All That and a Bag of Chips

Chapter 6

Sam turned off the TV and stood. "Drinks. We need drinks," she announced.

"Fuck yeah we do," Collin agreed, sitting up and wiping at his eyes with the heels of his palms.

She walked into the kitchen, grabbed two glasses from the cupboard, and then considered the bottles that were always left out on the back countertop. "Brown or clear, that's the question. Brown or clear?"

Collin craned his neck to look at her. "Jack and Coke sounds good."

Shit, Jack and Coke always sounded good.

Sam walked to the fridge, grabbing a two-liter bottle of coke and then opening the freezer to grab an ice tray. After placing the bottle down, she twisted the blue plastic tray, popping out all the cubes. Before placing the tray back into the freezer, she ran it under the faucet, filling it. Then she divided the ice between the two glasses, poured a generous amount of Jack Daniels into each, and finished the drinks off with a dash of soda.

Walking back to the couches, she handed Collin a glass. "Liquor before beer, you're in the clear," she toasted, then took a long drink.

Collin brought the glass to his mouth, the ice pushing against his upper lip as he drank down the brown elixir. He loved Jack and Coke. Sweet like dessert, but with a manly aftertaste. That was the only way he could describe that particular thick-bodied smoothness of Jack Daniels. Bourbon was the essence of masculinity: cowboys, bikers, and John Belushi in Animal House.

After a beat of silence, long enough for Collin to have the ember of drunkenness sparking alive in his gut, Sam placed her drink down on the water-ringed and edge-worn square coffee table that took up the center of the living room.

"Tell me everything," she insisted.

And Collin did. He told Sam how Avery had come into his work to cancel their plans that afternoon, and when he went out to give her an orange juice, he'd caught her making out with Gina. And he told her what Avery had said to him. That she was a lesbian, and couldn't date him anymore because of how much he had changed in the past several months, since starting hormones.

"Fucking labels," Sam said, finishing her drink in a big gulp. "It's all bullshit. I mean, everyone's a little bit bi, right?"

Collin wasn't sure he agreed, but he nodded anyway, taking another sip of his drink, savoring the way it both cooled and burned his throat on the way down.

"You're the same person now as you were last summer." Sam shook her head, placing the empty glass back down on the coffee table.

Collin looked at the glass he was still holding and noted the dark hairs sprouting along the back of his hand. His hair had coarsened all over his body, especially along his jawline and above his upper lip. Even the texture of his skin had changed. He'd lost his softness, and he felt wider and sturdier with muscle growth.

But testosterone had done more than change his body. He'd had more energy. Felt more alert and driven. Overall he felt happier, but there was also an impatience about him that wasn't there before. And he had flares of anger that rushed through him like a forest. He could feel his brain changing along with the rest of his body.

He was still himself, but he was also becoming more himself. A concentrated version of who he had always been.

"I don't know," Collin finally responded. "Maybe she's right."

Sam met his eyes, opened her mouth once, closed it, and then said, "Well, right or not, this Gina thing is total bull."

Collin raised his glass to that. "Fuck yeah it is."