Rules for Being a Girl

Gray breaks a massive snickerdoodle into two pieces, handing me half. “My moms make these every Christmas,” he tells me. “They have this whole baking day they do—they both have a bunch of sisters, so my aunts and all my girl cousins come over and make like a million different kinds.”

“And you taste test?” I joke.

Gray snorts. “You think my moms would let me get away with sitting on my ass while a bunch of womenfolk make me food?” he asks with a laugh. “I do my fair share. I’ll have you know I’m an excellent measurer.”

“I don’t doubt that,” I say with a smile. “So you have a big family?”

“Huge,” Gray says, finishing his cookie in two bites. “Like, twenty-two first cousins. And some of them have kids now too. It’s a zoo.”

“That sounds nice,” I tell him, using a teaspoon to scoop a mound of whipped cream out of my hot chocolate before it can sink to the bottom of the mug. “It’s always just been Gracie and me and our parents. It’s part of why we’re so close to our gram.”

“Oh yeah?” Gray looks interested. “Is she cool?”

“She’s the best,” I say immediately, leaving out the part where she’s not always reliably herself these days. “And I actually just found out she’s got this whole secret Riot Grrrl past I never knew about.”

“That’s awesome,” Gray says with a grin.

We sit in the coffee shop for a long time, until the crowd thins out and it’s just us and a glamorous-looking middle-aged woman nursing an espresso, and still I’m in no hurry to get home. Gray’s a good question asker, full of self-deprecating stories about being the only guy in a family full of ladies; he’s got a sister named Alice who’s studying political science in Chicago.

“You guys will like each other,” he says, totally confident, and I can’t help but smile at his use of the future tense.

Finally the baristas start wiping down the tables in a way that feels like a hint. We head out and make our way down Charles Street, our footsteps echoing on the cobblestones. Laughter spills out the doors of the bars. It should feel festive—Christmas break is only a few days away, and there are fairy lights and garlands strung up over the empty street—but out here in the cold and the dark I can feel the cloud of dread that’s been following me around lately come sulking back. I’d forgotten about yesterday’s conversation with Bex while Gray and I were hanging out—I’d forgotten about all of it, actually—but forgetting only works for so long. This whole thing is still a baffling, humiliating mess. God, what am I going to do?

Gray can tell something’s up: he’s been rambling cheerfully on, holding up the conversation for both of us, but as we tap our cards at the entrance to the brightly lit T station he pauses.

“Everything okay?” he asks, his cheeks gone pink from the cold. “It feels kind of like you just . . . went somewhere.”

I shake my head. “It’s nothing,” I promise as we take the escalator to the elevated train platform, the dark expanse of the Charles River visible in the distance. The giant neon Citgo sign glows white and orange and blue. “It’s dumb.”

“It’s nothing, or it’s dumb?”

I hesitate. “Both?” I try, glancing down the track for any sign of the train, even though the arrival board on the platform says we’ve got ten minutes to wait. “Neither?” I sigh, my breath just visible. “I don’t know.”

Gray nods, tucking his hands into his coat pockets. “You don’t have to tell me jack shit, obviously,” he says, rocking back on the heels of his boots. “But like, just FYI, you can if you want to. I get that this might come as a shock to you, but I’m actually a pretty good listener.”

I snort, I can’t help it. “You do realize that people who self-identify as good listeners are never actually good listeners, don’t you?”

“Oh, really?” Gray shoots back, all mischief. “Did you come up with that theory while I was telling you my life story just now and you were like, reorganizing your sock drawer in your mind?”

“Rude!” I protest, elbowing him in the bicep. I tip my head back, look at the sky.

“Yeah, yeah,” Gray says, dimples flashing. Then he shakes his head.

“Marin,” he says, quiet enough that nobody else on the platform can hear him. “Try me.”

I sigh, and then I just . . . tell him. I tell him everything—about Bex and about how Chloe has been so busy it feels sometimes like she’s avoiding me and about lying to my parents and about the paper and the creeping feeling that somehow all of this is my fault.

“I don’t want to get anybody in trouble,” I finish finally, shivering a little inside my peacoat. “But I also feel like ignoring it hasn’t made it go away so far.”

Gray’s quiet for a long time when I’m finished. Then he shakes his head. “Holy shit, Marin,” he says, and I’m surprised by how angry he sounds. “That dude is a total dick.”

I bark a laugh, so loud and surprising that a woman looks at us curiously from the other side of the platform. All at once I realize it’s what I was expecting Chloe to say when I told her. What I kind of needed for Chloe to say.

“Yeah,” I reply, swallowing down that now-familiar tightness in my throat, that feeling of trying to keep it together. “I guess he kind of is.”

“Not kind of,” Gray says decisively. “A hundred percent.”