“I don’t know. I didn’t ask him all that,” I said, still crying.

“Girl, wipe your eyes. Don’t be crying over no man. Shit, James was the brokest of the three, anyway,” she said frankly.

“That’s not the point, though, Tina,” I explained. “I really hurt him. He sounded like he was going to cry.”

“Well, you know what, they do it to women all the time, play with their hearts. He’ll get over it.”

“But what you gonna do about Khalil?”

“What about Khalil?”

“You know James is gonna tell him, if he didn’t already,” I explained.

“Khalil is doin’ time. James ain’t gonna be in touch with him for a minute. Especially with James going to the NBA, him and Khalil will probably lose touch.”

Tina had all the answers, but she didn’t understand. Yeah, she’d been dressing up since she was fourteen, but she never been in my or James’s situation before. She never even came close to a guy finding out about her. Hell, when I met her I thought she was a girl. It was ninth grade. We had a class together. She was dressed so fly. I admired her. I was still playing a straight role to a certain extent. I dressed like a regular guy. I acted like a regular guy. But I wasn’t a regular guy on the inside and Tina could sense that. When she told me she was a dude, I flipped out. I didn’t believe her. It came down to her showing me her dick. It wasn’t on some gay shit either, because I was not at all attracted to her. She was too pretty and looked too much like a girl. I wanted to do the same thing she was doing. I wanted to live my life as a girl. I figured it would be much easier on me messing with guys as a girl than as a guy. But now I didn’t know what to think. I felt fucked up.

I got drunk as shit off of apple martinis. Tina dropped me off home at about eleven o’clock. I went right to sleep.

Ding-dong. Ding-dong. Ding-dong. I jumped up out of my sleep.