You have to assume she’s been doing the work. You see her across the bar with a tboy – one of the dyke-y ones. He seems her type, or one of her types. Not like you at any rate. But he’s got a hot fit. Like, if you were into guys, you would find it hot. Which you aren’t. Well, you were. But you aren’t. You spent a while considering your experiences with men and decided that, no, women were the way forward. Some strictly non-binary people too, depending. One of your strictly non-binary pals asked you, “Depending on what?” and you said, “The vibe.”

You explained that you had been doing the work. The work of considering your experiences with men, that is. But also that was part of a larger project of doing the work in which the work was, and remains, not to let whatever happened with her happen again. She hit first but you hit harder. Now while you’re watching her down whatever’s in that pint glass to impress this tboy, you can see it shimmer, that fading scar trailing over her lip. You try to work out if the drink is non-alcoholic or not, but you can’t see pint glass branding at this distance and a different one of your strictly non-binary pals tells you to stop fixating on her.

She said she would start doing the work. Or, you heard from one of her ex-girlfriends who was still in contact with her but not on, like, the best terms ever that she would start doing the work. There was mention of maybe going to an AA meeting in the final few weeks of living together, after the fight that split her lip and before the fight that cut up your arms. Like, the fight that got you to cut up your own arms, that is. Or rather, the fight after which you decided to cut up your own arms, with her razor blades, in front of her. That fight, which has meant that she doesn’t want to say hi anymore even while you’re at the same bar.

You have to reiterate these things to yourself over and over cause really, that’s doing the work. That’s the doing, the reiterating, the non-obfuscation, the full context. The work is not letting whatever was happening happen again with anyone else, and the doing is talking about it, mostly to yourself since your pals, when they have free time, want to drink and make out with each other in the one bar in Glasgow that lets a group of transsexual women and some strictly non-binary people get away with that. You do that too, and you can see her over the shoulder of the woman biting your neck on the couch. She’s kissing the tboy, pulling him upwards by that chain harness he’s wearing over the tank top.

You have to trust that she’s doing the work, just like you. Maybe she’s not going to AA, but she should be going to therapy, just like you tried to do. It was sixty quid a session and then work cut your shifts and you figured that going three times was probably enough to start the doing and acknowledge the work. Lots of people just use spending money on something like therapy as a way to disavow that the work is something they have to do.

So even if she’s going to therapy, as she should be, she still needs to be doing the work herself. You trust that she is. You have to. Or this would all be untenable, this watching her with someone new, ready to go back and ruin their life as well by putting them through whatever was happening with you. It cut both ways, but that itself cuts both ways. You do the work and she does the work and you trust that you won’t make monsters out of the other. But still, it’s not like you’re sending each other updates. It’s not like you get points on some leaderboard. It’s not like there’s this healthy glow emanating from your being that means you’re, you know, behaving according to a meaningful, consistent, and moral set of ethics now. The only thing you can judge anything by is your group of friends who all seem to like you, if the strictly non-binary person slipping on the couch behind you to make out with the other side of your neck is any indication.

You assume she’s doing the work. She takes the tboy out of the bar and spots you and tries to smile. Or maybe she grimaces. Or maybe she doesn’t recognise you in amidst the writhing bodies on the couch. She makes some face for some reason and presumably you’ll never know why. All you can do is your own work, and trust that she trusts that you’re doing it – that it won’t happen again, whatever it was that happened.