “I don’t know what you’re talking about.”

She’s crying and doesn’t let me see her face, like usual, and she throws me my hoodie. “You can go.”

So I do.

5

ANOTHER FIGHT

   How to Play Skelzies: Some people draw their Skelzies boards with chalk, but we properly outlined ours with yellow paint against the black asphalt ground years ago. There are thirteen numbered squares—Box #13 in the center—and you have to flick a cap across the board in numerical order. First person to hit all thirteen wins.

Making the caps has always been the coolest part. Whenever we go through gallons of milk or water in our homes, we keep the caps (or sometimes steal them right out of store fridges) and pour an even amount of candle wax inside so they have some weight and don’t blow away whenever the wind surprises us. My mom likes skim milk so my cap is blue with yellow wax from one of her Santeria candles.

I’m playing with Baby Freddy (green cap, red wax), Brendan (red cap, orange wax), and Skinny-Dave (blue cap, blue wax).

Thomas should be joining us soon.

Baby Freddy is on his knees and elbows, measuring the distance between the starting line and Box #13; if you get in the box on your first move, you automatically win. He flicks the cap and it falls short. Brendan flicks his cap next and it’s like a comet both in appearance and its glide. He lands in Box #1, then Box #2, and misses Box #3.

“Yo, A. I was trading in some games yesterday and guess what I found? Legend of Iris!”

I laugh. We bought it when we were twelve because there was a rumor that the developer—some beautiful girl in her late twenties—hid a picture of her ass in the game as some sort of erotic Easter egg. We played for hours, using cheat codes to speed the game along, but no dice. “The Great Ass Hunt of Sixth Grade. Good times.”

“Yeah.”

Here’s the thing: I remember genuinely being a girl-liker when I was younger. I asked girls out on dates, was offered a blow job at fourteen if I pretended to be this girl’s boyfriend to get her ex jealous—which I did, but pussied out when she unbuttoned my pants—and I only focused on the girls when watching straight porn. In January I was freaking out about what to get Genevieve for Valentine’s Day, only for her to tell me a couple weeks later she doesn’t believe in celebrating it. Major relief, but also super real.

I play my turn after Skinny-Dave goes and it’s a direct hit with Baby Freddy’s cap, sending it out of the board. I go again and miss Box #1.

By the time Thomas shows up, Brendan and I are on our way to Box #7. After my turn, we fist-bump and I hand him the cap I made for him (green top, yellow wax).