he takes it off

He stood in front of the mirror for a long moment, the navy fabric hugging his body, the reflection staring back at him with those wide blue eyes. Then something snapped — reality, maybe, or fear — and he reached for the straps.

He peeled the swimsuit off carefully, slowly, as if it might tear or as if moving too fast would make the moment real. It slid down his hips and pooled at his feet, and he stepped out of it, suddenly cold in the evening air of his bedroom.

He folded it. Not hastily, not crumpled — folded with the same care his mother used. He held it to his nose for just a second before he could stop himself. It smelled like her perfume. Like chlorine from a hundred family holidays. Like something familiar and forbidden all at once.

He walked back to his parents' bedroom, still in just the boy shorts, and opened the bottom drawer. He placed the swimsuit exactly where he'd found it, on top of the others, aligned with the edges. He closed the drawer and stood there, his hand still resting on the handle, his heart hammering in his chest.

*No one will ever know,* he told himself.

He went back to his room, closed the door, and sat down on the bed. The laptop screen was still glowing, the video still paused on the woman's bare back. He looked at it, but he didn't see it.

He pressed play.

The video continued — more bodies, more changing rooms, more grainy hidden-camera footage. He watched, but his mind was elsewhere. He kept glancing at his own reflection in the dark screen of his phone, checking to see if anything looked different. It didn't. He was still Lorenzo. Same face. Same hair. Same everything.

But something had shifted. He could feel it, like a tectonic plate moving deep underground. He'd put on his mother's swimsuit. He'd *liked* it. And now he couldn't un-know that.

He closed the laptop after twenty minutes and lay back on his bed, staring at the ceiling. The house was quiet. His parents wouldn't be home for hours.

He thought about the boy shorts, still on him. He thought about the way the swimsuit had hugged his waist, flattened his chest, made his legs look longer. He thought about the homeless man calling him "little lady." He thought about the coffee girl offering to "work something out." He thought about the way he'd felt in the pool — free, like he'd "shed a layer of himself that didn't quite fit anymore."

He reached for his phone and opened his browser again. Private mode. His fingers hovered over the search bar.

He typed: *why do I like wearing women's clothes*

He stared at the words. Then he deleted them, one letter at a time.

He typed: *boy shorts vs boxers*

Deleted that too.

He typed: *am I still a man if I like soft clothes*

He deleted it before he could hit search. His face was burning. His chest was tight. He threw the phone onto the bed and pressed his palms against his eyes.

*This is stupid,* he told himself. *It was one thing. It didn't mean anything. I was just curious.*

But the boy shorts were still on him, soft against his skin, and he hadn't taken them off.

He got up and walked to his wardrobe. He pulled out a pair of his normal boxers and held them in his hands. Plain. Functional. Familiar. Then he looked down at the boy shorts — the ones from lost property, the ones Ms Sheppard had handed him with that wry smile.

He put the boxers back.

He pulled on his tracksuit bottoms and a hoodie and went downstairs to make himself dinner. He moved through the motions — pasta, sauce, a glass of water — but everything felt slightly off, like he was watching himself from outside his body. He kept catching himself touching the waistband of the boy shorts through his tracksuit, just to feel the fabric.

He ate at the kitchen island, alone in the big quiet house, and thought about his mother. She'd be home soon, smelling of perfume and cigarettes, and she'd ask about his day. What would he tell her? *I smoked one of your cigarettes today and wore your swimsuit and I think something is wrong with me.* No. He'd tell her nothing. He'd smile and say his day was fine.

He finished eating and washed his plate. He checked his phone — no messages. He wandered into the living room and sat on the sofa, flicking through channels without seeing anything.

At some point he went back upstairs. He stood in the hallway, outside his parents' bedroom door, just looking at it. He didn't go in. He didn't need to. He knew what was in the bottom drawer.

He went to his own room and got into bed. He pulled the duvet up to his chin and lay there in the dark, the boy shorts still on, the taste of cigarette smoke still faintly in the back of his throat.

He didn't know what tomorrow would bring. He didn't know what any of this meant. But as he drifted off to sleep, one thought kept circling in his mind, quiet and persistent and impossible to ignore:

*I want to do it again.*