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“I didn’t say it was…”

“Then why say it like that?”

I scramble for the right apology. “I didn’t mean anything by it.”

“Sounded smart-assed.”

“I’m sorry.”

“You’re always fucking sorry.”

My hands bear little half-moons pressed into my palms by my fingernails. Wade drums his thumb against the steering wheel.

“You know what you need?” he asks. I wait. “To toughen the fuck up.”

Of course. I should have guessed.

“You think the world is gonna be nice to you because you’re all…” He waves, searching for the insult. “Whatever the fuck you are?”

I stare at my knees and the top of my bag. “No, sir.”

“Because it ain’t.”

“I know.”

“You don’t know shit.”

“Yes, sir.” He fixes me with a sharp look, and I stumble to correct myself. “I-I mean, no, sir.”

He laughs. “There. See? You don’t even know how to answer somebody. So fucking sensitive.”

I hold still. The familiar pressure behind my eyes builds; I blink until it slips away. Crying would only prove him right.

When he was still here, my father called me “sensitive” like it was a compliment, like it was something he loved about me.

Mom says it like it’s a cancer diagnosis. Wade spits it out like a guilty verdict.

“People will eat you alive if you go through life acting like a pansy,” he says. “Nobody respects that shit.”

I nod minutely.

“You hear me?”

“Yes, sir.”

“You gotta walk into a room like you got a dick between your legs.”

I swallow. “Yes, sir.”

“Not tiptoe around with your wrists limp and your hair done like some chick.”

My hands flatten against my thighs. I hadn’t realized I was holding them any special way. Now I don’t know what to do with them. Curl them into fists and look angry? Leave them open and look weak?

“Your mom should’ve put a stop to that shit when you were little,” Wade continues. “Would’ve saved you a lot of trouble.”

I stare at a scratch in the passenger window, a curved line gouged into the glass. Someone scraped a sticker off long ago.

“She tried,” I whisper before I can stop myself.