Chapter 13: John

Aaliyah drops by after class,sitting beside me outside of the surgery unit while Isamu takes Inu on a walk. Although, Isamu was so antsy, I think the walk was more for him.

"I can't believe they found a donor," she says, nails scratching against my skull. "I think we should redo your jewelry."

"I'm not doing trans colors," I tell her. She's already asked me to do them for the rally.

"Not what I meant. Just new bling."

"Next you'll want me to get synthetic hair like you," I complain.

She grins and flips her braids over her shoulder dramatically. "Martin said he liked it."

"Hate that you call my dad by his first name. Y'all should've never met, but he loves you by default. Let's not talk about him right now." Somewhere beyond those doors, he's being cut open and dissected. He'll be on more medicine for life just to keep the liver from being rejected.

"Let's talk about the rally then. I'm excited. Just a few more days, baby!"

I groan.

"What's with the attitude?" she asks, flicking my forehead.

Sitting up, I put my head on my hands. "I don't know, Liyah. Does it mean anything? Like, we protested in Black Lives Matter, and yet here we are still being shot left and right and lynched while we protested in California. It's like it doesn't mean anything. Politicians don't listen to us."

I look over at Aaliyah. Her face is stone, jaw grit so tight that I'm worried her teeth might crack.

"What?" I snap, annoyed.

"John Love, you have got to be fucking kidding me. I'm not yelling because I am not getting kicked out of this hospital while your dad's in there, but so help me God, I would yell so hard. Do you think for one second that just because something is hard, we should give up?" She thrusts a finger into my chest.

"That's not?—"

"No, John. Shut the fuck up and listen. Did Harriet Tubman?—"

I groan.

"Did. Harriet. Fucking. Tubman. Give up? Did she say, ‘oh, it's really hard to free my brothers and sisters from these white slavers. I'll just call it good and quits.' Did she?"

I shake my head.

"No. She went back and back and back, over and over again, John Love. Did Martin Luther King Jr. give up when he was threatened and attacked? Damn John, they had to assassinate him to keep him down."

"I know?—"

"No, John. You don't know." She slaps me across the shoulder, chiding. "Rosa Parks? Shirley Chisholm? Bayard Rustin?"

"You're right."

"Damn straight," she says, getting in my face. "Shit is hard, John. Your dad is in there and maybe your stressing is why you're so stupid today, but don't you dare look in the face of our ancestors and say, ‘shit's hard'. Of course shit's hard—we're Black. But if Harriet Tubman, small little Black Queen she was, can face down crackers and dogs while running with babies and our folks across the river, you can nut up and fight for our trans siblings the way Martha P. Johnson did."

She huffs out a breath and turns from me, crossing her legs delicately.

"Are you done?" she snaps.

"Yeah. I'm sorry."

"Nuh-uh. Do better next time. Piss me the fuck off, John." Despite her words, she leans in and hugs me. "Listen, even if you're feeling scared and down and like you can't do it, I swear I will underground railroad that lifesaving hormone therapy to people. Just expect me to rope you into it."

I laugh and wipe at my dripping nose—forgetting whatever thought I had about crying. This week has been a lot. "Wouldn't have it any other way, Liyah."

"Stupid ass," she chastises one last time.

"Is, uh—am I intruding?" Isamu asks.

"Not at all," Aaliyah tells him, smiling. "Come on, he should be out here soon."

Isamu sticksout like the first orange leaf in autumn as he stands in my dad's kitchen. It might be the bright orange Ralph Lauren polo against the dark woods of the cabinets, but it's also the knife kit he brought with him, shiny and silver, that he's using to cut carrots while I study on the couch, Inu's head on my knee.

My dad's snoring can be heard from his room, recovering from being torn open and replaced. Gutted from his mistakes and from mine.

Isamu has been here for it all. Helping me carry my dad in from the car, cooking him soupy meals that he can actually stomach, and then making another for me while I study until it feels like my eyes will bleed.

Don't leave,I want to say, but the van is done, nothing but cushions and utensils left to buy, and I catch him on his phone late at night scrolling through bedsheets and sending emails for backcountry passes to National Parks. He's leaving.

I just can't let him leave without saying something. I won't make the same mistakes my pa did.

"Isamu."

"Hmm?" He looks up from where he's dropped carrots into the blender.

My dad's obsessed with carrot soup and anything else high in Vitamin D, a food group he had to avoid when he had cirrhosis. Which is a concept I'm still getting used to.

"Rally's next week," I say, because it's easier to think about than the finals I've been too frazzled to study for. Isamu is too close and my dad is finally healthy; finals seem like the least important thing now.

"You excited?" His hand is still on the blender top, and I motion for him to go ahead, just to give myself a second to get my thoughts together.

"More nervous," I say once the blender's done its thing. "Kind of nerve wracking to protest something that affects me so much, you know?" I look away from him, back down to my open textbook on the coffee table that was once only used for beer cans. "It's really important that people like me have access to their hormones."

I'm still not looking but I hear the second Isamu stops mixing the soup, his ladle going still against the pot. It's a heavy second, then two. Inu rises from the couch and goes into the kitchen. Then it starts up again, Isamu picking up the conversation as if there was never a pause.

"I'm sure a lot of people will turn up. It's a life-or-death medical necessity for people, so it's bullshit in the first place that it's being taken away." He scoffs. "Protect children, my ass."

Isamu's back is to me, shoulder muscles visible against his shirt as he cooks. I don't want to lose this view. I don't want to lose him. But I have to make sure.

"You got that I'm transgender, right?" I ask, voice tight as I fight waves of fears and insecurities.

Isamu looks back at me, a grin on his face. "Yeah, Johnny. I got that. Just kind of figured you didn't want to make a big deal of it."

My dad's fresh out of the hospital and I've kept the secret so close to my chest for so long. Isamu's been chipping away at my walls bit by bit, and it's all crumbling down as I feel my face fall apart.

"Woah, hey—hey. Shit." Isamu fumbles the pot off the stove and comes over to me, dropping to a crouch between the couch and the coffee table as he puts his hand on my knee. "Johnny? What's wrong?"

"I'm just scared," I say, teeth gritted as I try to keep from falling apart.

"Fuck, dude. Hey, come on. Don't look so down. There's nothing... it doesn't change anything for me." Isamu rubs my knees, brows furrowed above wide, pleading eyes.

"You, uh, do you still like me?" I look at him, trying to mask my face so he doesn't see the weight of the question. I don't want him to see how much his answer means and how destroyed I'm going to feel if he rejects me.

I just don't want him to walk away from me.

Isamu

A laugh escapesfrom my throat like a gasp and I sit my butt down on the floor, letting my head rest on John's bare knee. A knee that I've been dying to put my hands on since I saw him this morning, walking out with a bedhead mess of locs and ratty basketball shorts.

My face is warm against him and I'm discovering that there's even a limit to my bravery as I look at the floor as opposed to John.

"John," I start, feeling my heart tighten in my chest before letting it all go in a rush of acceptance. He's already rejected me once and here I am on the floor in front of him. I'd always come back for John. "My face is tingly against your leg. Every time I'm near you, it feels like I can't breathe, like Inu should be barking because I'm about to faint. When I touch you, I'm—I'm absolutely charged with it."

Fingers against skin, pinpricks that send electric shock through my body as I long for more. I want so much of John that he devours me. I would happily bury myself against John and never need for more.

"Just because you didn't get the memo that you were a guy at first, doesn't change that. I mean," I laugh self-deprecatingly. "You rejected me, and I still dream about how your hands feel in my hair, how you would look against my pillow. I feel like I'm floating anytime I imagine you in the van with me, miles from here and all our problems. We'd be below the stars with a cassette tape playing in the background and my fancy cooking skills to impress you.

"I hope this isn't scaring you off, but I am way past being trapped in your orbit. I am gladly obsessed with your eyes and your arms—God, your arms—and the way you've given me so much about you. I feel so honored to know you, John. Everything. So, I guess to me it isn't a big deal that you're transgender because I'm still gay and you're still the man that I—" I pause, hands clinging to his knee as I bite my lip with all the pressure erupting from my chest. "And I'm seriously falling for you, John. Or, I already have, if we're trading secrets again."

John pulls me up from his knee and wipes at my face, tacky with sweat from the stress.

"You're onto something with keeping secrets. I'm embarrassing myself," I say, stupid as I drown in his dark brown eyes.

"You're not," he says, leaning forward.

His lips taste like mint and like the open roads of freedom and like home. His lips are soft and everything all at once. I chase them when he pulls back laughing.

"Wait," he says, pulling back again. His eyes follow my tongue as I go to taste the memory of his lips against my own. "Uhm, date. You want to go on a date?"

My cheeks are probably red enough to illuminate the room as I nod, lean in again, and chase those lips just a little more. And then more. Until everything is John and the way he smells like the trees and engine grease, and the way his hands feel against my back and chest and the way his jaw feels under my teeth.

We only stop when the sounds of his dad waking up give us pause.

"I should—the soup," I say, pulling my hand from the back of John's neck.

He leans forward and steals one more kiss. "Yeah. The soup," he whispers, his crooked teeth shining behind his wide smile.