You look like you’re pretty fucked up. Can I stay?”“I can call you an Uber,” I said. “I don’t think staying is a good idea. I’m sure you...get it.”“I do,” she answered. “But I promise I won’t try anything and you can even lock your bedroom door, so I don’t come in there at 4am with a butcher knife and slice off your balls,” she giggled.“One night,” I said. “I have a lot of shit to do tomorrow. I’ll drive you home first thing in the morning”“Ok, cool,” she answered. “Thanks.”“Extra blankets and. He couldn'thelp it... it was the first compliment he'd received from a man, sincehe had inhabited this female body, that hadn't been completelyrevolting."My fingernails match," Tyler said, smiling back at Ben and flourishinghis hands. It was a horribly girly thing to do, but Ben obviouslyenjoyed it whenever Tyler started acting this way. The longer Tylercould keep this up, the longer he'd have Ben on the hook, and the easierit would eventually be to get access to Ben's most valuable secrets."I. Since they had none, I settled on a Coke with ice,"Why not try regular milk," Tom suggested."I don't like the taste of milk," I said. "The Coke will do till I figure something out."After I finished my steak and egg sandwich on a kaiser roll, we drove back to the motel where Tom's car sat in the parking lot. I handed him the envelope with the tree hundred dollar final payment. I had added one hundred dollars of my own money. It was for staying around a babysitting me. It was the least I could. But there was a rule in the town. It wasn’t writ down anywhere, but the rule was: if you was in town on Sunday, you was in church. Didn’t matter if you wanted to or not, or if you believed or not - you went. When you was in town everybody else knowed it, so if you didn’t show up in church the sheriff would come lookin’ for ya.Even when I was a boy, I understood the power a preacher had. You could break the law and get away with it, and you could sass your folks and get away with it, but if you.