Disappoint Me

After kissing Alex⁵ and agreeing to travel together to Koh Samui, Vincent² goes to the hostel rooftop to clear his head. There he encounters Bex,¹⁴ a drunk British traveler who, with casual malice, informs him that Alex⁵ was born a man. She is here for the surgery, Bex¹⁴ adds.

Vincent²'s internal response is immediate and panicked: he thinks about what his parents would think, about whether people will assume he is gay. He returns to his own dorm bed rather than Alex⁵'s room. The next morning, he becomes cold and distant. On the overnight train to Surat Thani, Alex⁵ confronts him directly about his changed behavior.

He lies, claiming he is just not feeling well. She suggests that maybe getting together was a mistake. He agrees too quickly. The warmth between them evaporates into careful, guarded politeness. She does not know that he knows. He does not know how to process what he knows.

In Koh Samui, Fred⁴ has arrived, golden and charming. Vincent² watches with mounting jealousy as Fred⁴ flirts with Alex.⁵ At the Half Moon Party, high on mushroom shakes and alcohol, Vincent² leaves them alone briefly. When he returns, they are kissing.

Later, back at the hostel, Fred⁴ returns to their shared room and boasts that Alex⁵ sucked his dick but would not do anything else. Consumed by rage and jealousy, Vincent² tells Fred⁴ that Alex⁵ is trans, that she used to be a man. Fred⁴'s reaction is instantaneous and violent. He storms to Alex⁵'s room.

Vincent² follows and arrives to find Alex⁵ on the floor, bleeding from her nose, her shorts at her ankles. Fred⁴ is shouting slurs. Vincent² tells Fred⁴ to leave. He then kneels beside Alex,⁵ cleans the blood from her face with a wet towel, and says he is sorry. He does not yet understand the full scope of what he has done.

After Fred⁴ leaves Koh Samui, Vincent² stays with Alex.⁵ He books her a room, brings her food, watches Lost in Translation with her. They become intimate again. She cries at night from the hormone withdrawal required before surgery. Vincent² tells her he will stay with her through the operation and recovery.

But as the surgery date approaches, his old panic resurfaces. The night before, they have mechanical, distracted sex. In the morning, Alex⁵ leaves for the clinic. Vincent,² alone in the hostel room, packs his bags and leaves. He messages Fred,⁴ trying to pretend none of it happened.

He does not call Alex.⁵ He does not say goodbye. He simply disappears, a 19-year-old who decided, in the end, that someone else's transformation was too much weight to carry. The abandonment is total and silent, the kind of cruelty that leaves no visible marks but reshapes a person's capacity to trust.

En route to Edinburgh to meet Max¹'s parents, Vincent² reveals he has told his mother about their relationship. Max¹'s response is not relief but dread. Vincent² then produces the three surrogacy pamphlets his mother gave him, covering options in the UK and abroad.

He seems to think this is funny, progress of a sort. Max¹ is devastated. She sees the pamphlets as proof that she will always be reduced to her reproductive incapacity, that Vincent²'s family will always see her body as a problem to be solved. They argue.

Max¹ points out that saying she is just like an infertile woman is not the reassurance Vincent² thinks it is. The tension lingers through their arrival at her parents' large sandstone house in the Scottish countryside, where her father Peter⁸ and mother Melinda⁹ wait, alongside her brother Jamie,⁷ who is about to announce unexpected news.

At her parents' house, Max¹'s brother Jamie⁷ dramatically announces that his ex-girlfriend Maria is pregnant. The family reacts with confusion, since Jamie⁷ and Maria broke up months ago and do not plan to reconcile. Max¹ feels the sting of how easily reproduction happens for cisgender people.

That night, Vincent² asks about the tension between Jamie⁷ and their father.⁸ Max¹ finally tells him about Lamma: when she was 15, her alcoholic father fell asleep with a cigarette and set the living room carpet on fire. She discovered it, put it out, and kept the secret until Jamie⁷ returned from university.

Jamie⁷ erupted at their father⁸ and has never forgiven him. Their father⁸ got sober, but in the process became emotionally distant from Max,¹ who mourns the affectionate drunk father she lost. Vincent² holds her as she cries, but his response is muted. He does not know how to hold her history alongside his own.

Max¹'s persistent migraines lead her to Dr Pandya,¹³ a neurologist with perfect skin who delivers devastating news: Max¹ has a sphenoid wing meningioma, a brain tumor likely caused by years of taking cyproterone acetate, her anti-androgen medication. The tumor is large, located behind her eye and above her ear.

It requires surgical removal with a 5 to 10 percent risk of major complications or death. Max¹'s first thought is of the CT scan she skipped on New Year's Day: could earlier detection have changed this? She tells Aisha⁶ about the tumor before Vincent,² a choice that reveals her difficulty receiving care.

When she finally tells Vincent² over the congee he has lovingly prepared, he crumbles. She finds herself comforting him, narrating her own tumor as manageable so that he will not panic. The surgery is scheduled for several weeks out. She will go to France first, then Emily¹⁰'s wedding, then the operating table.

Jamie⁷ calls Max,¹ distraught. Maria has had an abortion. She decided she could not raise a child alone while Jamie⁷ prioritized work. Jamie⁷ is shattered, seeing the lost baby as his one chance to prove he could be a better parent than their father.⁸ Max¹ goes to his flat and cooks him pasta while he screams into a pillow.

When she finally tells him about her brain tumor, he processes it with the same brittle rationality he applies to everything: near the optic nerve, we might be okay. Later, they take the spa weekend Jamie⁷ had booked for Maria.

At the luxury Somerset hotel, they are mistaken for a couple. Max¹ is mistaken for pregnant when the spa books her into a mother-to-be massage. Jamie⁷ cries at dinner about the baby, about their father,⁸ about his fear that he will never be good enough. Max¹ holds him. She does not tell him that Maria was probably right.

Max,¹ Vincent,² Simone,³ Fred,⁴ and Aisha⁶ holiday at a friend's house in Provence. Fred⁴ bakes hash into a lemon drizzle cake. Everyone eats it on full stomachs; when the high hits hours later, they are incapacitated. The next day, still recovering and irritable, Vincent² lashes out at Fred.⁴

The argument escalates. Fred⁴ tries to position himself as Max¹'s defender against Vincent²'s bad behavior. Vincent,² enraged, snaps. In front of everyone, he reveals that Fred⁴ beat up a trans woman⁵ in Thailand a decade ago. The room goes cold. Aisha⁶ is silent; she already knew.

Max¹ stares at the two men, trying to process what she has just heard. Vincent,² still talking, adds more: he was there. He told Fred⁴ she was trans. The secret that has bound Vincent² and Fred⁴ together for ten years, the unspoken pact of silence, has just been incinerated by a homemade edible.

Max¹ retreats to her bedroom. Vincent² follows and, under her interrogation, the full story emerges. He did not just out Alex⁵ to Fred.⁴ He dated her afterward. He promised to stay with her through surgery. And then, on the morning of the operation, he packed his bags and left.

She woke up alone. Max¹ sees herself in Alex⁵'s position: on an operating table, waking to the chalk outline of a boyfriend who could not handle what her body required. Vincent² insists he has changed, that he was only 19, that he would never leave her. But the parallel is too sharp.

Max¹ goes to sleep in Simone³'s hut. The next morning, she and Simone³ leave for Emily¹⁰'s wedding in Bordeaux without saying goodbye. Max¹ tells Simone³ she should break up with Vincent.² Simone³ says yes, absolutely, but adds: you are not me. The question of what Max¹ will do hangs in the air.

At Emily¹⁰'s wedding in Bordeaux, Max¹ and Simone³ wear dusty pink bridesmaids' dresses. Simone³ is miserable. The dress is not her, and the entire ceremony feels like an indictment of her single, queer life. During the reception, Max¹ is drawn to David,¹⁵ a groomsman who flirts with her.

She goes so far as to kiss him, then pulls back and returns to her room, where she finds Simone³ weeping in the bathroom. Simone³ is not crying because she wants to get married; she is crying because this environment makes her feel like she has nothing, despite her successful career, despite her independence.

They sit together in the bathtub, still in their dresses, passing a bottle of wine. Max¹ confesses she almost cheated on Vincent.² Simone³ asks if Max¹ is going to die. Max¹ says she is not. Simone³ makes her promise never to move to the countryside or get a whippet. They laugh, and Max¹ thinks about what memory she would take to the afterlife.

Instead of returning to London and Vincent,² Max¹ flies to her parents in Scotland. She asks for a moratorium on tumor talk. On a walk with her father⁸ through the Scottish countryside, she finally asks the question she has carried since she was 15: does he forgive her for telling Jamie⁷ about the fire?

Her father⁸ is confused. He tells her there is nothing to forgive. He quotes her poetry back to her: No person is fewer than two things. He has read her collection many times. He says he struggled to express affection after getting sober, that alcohol had opened a door he could not find again without it.

Max¹ cries into his shoulder. She apologizes for telling Jamie.⁷ He apologizes for everything else. They walk back to the house where her mother⁹ has prepared lunch. Later, Max¹ receives keys to Simone³'s flat in the mail. She decides to return to London. She does not know yet what she will say to Vincent.²