Cam Girl

“And it’s not just homophobia.” She unleashed a barrage of arrows, mowing the ogre down. “Some things go deeper. Like gender. Pink for girls, blue for boys. It’s the very first category we’re put into as babies, before we even know who we are. Messing with that is sacrilege. It goes against everything they assume to be true about people.”

“Obviously I agree, but what’s your point?”

“Some people get violent when you challenge their deepest beliefs. Like their religion, or their binary definitions of people. Maybe Ryan made them question those things. Things they assumed were universal truths.”

The deceptively obvious.

Could he have been bi, like me and Dane? Could that have been worse, the refusal to be pigeonholed into Us or Them? From personal experience I knew people dealt poorly with shades of gray. When I was with Elle they saw me as gay. When I was with Raoul I was straight. Neither was true.

Sometimes I bought into the black-or-white mentality, too. It was easier, picking a side. Not fighting to be recognized as a fluid, nuanced individual, but simply accepting a premade label, a prefab identity.

I’d only felt like my real self with a handful of people in this world. Ellis was one.

Blue was another.

He was unlike any guy I knew. Other men might call him weak, beta, soft, but to me his tenderness only made his masculinity stronger. He wasn’t afraid to feel. Men who express emotion have more balls than those who fake toughness. His softer masculinity fit my harder femininity. We fit each other.

When I’d looked at Max’s hand, I could have been looking at the hand that made me come each night. The hand that carved the wooden animal figurines now sitting on my desk: cat, bird, snake. Blue sent them using a mail forwarding service. I didn’t know the origin and he didn’t know the destination—something came from nothing, arrived at nothing. Ex nihilo.

If Ellis wasn’t here, I’d touch them. These things that Blue had touched. Made for me.

If Max was Blue, how the hell would I deal with that?

It frightened me. Exhilarated me. Made me a little sick.

“I need to kill something,” I said. “Let me play.”

She sighed and slid me the laptop.

I went to the log-in screen to choose a character. “Oh my god, you nerd. All your characters are blood elves.”

“Shut up.” She tried to grab it back but I fended her off.

“Will you relax? Smoke a jay or something.” I scrolled through the list. “Holy shit, you have one of every class at max level.”

“So I play a lot. That’s not a crime.”

“No, it’s a sickness. I bet these names are all lore-appropriate, too.”

“Don’t pretend you know what that means.”

“Believe it or not, I actually listen when you geek out on me. But thanks for the vote of confidence.” I frowned. “All your characters are guys? No girls?”

“Girls get harassed.”

“But they don’t know if you’re actually a girl in real life.”

“Doesn’t matter.” She sifted through the gummy bears, finishing my sorting. “People treat you the way you present. One of the ‘girls’ in my guild is a guy in real life. People send her gifts all the time. They kill monsters for her, give her the best loot drops. But they expect attention in return. If she neglects them, they get mad. She got kicked from her last guild for starting ‘drama’ between two guys who had crushes on her. All she ever did was talk to them. There was nothing unsavory going on.”

“ ‘Unsavory.’ Cute. It’s like you haven’t been grossly corrupted by a cam girl the past couple months.”

“You do the same thing, cam girl. You play a role.”

I clicked on an elf in shining armor. “Everything is a role. Right now I’m role-playing a blood elf paladin. When are we ever our real selves?”

“I’m real with you.”

I looked at her across the bed. “Ditto, nerd.”

Ellis picked up a blue bear and pinched it till its head swelled. “You’re real with him.”

“Can’t it be both? You each see different sides of me.”

“What if I want all of you? What if I gave you an ultimatum, like he did? No one else. Only me. You wouldn’t do it.”

Would I?

Elle stared at the bear and abruptly bit its head off.

I laughed. “You are being so Freudian right now.”

For a while I putzed around in the game, killing drunken ogres. I looted a rare item and the tooltip said it’d sell for a ton.

“Elle, how are you on money?”

“Rolling in it. I have this system worked out for gaming the auction house—”

“I mean in real life.”

She fidgeted. “Oh. I’m fine.”

“That means you’re not.”

“Don’t, Vada. Brandt’s family is helping me with bills.”

“You have that nice big house on the promenade and you’d rather live in a tree. You are an elf.”

Ellis rolled her eyes.

“Why are you staying out here, anyway? It can’t just be for me.”

“It’s easier to meet with Frankie when I’m nearby.”

“Are you avoiding your cousin?”

“No.”

“Do you not want me to meet him?”

She shrugged. “I just like it here. I like when things are simple.”

“But you like me, and I complicate the fuck out of you. Explain that, Professor.” I frowned, thoughtful. “If you won’t take my money, you’ll take my gifts. Only a jerk rejects a gift.”

“Open your mouth.”

My eyebrows shot up. “Is this about looking gift horses in the—”

“Open.”

I did.

Elle scooped up a handful of red gummy bears and stuffed them in. “There. Now be quiet.”

I choked, trying not to spit. Swallowed. Set the laptop aside.

Then I tackled her.

“Oh, no. Truce, truce, truce.”

“You have violated our peace accord for the last time, Ellis Carraway.” I pi

“What price?”

I leaned in close. “Eating the blue ones.”

Elle made unhappy noises as I fed them to her one by one. She was too well-ma

“You’re drunk,” I said, my voice husky. “We’re just friends, remember?”

I pulled out but she held on, kissed my fingertips, my palm.

“Do it for me,” she said. “What you do for him.”

“You want a show?”

“No.” She looked at me meaningfully. “Pretend I’m him. Not one of your clients.”

Well, I was drunk, too.

I rose from the bed, holding on to her hand. Drawing her with me. I wasn’t really sure where this was going till I pulled the chair from my desk.

“Sit.”

Ellis sat obediently, gazing up at me. She still wore street clothes but I was in a cami and boyshorts. I grabbed my phone, queued a track on the room speakers—some slinky, sultry Jaymes Young—and turned back to her.

I’d done this on cam dozens of times. But my heart had never raced this way before.

Let’s do this, alcohol.

I raised a leg and set my foot between her thighs. Instantly her demeanor changed—lower body tensing, upper relaxing. Resisting and submitting at once. I trailed a finger inside her collar, traced her clavicle around to the nape of her neck. Stroked the short hair there. She bit her lip, eyes closing a moment.

Touching her was like touching water. She responded instantly, fluidly, in a way that felt as if I painted myself into her. I swung my leg astride her lap, grasped her collar. Every time my fingertips brushed her throat I felt her pulse collide with mine. I undid her first shirt button, sketched the V of skin, then the next and sketched lower. Stopped at the top of her bra and instead lifted her glasses off. Without them she looked even more androgynous. When I drew close studies of her face, you couldn’t tell her sex. Sometimes a very pretty boy, sometimes a very dashing girl. A canvas you could fill with anything.