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They should’ve asked. I don’t like when people touch me without permission. I barely like being touched when I allow it.

I don’t care that they didn’t.

My hands burn, but my entire body is buzzing.

As soon as the bedroom door shuts behind us, I grab Felicity by the sleeve. “Look at me.”

Felicity full-body recoils.

“I’m sorry” is the first thing out of their mouth. They wrench out of my grip. “I’m sorry, I didn’t mean—I should’ve asked—that was gross of me and I didn’t mean to, I’m sorry, I won’t do it again—”

“Shut up.”

They shut up.

I take a deep breath.

In.

Out.

There’s a chance, however small, that it won’t be so bad this time.

That it’ll go better, somehow.

“I need to think about,” I say quietly, “anything but all this bullshit right now.”

Felicity nods.

“So whatever you’re offering,” I continue, “I’ll take it.”

“Whatever you want.”

“Don’t do that. Don’t say that.”

But slowly, like they’re waiting for me to snap and shove them away, they reach for my hand.

I give it to them.

We can’t lock the door, since it doesn’t have a lock—Felicity opens the door to show me the mechanism, explaining how it was removed—so we don’t take off our clothes. (That’s fine. Alyssa didn’t lock the door when we hooked up at that party. I was still in therapy, and she barely managed to convince me the door should be shut.) Instead, we pull the comforters over our shoulders and turn the TV back on, louder this time.

They’re not allowed to touch my chest. The hoodie stays on even though it’s too warm in here. Felicity pushes up their shirt until the little gold necklace rests shining on their bare sternum, and when I shove their pants down to their thighs, they flinch.

“You’re fine,” I mutter as I file away the locations of Band-Aids and scars. “It’s none of my business.”

They whisper, “Okay.”

They insist on taking care of me first, and they’re not very good at it but that’s fine. We get there anyway. I bite their shoulder because we have to be quiet. It leaves a dark mark nestled in the crook of their neck, and they keep finding the indents in their skin with the pads of their fingers, pressing in hard. I check the mark for blood. They smell like lemon bodywash.

When I touch them, though—

I’m not hurting them, I tell myself. I’m not doing anything bad. I’m not my father. I’m not putting my hands around their neck and shoving all my weight into their trachea. I’m not beating their head into the wall until their jaw shatters. Look at their shoulder, look at their throat, it’s fine.

But what if I’m remembering it wrong? What if I misinterpreted something? Did I force them into this somehow? That’s exactly the kind of thing a man would do.

“Morgan?” Felicity whispers, looking up at me. Their hair is a mess. Their eyeliner is smudged, right at the corner, and the dimming light coming in through the balcony window catches the injury that makes up the majority of their earlobe these days. I taste blood. “Are you okay?”

I nod. It’s fine. Felicity isn’t crying or screaming or begging me to stop. It’s fine. They’re not lying there in vacant paralyzed fear. It’s fine.