TW: transphobic slur, mentions of blood.

Amelia said nothing to me as we walked down the stairs together. She opened the building gate and led me to a car that was parked nearby. There was a tall redhead guy leaning against it. My memory was a little foggy, at first, but I recognized his voice once he spoke. Amelia’s brother, Vincent, from the restaurant.

“Are you all right?” he asked me, honestly concerned.

“Been better,” I said, simply. The bruise and the blood on my face wouldn’t let me lie. He opened one of the car’s doors for me to get in. I thanked him, then was a little surprised when Amelia didn’t join me.

Apparently, so was Vincent.

“Come on, sis,” he said.

Mel shook her head. “Not right now. I have… stuff to do. Can you drive her over to the hospital? I’ll text Lydia to let her know.”

Vincent sighed. “You’re doing it again.”

“Doing?” I asked, confused. “Doing what?”

“She’s doing her bravery act. Trying to fix everyone’s problems and risking her own life in the process. You can’t face this guy, Mel.” I watched as Amelia opened her mouth and was just about to object to that, but her brother didn’t let her. “And no, I don’t mean it just because you’re a girl, I know some girls can kick ass. What I mean is that there’s nothing anyone can do about this guy, not right now. What are you gonna do? Threaten him? I doubt that would make a difference. And I don’t wanna see my only sister going to jail on charges of assault or, god forbid, murder. So drop that bravery act, please?”

Amelia scrunched her face. She didn’t like being told off so bluntly by her brother, and she particularly didn’t like it that he was absolutely right.

“Fine. I’ll let it go, for now,” she consented.

“Good, now get in the car,” Vincent asked her.

Amelia glanced at me. There was hurt in her eyes, I could see, and fear, too.

“I… should go to the police department,” said the girl, looking at her brother again. I had a feeling that this wasn’t the real reason she was hesitating. “File a formal report, all that shit. I’ll call you when I’m done, and maybe meet up with you somewhere.”

“Don’t you want me to drop you there?” Vincent offered.

“No, I don’t. Take Hannah to the hospital, I’m worried about her.”

This, at least, I knew to be truth. I could tell that she was worried, even if I was fairly sure that there was no real danger involved. But that’s Amelia for you. Always worried about others, never about herself. Vin was right about that.

“Mel… why are you—?”

She stared at me again, that look of misery from before returning to her face.

“No, Hannah. Not… not right now. We’ll… talk later, okay?”

Amelia turned around and walked away, and I found myself unable to go after her.

—

I’ve never liked being fussed over. Particularly not when it was obvious that there was nothing wrong with me. I told the physician in charge of emergency this. Yet he still had me go through a CT scan, “for good measure”, and then had another physician examine my eyes and senses. A vainer person might have enjoyed the attention, I just found it bothersome.

Which led me to the question of whether Amelia had really just been concerned for my health, or if the girl had just used the hospital as an excuse to cover up her real feelings.

Her feelings that she didn’t want to be with me.

It couldn’t be, could it? Just some hours ago, we’d shared a wonderful night together at our favorite date spot, and Amelia seemed to be just in love with me as I was with her. So why was it, then, that’s she’d sounded so distant, when asking Vincent to take me to the hospital? Distant, and… broken. Did she really have to report the situation to the police station right away? Couldn’t it wait? And when I tried asking her about it, she just sounded devastated.

The door to the private room opened, and a familiar face stared at me, concerned.

“Hannah!” said Lydia, rushing over to me.

I smiled. “Hey, Ly.”

“How… how are you?” I saw her tearing up at the sight of the purple bruise under my left eye.

“I’m surprisingly fine, actually,” I told her. It was true. I should have been terrified and broken, and for a moment I had been, when Michael showed up. But after the events of that night, all the fear I once had of him was gone. Now all I felt for him was pity, and indifference. “I’m worried about Amelia, though,” I confessed.

That surprised Lydia. She furrowed her brow. “Wait, did Michael hit her? What happened? Where is she now?”

“Lydia?”

“Yes?”

“What does ‘tranny’ mean?”

Lydia scrunched her face. “It’s a slur against trans women. Did Michael call Amelia that?”

“He did, yes. But I don’t understand. What’s a trans woman, exactly?”

Lydia’s jaw dropped, and she stared at me, wide-eyed, trying and failing to form words. Then she stopped, took a long breath, and sat down.

“All right. This is going to take a while.”

—

Lydia brought me home with her. It was settled that I should stay there for a few days, before I contacted my parents about moving back with them. She told me she’d go to my place to get some of my stuff, and to lock the door that had probably been left open once Michael sobered up and left. I skipped classes the next day, and was left alone with my thoughts at Lydia’s place.

I watched that video for the tenth time. It was an interview. With my girlfriend, no less. She was talking about transgender rights, drawing examples from her own past. It didn’t make sense. Why didn’t she tell me? Granted, I knew nothing about transgender people, but I don’t think that her talking about her past would have changed the way I saw her, then.

And yet, the fact that she didn’t tell me, that changed something.

Rationally, I knew that I wasn’t entitled to every little detail about Amelia’s life just because I was her girlfriend. Boundaries were a thing, and she had a right to keep secrets. But it hurt me. It hurt that she could tell all about her past to a bunch of strangers on the internet, and yet had decided to keep that a secret from me. Why? Was that how little she thought of me? If she couldn’t trust me with details about her life that she had actually given interviews to strangers about, then what did that make of me, in her life? Her girlfriend? Could I even consider myself that?

I felt sick. I listened once more to her telling the interviewer about a transphobic aggression she’d suffered in public transportation, over a decade ago. I hadn’t known about that. I hadn’t known about any of that.

I realized, with a shock, that I didn’t know Amelia.

I was back at university the next day. Amelia and I had not spoken to each other since the incident. I thought about calling her, demanding an explanation, but each time I dismissed the idea, feeling self-loathing at the thought that I was supposed to be her girlfriend, yet I knew less about her than anyone else. I knew less about her than fucking Michael, for God’s sake.

Amelia didn’t call me, either. Deep inside, I was unsure if I wanted her to. We both knew that we would need to talk about it, and it scared me. I was hurting, but I could pretend to bear it for as long as I didn’t see her face.

Lydia respected my space, something that she hardly ever did. She didn’t ask me about Amelia or Michael, and only touched on the events of that night once, to say that I was welcome at her place for as long as I needed, but that I still should call my parents to let them know. I didn’t want them to know. Because then they would probably ask me about Amelia. And even hearing them refer to her as my girlfriend would be too painful. I needed time to process it.

One night, I walked out of the bath to find Lydia on the phone with Janis. It wasn’t clear what they were talking about, but it wasn’t hard to guess.

“I’m telling you, she’s miserable, Janis… No, of course not… How am I supposed to know that? She won’t talk to me about it… Oh… Wait, are you serious? Not once…? No, she’s not picking up my calls, either… You don’t think she went back to Rio, did you...? Okay… Okay… No, don’t worry, I’ll keep an eye on her too…”

I cleared my throat, to get Lydia’s attention. She jumped, startled, and almost dropped her phone.

“I— I gotta go now. Tell me if she shows up. I’ll see you tomorrow in class. Bye.”

Lydia hurriedly ended the call.

“Was that Janis?” I asked. Lydia stared at me, wide-eyed, looking very much like a deer caught in headlights.

“Ah, yeah… she was just, you know, asking me some stuff about physics. Like, relativity and all that stuff.” Lydia was lying through her teeth, and she knew that I knew, but was probably hoping that I’d let it slide.

No such luck this time, Ly.

“Who went back to Rio?” I asked.

Lydia whimpered. “You… you heard that, huh?”

I nodded. “I did. So?”

“It… was...” she seemed to be having a hard time answering that. “Look, we’re not sure about this, okay, Hannah? But… Amelia hasn’t been to classes in a few days, she took paid leave from work, and she’s not picking up any calls. She doesn’t seem to be home, either. So... Janis thinks that Amelia might have taken a bus to Rio.”

That took me by surprise.

“What?!”

“We don’t know yet!” Lydia emphasized. “It’s just a wild guess of ours. But if that’s how it is, well… it wouldn’t be the first time.”

Lydia proceeded to tell me about one time when Amelia’s had a huge fight with her parents, particularly her dad, and left home to go live with an acquaintance in Rio de Janeiro. I had heard a bit about that story from the girl herself, but she’d left out several details. I had no idea that the fight involved Amelia being transgender, something her father disapproved of greatly, much less did I know that it involved Amelia selling stock that her father kept in her name in order to pay for medical procedures. It once again left a bitter taste in my mouth. I really knew nothing about her, did I?

“Mel came back to Cartaluz for college,” Lydia explained. “But every time something really bad happened to her, she ran back to Rio. Mostly just for a few days at a time, but there was this one time when she stayed there for six weeks. She’s lucky her grades are so good, or she’d have failed that semester.”

I pondered about that, for a moment. Lydia just stared at me, waiting for me to say something.

“...okay,” I said, in the end, almost a whisper.

Silence. Lydia seemed nervous.

“Er… Okay?” she asked me, surprised. “You’re okay with that?”

At that moment, I wished that, for once, Lydia were just a tad bit more perceptive. No. Of course I wasn’t okay. Not only were Amelia and I giving each other radio silence, but now she might have even traveled to another city just to avoid me. At that point I didn’t even know if I still had a relationship or not. How could I possibly be okay?

I ignored Lydia’s question, and simply laid down in bed. I decided that the next day I would call my parents. I would tell them everything, move back to my parents’ place, and finally put an end to that whole episode. It hurt me that Amelia didn’t trust me, that I didn’t know anything about her, and if she wanted to keep avoiding me, well, I’d let her have her way.