JulieYBM

  October 31, 2017:

  “Trick or treat!” Michael and I said in union as Megumi opened the door to her apartment.

  Dressed in what was a more extravagant take on her familiar Gothic Lolita style, Meg answered the door by flicking a fun-sized Baby Ruth at my forehead.

  “Ouch!” I whined, scratching my forehead with great care so as to not draw blood with my costume’s cws, “What was that for?”

  “Nice BDSM catsuit, Michelle Pfeiffer,” Megumi cracked, before motioning towards Michael with his green-painted skin, “What with the Jolly Green Giant?”

  “I’m The Incredible Hulk, actually,” Michael steadfastly corrected, his stupendously defined arms and torso on full dispy. The earnest smile on his face could have melted the por ice caps.

  Leading us inside her apartment, Megumi sat on her couch as Hinata pyed on the carpeted floor with an array of toys, “If you two are about to ‘Marvel vs DC’ all over my apartment, please bear in mind that there’s a toddler in the room.”

  “Jeez, sis, you’re such a—ugh!” I groaned, carefully lowering myself next to her on the couch. The tex of my suit made a funny noise against the couch.

  “I know, ain’t I a stinker?” Megumi droned in a restrained Bugs Bunny impression.

  Michael elected to stand, for the sake of Megumi’s match chair, “I’m not melting, am I?” Michael asked, bending down to take a peek into a wall mirror.

  Plucking a small kit from the purse—bck leather, of course—that I kept over my shoulder, I tossed the green paint to Michael, who caught it after some comedically-timed fumbling, “Thanks babe, be right back?”

  “You know where the bathroom is,” Megumi grinned, amused by the scene unfolding before her, “Just…be careful while you’re in there?”

  “Yes, ma’am!” Michael saluted, accidentally smudging the green makeup on his forehead, before taking off for the bathroom.

  Turning back to me, Meg allowed her right hand to venture into the candy bucket, plucked a piece of something from it, and then began opening it, “I’m surprised you two aren’t partying up in Seattle or something.”

  There was something surreal about seeing a Goth woman fiddle with a fun-sized bag of Skittles, “A friend is having a party down here, so we’d figured we’d hit two birds with one stone, y’know?”

  “Apt choice of words for a couple of queers coming to visit their queer friend,” Meg offered, a shit-eating grin at her own cleverness.

  Unable to watch my pretend sister-in-w fiddle any longer, I withdrew a small pair of scissors from my purse and made a small incision at the top of the bag.

  “Thanks, Mom!” Meg’s goofy affection of a little boy voice seemed—ironically—not masculinizing at all.

  With an affected character voice, “Hush with the sarcasm, young dy!” I couldn’t help but sigh as I dropped my scissors back into my purse, “How have you two been tely?”

  “Oh, not bad,” the amused little cuss hummed before tasting the rainbow, “Mostly just work, spend time with the kiddo, make small chat with Bethy when she comes to pick Hinata up and then drop him off with me again. My son has developed an unfortunate attraction to Barbies, though.”

  I stifled any unpleasant faces I wanted to make at the mention of my sister, “No partners? Also, what’s wrong with Barbie?”

  “No time,” along with a little shrug, “Also, Barbie is aesthetically displeasing—he must get it from Bethy.”

  I bit my tongue on the topic of Barbie and switched tracks to safer waters, “Even when you don’t have to—?”

  “I’ve been getting out, but I can’t really say I’m all that jazzed for a date,” the grape-fvored Skittle matched her purple fingernails as she flicked the little tablet of sugar right at me, “Honestly, I think that an unfortunate part of me is just waiting for your sister to pull her head out of her ass and try again with me. Dating is boring.”

  This time, I caught the piece of candy with my mouth and immediately began chewing on it, “Good luck on that ever happening.”

  “I know that you’re upset with her, Candace, but—”

  “—Harri—”

  “—Candace, she’s—Annabeth is under a lot of pressure. S-she’s—”

  An unfamiliar vulnerability washed over Megumi’s face, before infecting her voice, and then threading down to the subtle ways her shoulders and arms moved. Leaning forward, I wrapped Meg in my embrace and held her tight, “I’m sorry, sis, I didn’t—”

  Through sniffles and a tight returned hug, Megumi’s reply broke my heart further, “—It’s okay, dear—really! I-I just have to do this. For all of us.”

  I didn’t understand Meg’s words, but it hardly seemed the time to ask for an expnation.

  Reaching for a box of tissues on the coffee table, Meg blew her nose, and then let her gaze fall to Hinata as he pyed with his toys, none the wiser, “Bethy will come around someday, I have to believe that.”

  Taking Meg’s left hand in mine, I squeezed as tight as I could, “I—I’m not happy with Beth, Megumi…but if what you want is to be with her again…” a deep breath, “...I’ll support you.”

  Megu’s weary smile began to melt again as she leaned forward into my embrace.

  Shortly thereafter, Michael trotted back into the room with his usual golden retriever cadence to his step. Giving Michael a look, my boyfriend instantly understood. Nodding, Michael said nothing, and let the moment settle by standing in pce. I wondered if he might have even been holding his breath, because even over the sound of my right hand rubbing Megumi’s back, I felt like the only thing I could hear was the cnking of children’s toys: Barbie was crashing into a fire truck like the METEOR in Final Fantasy VII was trying to crash into the pnet.

  Pulling herself off of me, Megumi once again blew her nose and cleared her throat before looking back at Michael and then at me, a devious grin spreading on her face, “Enough about me. How is my favorite sister doing?”

  “Gayly,” I deadpanned, hoping—and succeeding—to draw a giggle out of Megumi, “But no, things are going pretty good, right?”

  Catching my look, Michael booted back up, “No, yeah, definitely. We’re getting close to the finish line, so it’s just that we’ve been doing a lot more studying tely.”

  “Less fun, more studying.”

  “Ohoho, less fun indeed.”

  “Michael!” I stamped my little bck boot on the carpeted floor.

  “Sorry, Hare,” Michael quickly replied, sheepishly rubbing the back of his head, “Oh crap, I’ll get paint on my hair!”

  “Ugh, Michael!”

  “Sorry, sorry,” Michael zoomed back over the mirror hanging from the living room wall to try and see if he had indeed gotten green paint on the back of his hair. “Shoot, I can’t quite get the angle right?”

  “Michael, just turn around and I’ll check for you!”

  “Oh shoot, that makes more sense!!” Lumbering over to the couch, Michael took rge and dramatic steps over Hinata as he pyed on the floor, attracting the child’s amusement as he saw what may have just actually been the real Incredible Hulk stepping over him.

  Either the test of my costume was becoming too adhesive and thus crushing my chest or the giggle of the toddler was like a giant can crusher pressing against my chest.

  Megumi burst into ughter as Michael scurried on over to me and bent backwards, “Pfft, you two are a real sight, you know that?”

  “Huh?” Michael asked, bent back in the air as I stood up a bit to give his dark hair a closer look.

  “Nevermind hon,” Megumi replied, pointing at me with her finger, “Better make sure that one doesn’t cw blood!”

  “Wai—what?”

  And then it happened. Shifting around so much while I spread through his thick, dark hair, Michael accidentally leaned backwards into my costume’s cws, scratching himself, “Oh, shit!”

  “Oh God, I’m so sorry, baby!”

  Michael swung his full form forward like there was no tomorrow and instantly pced a hand on the back of his head where he had been scratched by my cws, “I’M BLEEDING!” His voice big and melodramatic, Michael stomped forward, around the coffee table and slowly, dramatically, and safely lowered himself to the ground to py dead.

  Hinata ughed like he had just witnessed the most hirious thing in the world. Cpping his hands, the four year old ughed at Michael’s predicament, “Hulk Smash! Hulk Smash!”

  Mencholic as it made me, it was impossible not to smile at such a bright voice and the accompanying, passionate cpping, “Gosh, his enunciating is becoming so clear.”

  “I know, right? I swear, when he first called me Mommy—oof!—”

  “—Mommy!”

  “Yes baby?”

  “Mommy, Mommy! Hulk!” Hinata’s cheers grew stronger and stronger as he stood next to the fallen Michael and pointed at him as if he were the funniest thing in the way.

  “Talk about Hulk Smashed,” Megumi cracked.

  “Megumi!” I gasped, unable to hide any amusement in my voice.

  “Hey, you’re ughing, too!” Megumi ughed, leaning off the couch to reach for her child. Hinata stumbled over and crashed into his mother’s hands, returning her tight embrace with one of his own.

  The sight of the mother and child was almost too much to bear. Turning my gaze back to Michael—now positioned like he wanted to be drawn like One of My French Girls—I could see the ease and comfort with which he could handle children. It hadn’t been an unfamiliar sight over the past four years, but as Hinata grew more and more into his own person, I couldn’t help but feel an awful, sinking hole in the pit of my stomach.

  Michael wanted children: I knew that much. He was bisexual, too—it wasn’t like he was stuck with someone like me. All I was doing was holding him back, at the end of the day. It was awful of me to selfishly keep a hold of him, was it not?

  “Oh, fudge,” Michael groaned, peeling himself off of the floor.

  “What?” I asked, standing slightly to see over the coffee table.

  Michael had left a hell of a green imprint on the carpet.

  “Guess I’m not getting my deposit back on this pce,” Megumi hummed.

  ***

  October 31, 2017:

  The thump of the bass of the party’s music nearly matched my own heart beat as Michael and I approached the front steps of the mansion where one of our mutual friends was holding their costume party. I had only met Cornelius a few times, so he was definitely more ‘one of Michael’s friend’s from the math department at our college’, but he also clearly knew how to throw a hell of a party. Costumes that were clearly just pre-bought from some costume store or the seasonal section at a brick-and-mortar store littered the party, but every so often a gorgeous homemade costume from what was clearly a cospyer would pop into my field of vision throughout the sea of people.

  I had—of course—had some help with creating my Batman Returns-style Catwoman costume, but it was still one that I was nevertheless very proud of. Learning to sew and even do basic measuring had been a tactile experience that I didn’t realize would be so rewarding. I had dabbled a little with simple procedures, but as I grew more familiar with the type of fashion that I preferred to wear, I realized that I could do more than simply modify pre-bought clothes, and began researching how to create my own. The quality of materials avaible to me weren’t always going to be the best, but at the very least it meant developing skills that I hadn’t previously had.

  My closet wasn’t much of a fan of the additional clothing, though.

  I had spent hours in the lead up to Halloween admiring how my costume showed off my fring hips and tiny waist. The curve of my ass looked just as spectacur, too. As deeply uncomfortable as the costume was—being far too tight and hot—I nevertheless found myself all the more gd that I had cut a few meals to make sure that it fit properly.

  And yet, the looks of admiration from men and women alike were intoxicating. Party goers either loudly or silently praised my costume as Michael and I made our way through the crowds in search of the party’s host. I knew that the quality of my costume wasn’t necessarily the primary thing being praised, though. My body itself was the main attraction, but in my most self-indulgent of moments I thirsted for more attention. It didn’t matter which gender the gnces, the leers or the compliments came from: the pleasure of being desired for a body that I loved was like discovering a master-css album for the first time.

  I could hear the thump of dance music even in my skull.

  The only real downside to a costume made of tex was the ck of ventition. Even the chill of the Halloween air wasn’t enough to stop me from sweating under the tight, adhesive leather of the catsuit I had crafted. The things we suffered for beauty truly did try us.

  As we continued to shuffle throughout the expansive house, I took note of how the dancing party goers spilled in and out and all throughout the home. Tightly holding Michael’s hand so as to not get lost, I followed Michael through the sea of people until we reached the exit to the backyard, where dozens of people enjoyed each other’s company—some even leaping into the gorgeously lit pool carved into the ground itself.

  From across the pool, Michael finally spotted our familiar target and shouted in the rgest of voices, “Corni!”

  “Mike!!”

  Led by Michael, we quickly filtered through the crowds of people and wrapped around to the other side of the pool, where we embraced the 5’8’’ young man, cd in little more than a pair of swim trunks and an unbuttoned Hawaiian shirt, “Mike! Candi! Lovely to see you two again!”

  Cornelius was one of Michael’s more recent acquaintances, so I had simply allowed him to think that I was simply Michael’s girlfriend. While I could try hiding the effects of taking Estradiol Valerate from my folks, it was simply not worth the hassle to try and hide it from or try to expin to others that I wasn’t technically trans, especially since I had long since stopped being able to convincingly boymode unless I used a little makeup to try and alter my face. I was also—quite fervently—not a fan of needing to wear my old boy clothes, anyway.

  Being a boy and being recognized as a girl was hardly the worst thing in the world, anyway.

  I admired Cornelius’ confidence, completely unashamed of his less-than-fit body. I could not help but curse my own shallow sense of self-worth at how zealously I worked to keep my stomach tight and trim, especially in the face of the bookworm before me. As much as I was reminded of my own self-consciousness, I was gd to see that it didn’t transte to judging others for their bodies, especially given that each body type had its own merits. Hating my own shoulder width was nightmarish enough, anyway.

  “Mike! I want you to meet someone! Babe, come over here!”

  What appeared to be a young woman wearing a leather jacket and knee-length pencil skirt—the exact color of which I couldn’t quite determine in the dark—with immacute hair combed back turned from the conversation she was having with other party goers and bid them a temporary farewell as she joined us. As she approached, it became clear that I was in fact eyeing a man dressed as a girl for the party, which then led to me being taken aback by yet again seeing another man so much shorter than me, “Mike, Candi: this is my boyfriend, Hunter Shaw. Hunter, Mike and Candi!”

  Clearly a proud charmer, Hunter held out his soft, well manicured hand for a shake, which I met with my own, “Beautiful costume, Candace. That shade of red looks gorgeous on you, by the way.”

  Right, my lips were a brilliant royal red, “Oh gawsh, thank you, dear, I love your costume,too! I hope this isn’t weird, but I love your skin?”

  A hint of red perforated through Hunter’s cheeks, “Oh darn, thank you! I’ve been trying some—uh—new supplements for a few weeks, although clearly I’m not as clear as whatever you’re doing!”

  “Let’s remember who we’re dating, Romeo,” Cornelius ughed, pulling his boyfriend over for a quick kiss on the lips that was enthusiastically returned.

  “Such a jealous boy,” Hunter’s voice oozed coyness, as he wrapped his left arm around his boyfriend’s waist and turned back to us, “It’s great to meet you two, really. Any friend of Corni here is a friend of mine.” Turning to Michael, “Math department, right?”

  “Right, I’m in Corni’s study group for Professor McCallum’s css, which! I just remembered: thanks a bunch, that st exam went better than I was thinking it would.”

  “Y’see, this is why you never doubt the Corn, Mikey boy,” Cornelius dragged out the word ‘never’ with the sort of masculine hype that only a ‘alpha geek’ like him would, as if to say that his skill was undeniable, “But seriously, I’m gd you passed.”

  “That’s my line—I haven’t had my boyfriend all to myself in weeks,” I ughed, hoping to see if I could coax a little rosy red out of Michael’s cheeks.

  It worked, “Can—Candace is very needy, you see.”

  “Pfft, yeah, sure—I’m a lil’ nympho, just how you like me,” I joked, leaning against my green boyfriend’s hulking form as I nearly snorted at his comment.

  The boys politely—if poorly—restrained their little grins at our shenanigans.

  Unfortunately, even sweating as much as I had all night, I still found myself needing to rush to the restroom, “Sorry boys, I need to use the restroom?”

  “Oh shoot, yeah, it’s inside the porch door and the second door on the left in the hallway on the right!”

  “Awesome, thanks Corni,” I patted Michael on the arm with the back of my hand—so as to avoid scratching him again—to let him know that I would be back soon and immediately began speed walking to the restroom for a quick break.

  ***

  October 31, 2017:

  I had chosen a hell of a costume to try to easily get in-and-out of for restroom breaks. As I struggled to make sure that my leather costume sat just perfectly on my curves again post-potty break, I double-checked my makeup in the mirror. An extra yer of lipstick wouldn’t hurt.

  A knock at the door nearly made me mess up while applying my new coat, “Just a sec!”

  “Hurry up, I gotta PISS!” Cried a familiar voice.

  Eyebrows raised, I unlocked and opened the door, to find Ashley Delgado dancing in pce, completely bereft of a costume in favor of her typical bck tank top and camo pants.

  “Thank fuck, a girl! Holy shit, lemme in BDSM Kitty!!” Hastily, Ashley barged inside of the restroom and walked straight around me to immediately take the toilet. The older woman had stopped dying her dark hair and grown it out down past her shoulders, which was a bit of an unfamiliar sight, but at the same time it was a refreshing change of pace.

  Every time I took sight of her, I was reminded that it had already been four years since we had originally met.

  “This is surreal,” I mused aloud as my friend did her business, “Hey, Ashley.”

  “Huh? Do I know you?”

  Right, right, I still had my mask on, “It’s me, Can—Harri, whatever.”

  “Oh shit, Bunny’s a kitty!”

  “Me~ow,” I jokingly purred, summoning up my best impression of Michelle Pfeiffer’s voice from the film, “So, like, I didn’t realize you would be here tonight?”

  The strain of our retionship had improved as time had passed by, but I still found myself a little hesitant to get too close to her. At the back of my mind, Ashley Delgado remained a woman that knew precisely how to get under my skin, and when I had agreed to let her back into my life, I had decided not to let her back into my heart.

  “Oh, yeah, like, Corni invited me—we go way back to freshman year, and I needed to blow some steam off after work this morning!”

  “Retail Hell still hellish?”

  “God, is it ever—this old shit kept trying to ask me out when I was trying to sell him a fucking TV today. Still, I finally got my rhinopsty scheduled, so I’m fuckin’ pumped!”

  “Woah?!” I feigned enthusiasm, not sure if I was too jealous to be happy for her or because I was genuinely soured on being invested in her own success, “Really? Congrats, girl! When did this happen?”

  “On my lunch break, if you would believe it. God, I can’t fuckin’ wait to get rid of this nose,” Ashley stood, finally finished with her business, and then flushed. I averted my eyes as much as I could, but I still caught an unfortunate eyeful and then felt immediately ashamed.

  “Shit, sorry, I should’ve left,” I admitted, hoping that if I came clean upfront it would somehow absolve me of my sins.

  “What? No, you’re fine, girly. It’s just us girls here, you know?”

  With a heavy sigh, “But, I’m not actually trans, Ashley.”

  “Yeah, I’m sure that’s why you make Michael call you Candi during sex,” the sound of Ashley zipping up quickly became the only noise I could hear as the world around me faded into the background.

  “I—what?”

  “Oh shoot, I guess I shouldn’t have mentioned that?”

  “Ashley, when did—?”

  “I dunno, a couple months ago? Michael came to me asking for advice, so I gave it to him. Is it a big deal?”

  Trepidation set in. I hadn’t realized that Michael would talk to Ashley about our sex life, although it did occur to me that they had known each other a lot longer than I had known either of them. Taking one of the little disposable cups on the sink, I quickly fill the cup with sink water and downed it, “Fuck, fuck, fuck.”

  “Bunny, listen,” Ashley checked her hair on the rge sink mirror, “I used to give Michael advice when he was dating Bran all the time, I didn’t think it was a big deal. I’m sorry if it is, though.”

  “It’s just…it’s embarrassing, you know?” I admitted, propping my weakened body over the sink, “To have that sort of thing—like, I feel like I’m being a freak when we do that, you know?”

  “Girl, I swear to god, you’re the only person who thinks that you’re a cis man,” Ashley tugged her tank top down, and then posed for the mirror to take a selfie of the two of us.

  I had shifted into an in-character pose without needing to be prompted.

  “Don’t bme Michael for this, please? Just be mad at me, if you need somebody to be mad at. He’s just concerned for you, y’know? We all are.”

  “Why? I don’t—I don’t even know—”

  “You barely put up resistance when we just treat you like a woman in private, Bunny,” Ash stressed as she hopped up to sit on the long sink counter, “It’s okay to just admit that you want to be a girl full-time, you know?”

  “You don’t get it, Ashley,” I whispered back, lost in the sight of the woman in my reflection, “If I do this, then I—”

  Something was missing in my reflection. I had forgotten the whip in the car, hadn’t I?

  “What?”

  “You wouldn’t get it, Ash,” I hated how much I loved the sight of my own reflection these days. I hated how all it did was hang over my neck, at any moment capable of ending the fantasy that was my life when I was most vulnerable—when I had most abandoned my guard and allowed joy into my heart.

  “Girl, I am literally trans! If anyone gets it, I fuckin’ would!”

  And yet, I couldn’t have felt more different from the futch tomboy, with all her swagger and confidence and her escapades of topping an endless stream of partners and hook-ups. Ash relished in her transness, I couldn’t even be a cis man properly.

  It was because of that, of course. I knew it was that, I couldn’t have gone four years on hormones without realizing it…but to admit it would have…

  “You just wouldn’t—”

  “So tell me, then,” Ashley turned to me, lifting her left leg onto the sink as she directed her body to better face me and idly pick at her left boot, “How does it feel? Being a girl during sex?”

  The confluence of weather conditions brewing in my gut gnawed away at the back of my mind, but I staved off the pull of an emotional breakdown and coldly gave the woman the answer that I knew she was looking for, “Like the best thing in the world, of course.”

  “Of course.”

  A miasmic air hung between us for a moment as the weight of what I had said settled in. I had practically admitted it, after all. Ashley seemed as if the admission was more a formality than anything else, making no big deal of it and instead remaining uncharacteristically quiet. The way she seemed to just be waiting for me to be the first person to speak burned away at the midnight oil that was my patience and eventually led me to lift myself off of the sink and re-check my lipstick—it had grown smeared from the water and all the lip biting.

  Finally, the woman broke the cold war that was the silence, “Why not just try it out?”

  “What?”

  “Try out being a woman full-time, I mean. Well, I guess you kind of already do that?”

  “Ashley,” my patience was at its wits’ end, “I’m sick of this shit.”

  Ashley rapidly faded into as pale a shade as I had ever seen her, “Candi, wait, I didn’t—”

  “Fuck you,” I whispered sharply—my right eye facing the woman in the mirror and my left eye facing Ashley. The adrenaline pumping through my body, egging me on to say worse—to do worse, “From now on, just leave me the fuck alone.”

  Packing up my makeup into my purse, I slung the leather bag over my shoulder and left the restroom—and my friendship with Ashley Delgado.

  ***

  December 06, 2017:

  The knock at my apartment’s door was chipper and light—chipper such that even if one might be able to call the touch applied to the knock ‘light’, it nevertheless still hit with a crack and a thud that would wake all the many rotting cadavers from their slumber. Halfway through the second rapping of knuckles against my door, I sprung from my bed and stumbled over the dirty clothes piles on my bedroom floor and out toward the door. With a peep through the peephole, I was finally able to ascertain just who in the fuck was waking me up at 8AM on a Wednesday: it was the ever-shameless Sarah Summers.

  With my eyes barely able to keep open, I slowly undid the chain and lock on my door, and opened it, “D-do you know what time of the day it is?” How the hell did I ever wake up at 6AM regurly?

  Wrapped in a cozy little baby blue sweater, Sarah looked offensively chipper for so early in the morning, “Do you know what day it is?”

  “The day I die from ck of sleep?”

  “No! It’s your anniversary!”

  I groaned, “Yeah? I know. Mikey and I have a date tonight, so if you don’t mind,” my hand automatically began closing the door, “I’m going back to sleep.”

  Sarah’s long right leg had no problem catching between the door and the frame, “Come on, Candi, we got a lot to get done!!”

  “Like what?”

  “Like, shopping! And the salon!”

  I thought better of giving Sarah the old heave-ho—given how hard up I was for friends who were girls as of te—so I let the blithesome girl into my apartment to wait while I stumbled off for a much needed shower.

  Once in the bathroom, I looked at the girl in the mirror, sighed heavily, and tried not to think too hard about how I no longer saw a boy, as I took off my pajamas and got a fuller look at who I saw in the mirror. The girl I had started seeing in the mirror as far back as 2015 almost didn’t even need makeup anymore to look beautiful—not that the sight of her own forehead didn’t still send her into a near fugue state.

  Doffing the rest of my clothes, I shuffled into the shower for a nice wake up. As the first drops from the shower head cascaded down on me I could only mumble to myself, “God, today’s going to be exhausting, isn’t it?”

  ***

  December 06, 2017:

  “I still think that we should’ve gone to that pce on Western Ave, Candi!”

  “Girl, my parents don’t give me that much money, Jesus!”

  Sarah’s tanned cheeks puffed out with a cute little “Hmph!” that had me fighting off an amused smirk. Knowing that she would only take that as a sign of encouragement, I stifled my amusement and focused on shuffling through the racks of clothing at the mid-range clothing store within the mall that we settled on browsing first.

  “You need something hawt!” Sarah’s interjection underpinned the quicker clip at which she was shuffling through the surrounding racks. I wasn’t sure how she pnned on picking anything out at the rate she was going, but my own ck of enthusiasm at the moment was hardly helping me prove the merits of a slower pace, either.

  “You say this like I’m not already dating your brother, girly,” I added just a bit more sarcasm to my voice, to see if I could draw out exactly what she was pnning.

  “That’s besides the point, girl. If you want to date that dork, that’s on you. What’s really important is that you celebrate your anniversary, then you need to at least look your best. It’s just common sense!”

  My eyes nearly rolled all the way back over in my head, “If you say so.”

  With a snappy yanking movement, Sarah drew out a cute little bck dress that looked certain to accentuate my hips, “This is so you!”

  “Everything is ‘so me’, according to you,” a little bit of guilt creeped into my heart from pying so hard to get, so I let slip some warmth in my voice as I checked the price tag. “Jesus, this is too much, hon!”

  “Yeah, honestly, the keyhole favors someone with a bigger bust, too,” Sarah cracked deviously.

  “Oh hush, you! Not all of us are born with Anime Girl Tits like you, Sarah!”

  “Sorry, sorry, I just couldn’t help it,” Sarah’s giggle was the sort to make any anger very fleeting to those who heard it, but I puffed out my checks just so that I wasn’t letting her off easily, “I keep forgetting that you’re a weeb, too.”

  “Appearances can be deceiving, y’know.”

  I wasn’t sure if it was just because Sarah and I were simirly tall and wore the same types of clothing—at least, when she wasn’t practicing or pying basketball—but I appreciated having a woman of a simir height who knew her way around the kind of fashion I liked to wear.

  “This thing’s way too expensive. Who the hell is wearing this in the middle of winter, anyway?”

  “I doubt that you’ll be wearing that for very long, Candi.”

  “Eww, Sarah!”

  “I’m just sayin’!”

  Why were all the women I knew so weird?

  “Michael and I will be outside, too, I need to wear something practical!”

  “But it’s so cute!”

  “Then buy it yourself, Sarah! Aren’t you seeing one of your teammates, anyway? Wear it for her!” Sarah fell silent with little fanfare, which instantly triggered my sixth sense for bullshit, “Is everything okay between you and—fuck, shit—Nel?”

  Sarah turned from me to return to sifting through the clothes on the previous rack, her body nguage suddenly slower and stiffer. The mere touch of my hand on her shoulder sent Sarah twisting around and face first into my chest as she began quietly weeping in the middle of the store.

  Petting the young woman’s hair, I did cursory gnces around, just to make sure that we wouldn’t cause a scene.

  Luckily, anyone who crossed paths with us respectfully turned around and went the other way once they saw us.

  ***

  December 06, 2017:

  Sarah tersely picked at a cinnamon pretzel as we sat in the mall’s food court. I had never seen the little six foot three inch tall gremlin so dejected before. Such a sight left me with the nagging desire to know what exactly had happened since the st time I had seen her.

  Slowly nursing a water bottle, I broached the subject of Sarah’s retionship as sensitively as I could think to: “Is everything okay?”

  Mencholic, Sarah just shook her head side-to-side.

  “Did she break up with you?”

  “S-she—Nel—said that the retionship had ‘run its course’. I feel so blindsided. I thought that we were doing great?”

  Unfortunately, I had some experience in that department, “I don’t think that you should take it too personally, Sarah. The issue is likely just Nel needing something different.”

  “What do you mean?”

  “Well, when I broke up with my ex-girlfriends in high school, I did so because of me, not them. They were all lovely, but I couldn’t stand the retionships because of how I felt about myself.” My mind repyed each moment where I would be making out with my ex-girlfriends before the mood would turn more heated and eventually turned to sex. Bck-and-white snapshots of those moments made themselves at home at the forefront of my mind, which only brought up my usual, awful nausea.

  “Yeah…”

  Sarah seemed ill-comforted by my words, but I reached out for her hand nevertheless, “It’s never easy, girl. Breaking up with someone isn’t easy for anyone, Nel included.” Dredging up those old feelings, I did my best to ignore the nausea I could feel threatening to spill out of my mouth and tightened my grip on Sarah’s hand, “Senior year, I was dating a girl named—get this—Becki. With an ‘i’—”

  “—Becki with an ‘i’?”

  “Becki with an ‘i’. She was a great girl—not the best member of the cheer squad or anything, but she was always volunteering with tutoring and babysitting her neighbor’s kids. God, I can’t tell you how many dates I spent with her while she was babysitting. It was awkward as hell for me—I couldn’t stand to be around kids back then—thinking back, I think I really admired how good she was at helping others and taking fulfillment from that. Maybe that’s part of the reason I decided to become a teacher?”

  “She sounds sweet,” Sarah’s voice trailed off with each sylble, “Is she—?”

  “She’s painfully straight, unfortunately,” I giggled back, hoping to coax a little warmth out of the girl.

  “Damn!” I got my desired outcome, which immediately loosened the tension in my shoulders, “No wonder things didn’t work out between you two! Hey, don’t you roll your eyes at me, girly!”

  “I wouldn’t have to if you didn’t keep acting like I was trans, girl!” My scoff didn’t sound nearly as convincing as I had hoped that it would, but I nevertheless held back a grimace. That was the game I pyed, after all. My friends made their little remarks, I denied the obvious, and refused to ever let myself seriously consider the idea. That was how the game was pyed.

  “Candi, come on!”

  “Don’t change the subject, dear—my point is that sometimes the people that you think that you’re going to spend a long time with wind up seeing the retionship differently than you.”

  “So you’re saying…?”

  “Actually, I’m saying that we both knew that the retionship was doomed, unfortunately.”

  “Then how am I supposed to learn from your example, Candace?!”

  “Look for the commonalities,” I shrugged, a bit at a loss for words, “When I broke up with Becki—”

  “—with an ‘i’—”

  “—yes, with an ‘i’—when I broke up with Becki, she didn’t take long before she realized why things didn’t work. I think she was more shocked by the fact that I was breaking up with her to her face than anything else.”

  “That seems like a ‘you’ kind of thing, to be honest.”

  “Well, I didn’t want to be one of those guys—well, no, I don’t think it’s wrong to break up with someone over text or anything, I just don’t think it would have worked for me. I was going to have to see the girl for a few more months at school, after all.”

  “True.”

  “So, like, I broke up with her, apologized, and then did my best to avoid her for the st few months of high school.”

  “That must have been awkward.”

  “God, was it ever—especially since we broke up because I couldn’t perform in the bedroom.”

  “Wow, really?”

  Ugh, why had I said that? “Yeah, I couldn’t do what needed to be done. It was awkward. That’s it.”

  “That tracks,” Sarah’s signature smirk had resurfaced at the most inopportune time, “You don’t exactly give off ‘virile womanizer’.”

  “Well yeah, I wonder why?!” I shot back sarcastically.

  “Because you’re trans?”

  I poured my back into my hands and groaned loudly into them, although not nearly enough to overcome the background noise of the mall.

  “Oh come on, Candi, it’s not like it’s that big a deal to me of all people!”

  Lifting my face from my palms, “Yeah, but I’m not—whatever. Fine. I don’t care, this isn’t a conversation that I need to have.” Standing from my seat, I picked up my bag and huffed, “If you’re finished eating, I’d like to go check out the leggings store to see if they’ve got anything cute to wear.”

  The little cuss just snickered at my deflection, so I started walking off without her.

  Sarah caught up with me with a scrappy little jog and continued her giggling as she bumped shoulders with me.

  If things with Michael weren’t doomed for failure, I’d have thought that Sarah would have been an amazing sister-in-w.

  ***

  December 07, 2017:

  It was just past midnight, and just like every seventh of December for the past four years, the park ke where Michael and I had our first date was as dark, quiet and chilly as ever. There was moisture in the air, but thankfully no rain in sight. Nestled closely to my love and wrapped well in a warm pair of leggings beneath the length of my pink skirt and sweater combo, I admired the reflection of the moon on the ke’s surface as Michael and I warmed a very cool metal bench bolted to the surface of the dock overlooking the ke. The warmth of Michael’s natural furnace of a body did wonders for keeping me warm, despite the renowned chill of the Washington winter, but I was more than happy to put up with a little frost on my nips to continue our yearly tradition.

  After all, who knew how much longer our retionship would st? Graduation was in six months for the both of us, and Michael and I weren’t likely to wind up with teaching jobs at the same school, after all. In fact, it wasn’t even likely that our retionship would make it that far. As much as I loved Michael, the idea of depriving him of a life without children was something that ate away at me, and I was finding myself—perhaps wrongfully—surprised by how the grip of time around my throat grew worse by the year. College had been a great time to be young and dumb and gay, but with one more Christmas with the Woods’ coming up, I knew that I couldn’t put off what was coming any longer.

  I could no longer hide my breasts anymore—binding was too painful, even for just a few hours, and my mother was beginning to notice the changes in my face, my walk, and even the way I talked. I couldn’t repress the usual feminine way that I moved or talked anymore. Hell, I didn’t want to. I wanted nothing to do with the cishet man I had been before college.

  My life was like a slow-moving trainwreck, and the longer I put it off, the longer I realized that I was only deying the inevitable. I knew that I couldn’t just stop HRT at this point. I knew that I couldn’t impregnate a woman, either. All that was left of Harrison Woods was stuffed into the shell of a beautiful woman that he saw every time he looked in the mirror—that he could feel move and talk and be so painfully reflected in the eyes of his boyfriend.

  I envied her: I envied the adventures she could go on and the days she could have within her idyllic world.

  I knew what Michael saw when he looked at me now. I knew who he saw, and it tortured me. He saw a woman that I could never truly be. He saw a life that could never be.

  I had to end our retionship, before my heart was broken for good.

  Michael leaned into the left side of my body and rested his head atop the pink beanie warming my head and protecting my poor little ears. The weight of his form was characterized best as a puppy resting on his dy’s p, and the imagery of such nearly brought tears to my eyes as I waxed poetically about my own dreadful fate.

  I needed to stop feeling sorry for myself. I knew that I had to.

  I knew exactly what I needed to do to set Michael free.

  I just hoped that it wouldn’t be his ruination…even if it was mine.

  ***

  December 24, 2017:

  “Are you sure you’re ready to do this?”

  “Mikey, I’m as ready as I’ll ever be,” I said, scrutinizing my face in my compact mirror. I hadn’t left the apartment without my usual makeup looks mitigating the testosterone damage in what felt like years at this point, “I can’t keep hiding this from them. Honestly, if I’m ever going to tell them about being on HRT, it’ll have to be after I tell them I’m gay. Seems like the best course of action, really.”

  “I guess that’ll make the whole, ‘Yes, I’ve been feminizing my body, thank you for noticing!’ thing a lot easier to expin if you tell them that you have a boyfriend,” Michael kept his eyes on the road, but the artificial optimism in his voice betrayed the look of concern I could sense was dying his dark eyes a bleak blue.

  “Worry not, young Michael! I’m sure that nobody’s going to start shit when I’m with my jacked, six-and-a-half-foot tall boyfriend who pys football.”

  Suddenly, Michael switched tracks without sparing a grin or a chuckle, “Will Annabeth be there?”

  “She always is,” I replied, heavy on the sigh of annoyance. “Sister Dearest is always trying to make and maintain business retionships.”

  There was a beat before Michael asked his next question, “Will Hinata be there?”

  “She’s left him with Megumi the st two years, so I doubt it. I doubt our father wants a reminder of her ‘mistake’ around, especially if his business associates are around.”

  “That’s good,” Michael replied, a slight breath of relief on his tongue.

  “Why ‘good’?”

  “What, you think I want to have the kiddo see me kick the shit out of anyone who calls you a faggot?”

  I burst out into a ughter so strong that I immediately snorted.

  “But seriously, Candace, I don’t want—I want you to be happy. I hope they’re understanding.”

  “Christ, I hope so, too. Better hope the kiddo ain’t there, then. Not sure if any of my once removed first cousins will be there, though. Probably. Actually, if Richie’s there he’ll fuckin’ love seeing you kick the shit out of someone.”

  “Richie?”

  “Yeah, my older cousin Penelope’s kid. Really good at video games, kinda looks like I did when I was his age. Big weeb, too.”

  “Sounds like you two got a lot in common?” Michael fished, sparing a gnce to his right just in time to catch me fiddling with my phone while it was in selfie mode.

  “I mean, anytime I’ve hung out with him at one of these things he’s always been a nice kid—real weird, though. His parents should probably get him checked for being autistic or somethin’.”

  Well, at least my brows looked good. I snapped a photo—one more for the post-HRT album.

  “Jesus, how many cousins do you even have?”

  “Hell if I know, hon. I lost count at some point, to be honest.”

  “First cousins who are once removed must make it even harder to keep up.”

  “This is why I just hang out with the ones who look like they don’t have a stick up their asses.”

  “Pfft, Jesus, Candi—”

  “—Harri, Mikey. I really don’t want to expin the whole girl name thing to my folks tonight, y’know?”

  “Yeah, they’ll probably call you a Candi-ass faggot then.”

  It was like a volcano erupted in my throat and nose, scorching them as my unprepared throat let loose the strongest ugh that I had ever let loose, “Fucking Hell, Michael!”

  “Sorry, sorry, it just came to me!” Michael let off the gas just enough to not sm into the car ahead of us on the highway while chuckling at his own joke.

  “You’re going to kill me!”

  “Better me than them, I guess?”

  “Pfft, yeah, sure,” I couldn’t help my gaze longingly at the slight grin that graced the mountainous man’s pink lips. Even though she rarely smiled, I could tell that Michael had gotten his smile from his mother. Little details like that tended to stick out to me in quiet moments, where there wasn’t much to say, but I still had to sit still and let the clock tick down. Besides, if Michael had inherited her smile, perhaps he has inherited her polite disposition, too?

  Tomorrow was going to be the fourth consecutive Christmas spent with Michael’s mother and sister. Each year grew a little less awkward, but I was always still afraid of what I might do to fuck it all up and ruin things with the mother of the man I loved.

  The drive down south was always a bit of a pain—especially when I was having to visit my parents—but I was gd for the dense traffic for once. Coming out to my family and introducing them to my boyfriend was going to scare the ever-loving-shit out of me, if it wasn’t already. Each time I looked in my compact mirror for any sign of inspection in my unarmored skin I saw only one more reminder of the bulbousness of my forehead, or the unsightly thickness of my nose. Electrolysis had thankfully cleared my skin of any of the little blonde hairs that once darkened my doorway and painted it ever so terribly masculine, but I still couldn’t shake the feeling that no matter what I did, I would always be unmistakably male. It was suffocating, to be trapped with this face—and to be unable to properly conceal it.

  When Ashley had spoken to me about her issues with her nose before, I hadn’t quite understood at the time what she had meant. The longer I had spent analyzing what about my face I needed to fix with makeup, the more I had come to understand how she could want to get a rhinopsty. Facing—and finding the words to describe—my pain had only made the horror more easily defined and understood—real. As angry as I was at her, there was no doubt in my mind that she faced something truly horrifying, too. Still, I couldn’t forgive her—nor did I think it even mattered if I did. We were always bound to part ways some day, it just so happened to happen a little sooner than I expected. It was for the best, though.

  “Hey, Hare?”

  That name again, “Yes, Michael?”

  “You know that I got your back, right?”

  There it was again: that damned puppy dog face. It made me sick to think of much Michael wanted to sacrifice for me. He deserved better than that—to be left to take care of someone who couldn’t even give him the life he so clearly wanted.

  “Yeah, I do, Mikey,” I gave a soft smile, as I cupped his right cheek with my left hand, hoping that Michael wouldn’t see the sorrow in my eyes.

  ***

  December 24, 2017:

  Parked amidst a sea of far more expansive cars, Michael and I exited his car and met at the trunk to collect ourselves. Michael's left hand was an oasis in a desert. Reluctantly, I looked Michael in the eyes and shook my head.

  “No problem,” his voice was so terribly soft, “Better for them to hear it from you first.”

  “Later, Mikey,” I replied, suddenly finding it hard to swallow, “I promise.”

  Michael’s eyes said that he understood, but I couldn’t help but feel like a fraud in the face of it all. As we walked towards the house, I was again reminded of the strange feeling of the dress scks against my hairless legs. The change to softness that Estradiol had brought to my skin had all of my male clothing feel foreign now. I had almost never worn the more course materials since becoming a crossdresser, and each foray back into the world of men’s fashion rendered me like a kitten tied to a thousand balloons: floating into the air, only the balloons popped and I inevitably fell back to the Earth with a loud spt.

  Within moments, Michael and I arrived at the steps of the front door of the house. We quickly climbed the stairs, giving nothing more than little nods to the staff and guests standing around smoking.

  Once inside the mansion, I guided Michael—in his dorky little suit left over from his senior prom—to the living room, where many of the guests would no doubt be conversing. A full spread of at least fifty or sixty guests clumped together into various little groups of all across the rge partying room. Familiar faces—both whose names I did and did not know—fshed between my blinking eyelids as I led Michael through the crowds.

  Cousin Clive—busy chatting up a lightly charmed brunette woman in a gray pantsuit—noticed me out of the corner of his eye and did a very poor job of hiding his surprise when he saw Michael close behind me. Getting a good look at the poor woman, I muttered, “She can do so much better,” under my breath.

  Ignoring Clive, I pulled Michael away toward a table stocked with refreshments. Within mere moments, I had a shot of liquor pouring down my throat for my own sanity.

  Reaching for another gss, I stopped short when Michael tapped me on the right shoulder, having spotted the walking embodiment of professional bitch wyer, Annabeth, schmoozing with some dull-faced high-roller or whatever. The face that my elder sister made when she noticed Michael standing right behind me was like a ghost who had just seen whatever it was that ghosts feared most.

  Even at a distance, I could tell that Beth was excusing herself from whoever she was speaking to and made her way over to Michael and I in a panic. Looking back and up at Michael, I rolled my eyes, although he didn’t seem very annoyed.

  “What the hell are you doing?” Annabeth shout-whispered as she finally got within the range of a condescending lecture. “Get him out of here now, Harrison!”

  “I need him, Annabeth—y’know, in case anyone decides to kick my ass when I tell Mom and Dad that I’m gay.”

  “You fucking child,” Beth spat, “Wait until you graduate!”

  Michael spoke up with a measured calmness that I didn’t know how he could manage, “Annabeth, I’ll protect Hare, don’t worry.”

  “That’s besides the point, Harrison! Dad’s boss is here—Mr. York! If you cause a scene now, he’ll really disown you!”

  Waiting any longer wasn’t an option for me, “If I don’t do it now, I’ll never do it. I need to get away from all this, even if it means torching my life.”

  Dressed in one of her finest dresses, Annabeth looked like she was going to blow a gasket, or whatever the phrase was, “Harrison, I swear to god—”

  “—Don’t worry about it, Beth,” I hummed, grabbing a champagne gss off of a roaming server’s tray and immediately beginning to drink it, “What could possibly go wrong?”

  “Need I remind you what happened the st time you made a scene at one of these parties?” Beth scolded, grabbing Michael and I by our colrs and dragging us away from any crowds or clusters of speaking guests.

  Finally stopping in a corner hallway, “Remind me? Girl, I seem to recall me breaking your abusive ex-husband’s nose and giving you an excuse to divorce the fucker!”

  “Yeah, and sending me into bor in the fucking kitchen of the family house, Harrison!” Beth’s whisper-yelling game was sharp, but I could feel the taste of the champagne on my tongue already beginning to give me some backbone to py with.

  “Oh, come off it, Beth! You and Hinata are better than fine—and you’d be a lot better if you stopped being a bitch and just married Megumi.”

  Annabeth’s face took a more twisted turn, “Still on that, are we?”

  “What, do you honestly think you’ll be better off having to expin to some boring straight guy how you have a kid with another woman?”

  “Babe, I think we should give your sister some spa—”

  “And you!” Beth interjected, shoving a finger into Michael’s face, “You should know better than to come here and support this nonsense!”

  “Leave Michael out—”

  “—She wants to do this, I’m going to support her—”

  “—I’m not tra—”

  “—If Harrison forces our father to confront what he is, it will end badly for all of us, Michael,” Beth’s words cut through the air like a wn mower bde, “Goddamn it, you two!”

  A party guest quickly exited the vatory that we were positioned outside of. The harried man looked like he was doing his best to ignore the argument going on.

  “Beth,” I began slowly, “I need to do this. I can’t hide this from them anymore.”

  Beth turned her head back to me and bore holes into my eyes with her stare, “You don’t understand, Harrison. Father will not tolerate this.”

  I bit my bottom lip tightly, nearly drawing blood, “And you? Why do you put up with his bullshit? Why are you doing any of this shit?”

  “It’s what’s best for everyone,” Beth replied, sounding nearly exhausted, “This is the path I started down and now there’s no going back.”

  “Bullshit.”

  Annabeth had no reply other than an increasingly bnk face. After a beat, Annabeth sighed, and then left Michael and I to return to the party guests who she so clearly preferred.

  Finishing my champagne, I turned to Michael and said, “Let’s find Mommy Dearest, shall we?”

  Michael didn’t look all that enthused.

  That made two of us.

  ***

  December 24, 2017:

  Finding my mother exiting a restroom, I approached her and her familiar small stature while signalling to Michael to wait back several feet, “Hey, Mom.”

  Turning around with a look of confusion hosting itself on her face, the hostess of the evening—ever on guard for any guests who might overhear something less than pleasant—greeted me with her brightest face, made fresh by both botox and makeup, “Harrison? Harrison, dear! You’re home! I didn’t recognize your voice.”

  Lowering my voice and speaking without any melody was a complete and utter bore, anyway.

  “Well, you do expect me to make it back for Christmas, so here I am,” I replied weakly as the socialite strangled me with a hug. My bound breasts screamed like the lead in a horror film, “There was someone I wanted you to meet, actually.”

  It was now or never.

  Breaking from the hug, my mother looked around me to spy the figure she had noticed already, “Did you bring a friend along this year, Harrison?”

  Her voice and her face—two things that indicated the type of unbothered role that she pyed—only made the coming confrontation harder, “This is Michael, Mom.”

  Clearing the distance between us with very few—and very quiet—steps, Michael extended his right hand for a shake, “Michael Summers, ma’am. It’s a pleasure to finally meet you.”

  “‘Finally’? Harrison, sweetie, have you spoken about me to your friend here?” Turning to Michael, “Surely my son has only told you good things about me, Michael. Oh, where are my manners? My name is Darcy, dear.”

  Her ugh was so damned fake.

  “Mom, Michael isn’t my friend.”

  A look of confusion poputed my mother’s face as she stared me back in my eyes.

  “Mom, Michael’s my boyfriend.”

  Nothing.

  With a deep breath, I fought through the terror screaming in my skull to run away and never look back, “Mom, I’m g—”

  “Harrison, dear, no you aren’t.” Darcy Woods spoke with only the most confident of voices. She had already decided who Michael was the moment she had noticed him standing behind me, and there wasn’t anything I could do to change her mind.

  “Mom, please, I can’t just stay in the clos—”

  “Harrison,” a sudden sharpness took over my mother’s voice, “We’ve discussed this before, sweetie—”

  —Had we?—

  “—And we agreed that you would marry a nice young woman someday.” There was a particur unease to the way my mother specified the prefix ‘young’. For a woman who had spent decades trapped in an unhappy marriage, the very thought of a youth with any kind of potential was an insult to her.

  “Mom, please, you don’t understand, I can’t—”

  “You are not to speak of any of this nonsense to your father, do I make myself clear, Harrison?” She knew. There was no way my mother didn’t know that I couldn’t do what she asked of me. There was no way that she didn’t know that I was with Michael and that I wanted the freedom to be my own person.

  But she simply didn’t care.

  To my mother, I would never be more than the son that she was promised would keep the family line going, just as she was promised to be that son’s mother—and the social and financial benefactor of that son’s suffering.

  She had accepted that the only life she was capable of having was the life that she had been cursed with since her youth.

  “Ma’am, your child and I are—”

  “—Exactly, Mr. Summers,” my mother’s sharp voice cut off Michael like the sharpest of the knives in the kitchen of the Woods home—none of which she would have ever had to pick up herself. Straightening up, Darcy Woods looked Michael in his eyes as he shook with a nervousness that only a polite boy like Michael Scott Summers would have the manners to show a woman, “Harrison is my child. He’s a lost boy that has always needed guidance and direction, and I can see now that I was far too forgiving of him by letting him have so much freedom while he was away at college.”

  My mother’s self-important words kept me silent—stewing in my pce while she stared down my boyfriend.

  “Ma’am, we—”

  “Harrison!” I flinched in pce—it was like my heart had just been kickstarted again, each beat bored and growing faster, “If your friend is staying for the remainder of the evening, then I expect him to keep his distance appropriate. Do you understand?”

  Sick to my stomach, I could only look at my own feet—cd in those god awful dress shoes I had always hated for being so distinctly…male.

  “Now, if you’ll excuse me, I have to return to entertaining our guests.” Taking a step forward, the woman cd in her bck dress gave Michael one st dirty look. After a moment, my mother stepped around Michael, leaving us be.

  An air of silence remained between Michael and I for what felt like an eternity. Finally—after sniffling for the hundredth time—I whispered, “I’m sorry about that.”

  “It’s fine, Candace,” I couldn’t look Michael in the eyes, but I could hear the tears from the quiver in his voice. I had led the man I loved down a path paved with the broken gss of whisky, wine and champagne gsses. But in the end, it was the path of least pain.

  Another pause stood between us. No word seemed big enough to convey the depths of my anguish or the richness of my guilt. For what point could I possibly make that would make everything alright? What combination of words would heal the truth of the gap between our two worlds?

  I gave in to the Moonlight Sonata that pyed at a whisper in my ears at all times, cranking the volume up just to be able to drown out the rest of the world: “Could you give me some space, Michael?”

  A beat passed, “Yeah, sure.”

  Not waiting for Michael to make the first move, I slipped past him and sped walked straight for the stairs, ascended them, and then headed straight for my childhood bedroom.

  Ugly crying was best done in solitude.

  ***

  December 24, 2017:

  The cool metal of the door handle to my childhood bedroom had become a stranger to me since I had left for college four years ago. Retaking it now, for my annual check-up, I opened the door and found someone else already inside. Legs crossed, a shaggy, blonde haired pre-teen sat hunched over, pounding away on one of my old PyStation 3 controllers. The light of Marvel vs. Capcom: Infinite bathed my darkened bedroom.

  My arrival hadn’t disturbed the curious interloper at all, so I took the opportunity to crash on my bed and shoved my face into one of my pillows. Five minutes passed by, the sounds of the game forever repeating, to the point of nausea.

  “Kiko-ken!”

  “Hadouken!”

  “Kiko-ken!”

  “Hadouken!”

  “Kiko-ken!”

  “Hadouken!”

  “Kiko-ken!”

  “Hadouken!”

  “Kiko-ken!”

  “Hadouken!”

  “Kiko-ken!”

  “Hadouken!”

  “Kiko-ken!”

  “Hadouken!”

  Unable to take anymore, I flung my body up and turned on the ceiling light in my bedroom. The pre-teen finally snapped to attention and turned around to face me, “Harri?!”

  “In the flesh, Richie,” I groaned, rubbing my eyes.

  “Oh, shoot, sorry—I didn’t even notice you were asleep there!”

  The sheepishness of the boy’s smile pricked a sore spot in me, but I bit my tongue and walked over to sit down next to him, “Ignoring the party, I see?”

  “Ugh, yeah. I told my mom and dad that I just wanted to hang out at my friend’s house, but they said that it was, like, rude to impose on Christmas Eve or whatevs.”

  “I mean, yeah, that does make sense, dear,” I spared a giggle, reached for the spare controller, and waved it, “How about instead of getting your ass kicked by a computer you let me do it for a bit?”

  The eyes of my cousin's tween lit up brilliantly at my challenge, “Bring it on, Harri!” His toothy little grin was so precious that I had to turn away and face the screen, which was significantly less bright.

  After setting up the Versus Mode, my twelve year old first cousin once removed began mashing away at the buttons mercilessly. Out of practice, I relied mostly on blocking and dodging as I slowly began to recall how to py as Morrigan Aensnd against Richie’s Chun-Li.

  “So, how’s school?” I ventured. While I had pnned on just teaching high school, I was still going to have to learn how to interact with kids someday, assuming I didn’t chicken out and give up on my teaching degree. The moment the question left my mouth, I felt like I had suddenly aged twenty years in the face of the tween’s disinterested facial expression.

  “Ugh, middle school sucks!” He spat, eyes glued to the television, intent on crushing me in video game combat.

  “Any girlfriends yet?” As much as I had hated being asked the question growing up, it was the only thing I could think of to ask, especially as I was getting my ass handed to me in a game that I hadn’t pyed in a few weeks. I was doing a poor job of straddling the line between older retive and prospective teacher, though.

  “Uh…no? Not that there aren’t a bunch of cute girls…or anything…”

  This was awkward.

  God, I didn’t know what the fuck I was doing, “My boyfriend’s downstairs. Wanna meet him?”

  At this point, I didn’t give a shit who knew.

  “Huh?” Richie’s eyes never left the screen, “Whatever, maybe ter?” Richie crushed me yet again and immediately initiated a rematch.

  “Well,” I reasoned with a bored sigh, “At least one straight person in this family is sane about queer people.”

  “Hey, are you still pying Pokemon?” The button mashing from the tall tween continued, “I’ve been repying Ptinum a lot tely. Shirona’s so cool!”

  “I’m a bit behind, but I try to py Sun Version when I’m not hanging out with Michael or studying.”

  “Michael?”

  “The big meathead I call my boyfriend, dear,” I hummed, bumping into the boy with my right shoulder just enough to make him budge a little.

  “Chirp!”

  “Huh?”

  “Sorry, uh, I mean, right! Gotcha!”

  Right, right: Richie was a little bit…perhaps autistic, “Sorry, I forgot that you do that sometimes.”

  A little vulnerability seeped into the voice of my first cousin once removed as it grew tinny and hushed, “Is it weird?”

  With a practiced smile, “Not at all, dear.” I had been learning how to interact with children in my csses, and an off-hand remark from a fellow student mentioned how they had been taught that children typically needed more positive reinforcement and smiling. I was beginning to understand now just how important that could be for helping a child feel comfortable in your care.

  “You sound different.”

  “Aaah, well…yeah. I’m…different, I guess you could say,” I had also learned how blunt children could be. Still, it was par for the course with Richie. The goofy weeb always been a little different from the average kid—certainly as much a bck sheep among the cousins as I had been.

  “It’s cute, though. I like it.”

  “Thank you…dear.”

  Richie and I shared a giggle at that.

  Stealing a quick gnce up at me while my character was down, “I love how your hair looks, it’s really pretty and soft-looking…uh…if you don’t think that makes me sound gay or anything.”

  “Who cares if it makes you sound gay? You’re right!” I giggled back, which only helped Richie loosen back up. “Besides, I’m gay, I’m not going to judge.”

  “Really?”

  “Yeah, I’ve got a boyfriend, don’t I?”

  “Chirp! Right, I forgot, that’s how that works, like, duh!” Richie’s voice took a surprising uptick in its already high pitch at that remark, sounding indistinguishable from a girl’s voice.

  “Practice that much?” I asked, trying not to sound judgemental.

  “I m-mean, like, it’s fun to mess around with voice chat and stuff,” Richie’s quick stammer betrayed his insecurity, so I held my tongue. The st thing he needed was an older queer person making him too ashamed of any innate queerness he might have.

  If Richie was like me, it would certainly make his life complicated in ways that left me fearful for his well being—especially if Penelope and her husband—Peter—were not supportive. Despite its general conservative nature, the Woods family and those that married into other simirly wealthy families had a funny way of being poputed by so many queer people—it was very curious. The dynamics of trying to be some sort of out and supportive role model for children was a thing that I feared that I wouldn’t be capable of in general, but for that to hit so close to home in the form of a younger queer retive not being able to be himself would definitely leave a bitter taste on the tip of my tongue.

  Finally, after much patience, I managed to take a match from Richie.

  “Crap, you got me!” Richie’s voice squeaked up an octave even further at having to face the reality of being defeated. The dramatic boy put so much oomph into his physicality that he rocketed backward, then rolled backward, ying on his side with his arms out.

  I worried that it was condescending to want to smile at him the same way I smiled at Hinata, but while Richie’s back was turned, I couldn’t help myself and let the emotion in. The jealousy and longing churned within the pit of my stomach, like an ever boiling vat of toxic sludge just waiting to poison the entire ecosystem of the world. I wanted nothing more than to be able to enjoy the exuberance of children as the parent of one, and not merely an outsider. I wasn’t sure when I had begun to feel that way. I was but in my early twenties, and yet already I longed for a feeling that I should have been anticipating arriving years from now, once I was better established.

  And yet, I yearned nevertheless, in all the ways denied to me by the reality of my body. Was it because I knew that I would never have that opportunity? Suddenly, the moment of reprieve from the Hellish night was gone—as if it had never been. Taking to my feet, I stepped over the still dramatically defeated Richie—ying there in all the dramatic fir of an aspiring theater kid—and opened my bedroom door, “Sorry hon, I should go put in time downstairs before a few cranky old people give me trouble.”

  “Chirp!”

  This time, I understood the meaning of the chirp perfectly.

  ***

  December 24, 2017:

  “So, Jace’s gig at the zoo is really cool. He’s been studying to become a doctor for zoo animals, y’know? Anyway, he gets so much time with the animals—shit, I get to hang out behind the scenes sometimes, too—but don’t tell anyone because I don’t want him losin’ his job for sneakin’ me in just to see some animals up close!”

  It was interesting watching the sullen Elliot change over the years. While college had kept us from hanging out much outside of family gatherings, I found that my dear cousin had grown up quite a bit every time I saw him. Had the freedoms afforded to him by living the college dorm life with his boyfriend given him more freedom to discover exactly what kind of man he was? The differences between us only seemed to widen at each of the family Christmas parties.

  No matter what, coming back home and putting on the baggy suit and tying up my hair, binding my chest and facing the world bereft of my beloved makeup always left me miserable beyond words. Here I was, now twenty-two years old and made to feel as much the child as I had ever been by a family that saw any true break from tradition as heretic.

  And yet, here was my chipper-as-ever twenty-one year old cousin, Elliott, decked out in even more gm emo wear and makeup as I had ever seen him wear, and I couldn’t help but envy him. His queerness was practically fully on dispy now: I saw the foul looks from family, friends of family, and business associates. The ghouls of high-society had little interest in openly progressive views on open queerness.

  The jet bck eyeliner brought to life the sapphires he called eyes in a way that I found myself envious of. The immacute styling of Elle’s hair brought to mind a full spread of product littering his bathroom. I wanted nothing more than to talk shop with him, yet in this setting, where I was to continue to be the heterosexual son, I felt the noose slowly tightening around my neck. My own personal expression? Suppnted with nothing more than the beauty of the outside world before me, forever out of reach.

  Was this the difference between brothers Arthur and Andrew? Uncle Andrew had never seemed nearly as fussy about the rules of society or of business and tradition. As few times as I had interacted with the man—his stature small, but his voice somehow smaller—I had always had the impression that he had little care for sticking out, which only made Elliot’s casual vibrancy all the more intriguing to me. Sure, Ell wasn’t wearing his cat ears that I usually saw him wear in his Instagram posts, but there was no doubt that he was sticking out like a sore, emo thumb. Any desire I had to be an investigative reporter stirred within me any time I let my mind mull over for too long about the inner trappings of my extended family’s internal politics.

  Was it Uncle Andrew’s instincts as a parent that allowed him to be a clipped bird who could wish only for his child to fly? Was I nothing more than the afterbirth of my father, a phoenix? Was I meant for nothing greater than rising from his ashes? To repce him, when his time came, and pass down all the same terrible things he did? Repeat his awful actions and create new Harrisons, only to clip their wings upon birth?

  The sorrow of the thought permeated in my heart, and marred my words, “That sounds fun, Elle. How’s college going for you?”

  “Oh, great, great! I’m having a lot of fun working on my medical degree. Endocrinology is honestly pretty fascinating!”

  Then he shouldn’t have any trouble helping me with my levels if I ever need advice.

  “Mind if I ask you something?” Accompanied with a sip of my Chardonnay.

  “Sure, what?”

  “Does Uncle Andrew, uh, approve?”

  “Huh?”

  “Y’know, of the whole emo look,” I motioned up and down with my free left hand, “I mean, you are part of this fucked up family.”

  “Oh, yeah, no, I get what you mean,” Elliot adjusted in his seat, while keeping his eyes looking up at me as I hovered above him, “Dad’s been pretty cool about how I dress—I think he’s just happy that he’ll have another doctor as a kid.”

  “Yeah, I imagine the ‘dresses like a fag’ bit is easier to sidestep if you can mention that your youngest is a doctor.”

  “Oh, well, uh…I…did I not tell you?”

  “Tell me what?” I asked, more than a little paranoid that I knew where this conversation was going.

  “Dad knows about me and Jace.”

  It was as if the universe was ughing in my face, “What?!”

  “Yeah, he asked me if I was, uh, you know, gay, right?” Elliot motioned his hands up and down, signaling to his mighty expressive outfit, “‘Said he didn’t want to be the kind of father who couldn’t have real conversations with his kids.”

  “No fucking way?!”

  “Way! So, uh, yeah. I told him that I was bisexual and dating a guy.”

  Erase all traces of bitterness, Harri: “I imagine that you two are quite happy about that.”

  “Sorry, Harri.”

  He must have heard it in my voice either way—that or seen the bitterness in my eyes, “Don’t worry about it, hon, I’m just gd that you’re happy and you don’t have to hide shit like a boyfriend from your parents. We need more luck like yours out there in the community, not less.”

  “I’m sorry that there isn’t enough to go around for you, either,” Elle took a deep breath as a nervousness took siege of his face, “It can’t be easy, y’know, being, uh, what you are and not having family to support you.”

  Py dumb, me, “Gay?”

  “I mean…Harri, I do know why you look so different.”

  Shit, well, he was studying to be an endo, afterall, “So, you can tell that I’m on E, huh?”

  “Yeah, uh, sorry. I just figured that you would tell me yourself eventually—probably not here, surrounded by all these people, though.” Elle squirmed a little in his seat, suddenly feeling the pressure of the revetion beneath his hot leather and skinny jeans.

  “Uh…I mean, it’s not like I’m—so like, I just tell my doctor that I’m, y’know, trans, so I can get on HRT. I’m still just a—” stop lying to yourself “—I’m not—I can’t be trans, Elle.”

  Elliot looked at me with some of the saddest eyes I had ever seen. I had no real reason to be surprised, though. Elliot had been dating a trans man for four years now, he would have understood better than a lot of other people what I was going through…even if I was not entirely sure if I could accept who and what I was.

  I quickly finished my Chardonnay, hoping to numb the growing, burning pit of tar in my stomach. All of my senses shrieked with ill-content as the fires of the alcohol joining its brethren in my stomach filled me with nothing but a buzz that did little to resolve the source of my actual woes.

  “Michael seems nice, though,” Elliot’s reminder only made the tar burn hotter, “I mean, near as I can tell from afar like this.” The emo boy with the curious little grin kept his eyes locked on my boyfriend as he watched him awkwardly make smalltalk with some business associate or whatever of my father’s that I didn’t know.

  “Thanks, yeah. Yeah, I guess that’s right—you haven’t met him before tonight, have you?”

  “Nope. Damn, you sure know how to pick ‘em, dontcha?”

  I couldn’t help but spare a giggle, “Uh, yeah, like, he’s not just hot. He’s kind and funny and smart, too.”

  “Ptitudes aside, I can really tell that you love him.”

  “You can? How?”

  “The sound of your voice,” for the first time that night, Elliot nursed the gss of wine he kept on the end table of the arm chair he called headquarters, “It’s obvious.”

  With a roll of my eyes, “Yeah, sure.”

  “No, really. It reminds me a lot of how I feel about Jace.”

  An eyebrow shot up all by itself at that, “Really?”

  “Yeah, really! It’s sweet, too! How you feel, I mean.”

  I wasn’t sure that I wanted to know the answer, but I asked either way, “How did you know that you loved Jace?”

  Elliot’s eyes fell down to his p with a quiet little giggle, “Have you ever thought about what you’re going to be doing in ten, twenty, thirty years from now?”

  “I try not to.”

  “Do you ever think about who you’re going to be doing anything with?”

  Goddamn it, “I mean…”

  “I do.”

  Envy painted my very skeleton green from tips of my toes to the peak of my crown as I heard the confidence with which Cousin Elliot spoke those two little words. I had yet to even meet this Jace of his, and yet somehow I had no doubt that they would indeed be together, doing those mundane things that couples do in their forties and fifties. I couldn’t help but feel the envy seep into my bones, dying them that putrid green that I so loathed.

  As much as I wanted that for me and Michael, I knew that it could never be. Father would never allow it—Michael would never deserve whatever life I could give him.

  I gnashed my teeth at the thought.

  I was supposed to go into business, join the old man at work and continue on the grand legacy of the Woods family or whatever self-important bullshit I had been lectured on a million times as I grew up. I wasn’t supposed to be a teacher—that was faggot’s work, and I was no faggot, for Arthur Woods had no faggot sons.

  Why was I doing this? Why was I allowing this to go on and on and on and fucking on?! I couldn’t hide it—I couldn’t subject some poor woman to a miserable, loveless marriage to me, anymore than I could subject Michael to a childless marriage with me. If I felt that much about Michael, then I had to at least think that much about any future wife!

  Elliot’s voice was lost to me: “Harri?”

  Marching over to the first of the roaming wait staff that I could find, I snatched the strongest-looking gss of alcohol off of his tray from behind and immediately downed it. Familiar footsteps entered my field of hearing just as I haphazardly pced the thin gss back on the tray.

  “Hon?” The voice—as with the steps—belonged to Michael, still made up in that cheap suit from prom. The prom he went to with some other faggot, no less.

  “Oh, hey there Mikey!” I grinned wryly, whatever buzz I was feeling kicking up a notch after my st drink, “Fancy seeing you here!”

  “Ca—babe, I think we should probably get you out of here, yeah?” Michael reached for my right arm, but I tugged it away from him.

  “I’m fine, babe!” I struggled not to slur my words, but it didn’t really matter at that point. The fizz of the alcohol in my belly wasn’t the only thing bubbling up inside of me, “I’m ready, Mikey. Let’s do this!”

  “H-Hare, I seriously think this might be a bad—”

  Fuck it, “HEY, EVERYONE!”

  My shout drew quite a number of eyes, and dropped Michael’s jaw.

  “I’M FUCKIN’ GAY! That’s right! I’m GAY!!” I burst into a fit of giggles, face-pnting into Michael’s chest again. “ARTHUR WOODS’ SON IS GAY!!!”

  Michael reached out for my arm again, “For the love of god, h—”

  “—Harrison!” A booming voice cut through the crowd and caught my ear, “Haven’t you made enough commotion at family gatherings for one lifetime?”

  My father, ripped from talking to his fuckin’ business associates, stepped out of the growing crowd of party-goers, cigar in hand, just chomping at the bit to return to his mouth. He was simultaneously six feet and six inches tall and thirteen feet tall, standing above all in the house both literally and figuratively.

  A tall, blonde man followed my old man to the front of the crowd. I could just barely recognize him as Xander York, the CEO and president of the company my father worked for. Every time I had seen him, he had given me the creeps with that wide jaw and even wider smile of his, and this time was no different.

  “Fuck!” I ughed, hanging off of Michael’s left shoulder, “Hey Dad, didja hear? I’m GAY!”

  I think his usual scowl was somehow scowl-ier, “Harrison, return to your room at once. We’ll discuss this in the morning.”

  “Fuuuuuuuuuuuck you, DAD!”

  “Your boy has you there, Art!” The tall, ripped, blonde boss man guy guffawed before taking a sip of his Scotch.

  My father’s face grew only more red at his boss’ jovial cracks.

  “Babe, please,” Michael whined, trying to usher me away from my dad or whatever.

  A devious idea popped into my head, so I straightened up just enough to lock lips with my boyfriend, right in front of my father and all his associates, “See?” I shouted, after Michael pulled his lips off of mine, “GAY! Gay, gay, gay, gay, gay, FAGGOT HOMO GAY!!”

  My heart had never beat faster and my blood beneath my flesh had never felt hotter. My father kept looking at me with his scowl, but I loved it. It served him right to finally have to feel the humiliation that I did—especially in front of all of his precious bullshit fucking goddamned fuckin’ rich fuckers or whatever!

  “You can’t send me to my roomie-room-room anymore, Daaaaaaaaaaaaad! You can’t hit me and call me a faggot ‘cause I got a BOYFRIEND to do that now and when he does it I fucking CUM!!!”

  “Jesus, Harri, just shut the fuck up!” Michael screamed, throwing me over his shoulder as he made his way into the crowd.

  “Fuuuuuuuuuuck you Daddddd, you can’t send me to my room, I’m going to—going to go home and get my boyfriend to fuck me in my ASS! ‘Cause I’m fuckin’ GAY!!!”

  As Michael carried me outside over his shoulder, I screamed and cursed and sobbed. By the time I was back in the passenger seat of his shitty little car, I looked into the rearview mirror to see my face red and covered in whatever mess my eyes and nose and perhaps even mouth could manage to shit out over my face.

  I had finally stood up to my father, that piece of fucking shit. I had no doubt just nuked my free ride for the st six months of school, but it didn’t matter: I was finally out of the closet to everyone. I was finally me.

  Who gave a shit if it cost me my family?

  ***

  December 25, 2017:

  The splitting headache that began my morning woke up sometime around eleven in the morning. Vague memories of sobbing and vomiting the night before expined the utter exhaustion I felt from dehydration. I wasn’t sure if I had pissed my sheets, or if I had simply sweat too much over the night, but Michael’s presence in the arm chair that he had moved into my bedroom and pced next to my bed at least indicated that he had kept a watch on me st night.

  Shuffling out of my sheets, I groaned, “Hey.”

  Michael woke from his—surely uncomfortable—upright sleep in the arm chair, “Hey, how are you?”

  “I feel like I got hit with a truck,” the dryness of my throat made talking a living nightmare.

  Luckily, bottles of water had already been left on my nightstand by a certain someone.

  “Do you remember what happened st night?” Michael asked, trepidation, the name of the game in his voice.

  “I got drunk and made a big scene coming out to my whole family and their business associates?”

  “Pretty much, yeah.”

  “Fuck.”

  “For what it’s worth, while I am concerned about you, the bright side is that we can prepare for what’s next.”

  “God, he’s going to have me evicted,” excess water from my bottle spilled all over my face and dripped down to my shoulders as I poorly aimed for my mouth.

  “My mom won’t mind you moving in, I’m sure.”

  “Fuck, I hate to impose, though?”

  “Babe, I promise you, you’re not.”

  Coming out—cutting ties—was meant to free Michael from me. The big implosion was meant to destroy it all—and I wouldn’t even have to be in full control of my faculties to do it! Moving in with the Summers would only bring us closer, not further apart. Breath shallow, I dug my nails into my palm, until Michael reached over and took my hands.

  “I love you, Candace. I’ll always be there for you.”

  It—Michael’s stupid fucking dedication and my own fucking uselessness—made me feel vile in ways that human nguage failed to do justice, “I know, sweetie.” I kissed Michael on the lips, only to be reminded of the fact that I hadn’t brushed my teeth since doing all that vomiting, “Fuck, I’m sorry!”

  “Pfft, it’s fine.” There was a slowness to Michael’s voice that I couldn’t quite read, and a sorrow in his eyes that only made me all the more worried about what he had on his mind, “Let’s take a shower and then head over to my pce? Mom and Sarah are expecting us.”

  “Oh, shit!” I swung my sore, rickety body out from under the covers, and stumbled up off of the bed, only for Michael to catch me in his chest. Looking up, I let the panic flood out, “It’s Christmas!”

  The mencholic look on Michael’s face softened just as little, as his lips spread into a faint little smile and he pulled me in for a gentle hug and a kiss on my forehead.

  It took quite a while before he was ready to end his loving embrace, but each moment was only an eternity in Hell for me.

  ***

  December 25, 2017:

  The warmth of the shower washed away the sweat and the grime and whatever godforsaken shit had soaked into my skin over the course of the past twelve-plus hours. Feeling Michael’s hard, thick body against my soft, lithe form as he scrubbed my body was a greater gift than any trip to the spa. Michael’s tender touch was one that I could never forget and had always looked forward to any time we showered together, which was, admittedly, often.

  My long, blonde mane clung to my back as it soaked in the steamy shower. After the pin bun that I had tied it into for the party st night it was great to have the opportunity to let it down and just be me again.

  Looking up into Michael’s eyes, I submitted a soft smile before standing on my tippy-toes and kissing him. Breaking the kiss after a few moments, I exited the shower to begin getting ready while Michael remained.

  An hour ter, I was fully decked out in a form-fitting red sweater dress that showed off the curves I had been developing through both HRT and regur gym work. Combined with the dress and the heavier—than usual—makeup and hair, it was thankfully impossible to see Harrison Woods. I wasn’t a fool—I knew what I looked like to the entire world, makeup or not.

  Sighing, I mentally prepared myself for a round of questions from Michael’s younger sister.

  “Holy shit,” turning around, I spotted Michael—freshly dressed in a goofy Christmas sweat I had bought him the other week—standing sck jawed.

  I really should just admit it to myself, “Grab my jacket, hon?” I had read the internet pages. I had read the forums. I had read the social media posts. I knew what I was going through, and yet to say the very words felt like they would make the case closed and sealed.

  Blinking once or twice, Michael haphazardly rushed out of my bedroom and grabbed the puffy pink jacket I kept at the coat rack near the door and handed it to me.

  “Thanks, sweetie,” I whispered, feeling too small to even speak clearly.

  “No problem, Candace…” Michael’s voice was just as weak as mine, but his gaze remained powerful as he watched me slip the jacket on, followed by my trusty pink purse with the little froggies on it.

  Reaching out with my hand for his, I wondered how many more times I would feel his touch before I finally set him free.

  ***

  December 25, 2017:

  Standing on the porch of the Summers home, I turned back to the rickety car that Michael called his chariot—as if I were his own personal Cinderel—then back to him: “You’re sure they’ll be safe in there?”

  As if pre-gaming his own chipper mood, Michael replied with a heightened energy, “Worry not, Your Majesty, your bags are perfectly safe in my car.”

  I repaid Michael’s silliness with my best smile and girlish mannerisms—flicking back my hair on my most practiced show of faux modesty—before stopping Michael from inserting his key into the house’s front door, “Michael?”

  “Yeah?”

  “Let’s tell Sarah and your mom that I’m transgender.”

  Michael merely stared me in the eyes for a moment, his facial expression completely unreadable. Finally, Michael spoke softly and carefully, “Candace, are you actually transgender?”

  Fighting back the tears was difficult, but I didn’t know how to turn the overwhelming feelings soaking into every pore of my body from the inside out, “I—” like steel wool in my throat “—Michael, I don’t know what to say? I just…I can’t be a boy today. Not after st night!”

  Michael wrapped me around in his strong arms, which was all the excuse I needed to wrap my own arms around him and hide my face in his chest.

  “Candace?”

  “Yeth?”

  Michael pulled me from his broad chest and tilted my head upward by my chin with his freshly moisturized right hand, “Candace, I don’t think I can call you that other name anymore. I’m not stupid, dear.”

  One look into Michael’s eyes was enough to remind me of the exhaustion of the previous night. It was an exhaustion that seemed into one’s very knees and left one’s very feet like lead. With a deep sigh, I replied in the most immediately gratifying way possible: “Okay.”

  Michael’s expression softened at that, and an air of chill—other than the December chill—hung between us. Finally, Michael unlocked the front door and led me inside his family’s home, as he had done many times before.

  Once inside the toasty home, it wasn’t long before the familiar footsteps of Sarah rushing from upstairs on down filled my ears, “You’re here!! Holy shit, Candi?”

  “In the flesh,” I half-whispered, accepting Sarah’s usual greeting of a hug. I had grown so much more comfortable with the way that girls dispyed casual physical intimacy since the first time I had met Sarah that the discomfort and shame I had felt four years ago were a distant memory, “Missed you, girl!”

  “GIRL!” Sarah shot back, breaking the hug to look me in the eyes, “You look fab!”

  “Thank you, Sarah. I love what you’ve done with your hair!”

  Theatrically framing her head with her hands as if showing off a headshot, Sarah adjusted her hands to highlight the eborate spiral curls she had styled her hair in, “Thanks! I thought that I would try something different, since I knew that you were going to be here.”

  “Oh jeez, Sarah, you don’t have to ftter me!”

  “Candace, girl, you’re literally the most fashionable person I know—boy or girl or whatever!”

  It wasn’t like it was true or anything—not really—but still, this was as good a segway as there ever would be to just saying it, “Ah, well, about that…”

  Sarah’s head tilted in confusion for a moment, before a spark finally birthed in her eyes, “Oh my God, did you finally decide…?!”

  With a slight nod and only so many wordless vocal inflections that one could make, I gave Sarah the answer that I knew she had been waiting for since at least the day we met.

  “Holy shit?! OMIGAWD!!” Wrapping her arms around my neck, Sarah pulled me in for what was easily the tightest hug she had ever given me. The feeling of our chests touching left me with the oddest sense of dissonance and panic, but I hastily divorced myself from those feelings, damned if I was going to allow myself the opportunity to get lost in the minutia of my own existential crisis on Christmas day. “Mama!!” Sarah shouted towards the kitchen, “Michael finally has a girlfriend!”

  I could practically hear Michael’s eyeballs rolling back, “Jesus, Sarah!”

  Wrapping around the corner out of the kitchen, Michael’s beautiful mother leaned against the wall like she was the coolest person in the house, and gave me the same confident look she always gave me: “Yeah, that tracks,” she intoned, sticking an unlit cigarette in her mouth, “Congratutions, Candi girl.”

  Not blushing was out of the question as I caught the full extent of Desiree Summers’ form, cd in her polished bck boots, bck jeans, and a tucked-in bck button up that dispyed a generous amount of cleavage. The older woman’s mess of dark curls remained as vibrant as ever, and while her lips were clearly chapped from the cold air they remained as beautiful as her pale skin—paled by endless hours inside at her miserable retail management job—that was carefully and lovingly touched by her four decades. Peeling herself off the wall, Desiree stepped forward and initiated a hug that I almost forgot to meet halfway, stunlocked by her breathtaking aura of coolness and beauty. I felt like a terrible excuse for an English major in the face of her wry smirk—it so perfectly betrayed her usual reserved smugness and indulged in a sincere happiness for me that I struggled to process the phantasmagorical reality of the scene I was now cast in.

  I had—basically—just told my boyfriend’s sister and mother that I was his transgender girlfriend, and they seemed completely unsurprised—utterly accepting, as if they had already known this since the day that we met. It was unsettling, in that I didn’t truly think that I deserved such good grace and such warm reception. How could I deserve to be loved for who I was by these three when I had never known the outright love and acceptance of a mother, a father, or a sister? I was tricking them, after all! I was doing something wrong by doing this, was I not?

  As I finished my hug with Desiree, Sarah piped back up, “I guess that it’s a good thing that you’ve been taking those hormones for a few years, huh?”

  “Oh, uh, yeah,” it was hard not to just rely on smiles and replies that basically followed whatever script it felt like Sarah and her mother were following. In a way, I felt completely detached from the scene at hand, “I just hit four years five days ago, I think?”

  And yet, at the back of my mind, I was secretly celebrating. Sarah and Desiree had long since ceased treating me even as a feminine gay boy, and with as much shopping as Sarah and I did together, it wasn’t like I couldn’t have told her that I was taking hormone repcement therapy, either. The mere realization that we went out and shopped and hung out like sisters was like a knife to the heart: twisted and unforgiving.

  It was like the universe was dragging me into position, just to set me up for the ultimate, cruelest humiliation.

  “I’m just gd to have it all out there, y’know?”

  Michael’s grip around my waist tightened, bringing me closer to him as his mother and sister celebrated whatever it was they were celebrating about my ‘coming out’.

  With Michael’s assistance, I doffed my jacket and graciously allowed Sarah to gush over my dress—even if my face became as red as the dress with embarrassment.

  “Gaawwwd, girl, those hips are amazing!”

  Sarah’s gushing was damned determined to pull a giggle out of me, even if it had to shove its hand down my throat. “Oh Gosh, Sarah, you’re making me blush!”

  Making herself at home on the couch on my left, Sarah had zero qualms about flirting with me in front of her brother, “So, like, I guess this makes you straight, right? Or does a little lesbian action sound more fun than straight boy action?”

  Don’t be too serious about it, don’t let them know just how nauseous it all made you feel, “Miiiiiiiikeyyyy, tell your sister to stahp!”

  “Stop being a weirdo, Sarah!”

  “Sarah, just go and get another girlfriend already, would you?” Desiree piped up, the exasperation dripping in her voice. “Christ, this is what I get for watching so much yuri when I was pregnant with you.”

  Shooting to her knees, Sarah affected a dramatic stage voice, “I swear to you, my beloved, I can fix you!” The look in her eyes spoke of how she had finally told her mother of her break-up with Nel. I was gd that she had gotten it all out of her system.

  “Fucking hell, go and help Ma in the kitchen, Sarah!”

  “Yeah, yeah, I know,” Sarah retorted with a huff, her dramatic body nguage returning to its casual gait as she walked around the coffee table in front of the couch and headed to the kitchen.

  “Michael, go help your sister,” Desiree droned, lips careful not to drop the unlit cigarette still between them, “I’d like a moment with your girlfriend.”

  Wait, what?”

  “Oh, uh…sure?” The tone of Michael’s voice matched my inner confusion, but with a quick gnce at me, he stood from the couch and managed to peel himself away, “D-don’t ask anything weird, yeah?”

  “You should be asking me not to spill my guts on all the embarrassing things you did as a kid, bucko!” Desiree countered smartly, crossing paths with her son as she approached the couch and he approached the kitchen.

  With Michael and Sarah now having left the room, the woman once known as Desiree sat next to me on the couch for the first time in all four of the years that I had known her, and retrieved a silver Zippo lighter, flirting with it as she turned the fme on-and-off, “You doing okay, Candi?” I couldn’t tell what was engraved on the lighter behind Desiree’s palm.

  “Huh? Oh! Yeah, I’m fine,” in actuality, I wasn’t sure if I should be sweating nearly as much as I was beneath my dress, but trying to think of an answer to that question seemed a bit silly given the proximity my boyfriend’s mother now had to me.

  “That’s good, that’s good,” Desiree replied, her voice a ft tone that I couldn’t quite pce, “I’m sorry about how much, well, ‘Sarah’ Sarah is.”

  “Oh, no problem at all,” I replied, eye on the lighter just in case my boyfriend’s mother was looking to torch a tranny.

  “We haven’t really spoken much now, have we? I mean, not like this, girl-to-girl, y’know?” The immediate acceptance of me as a trans woman was more than a little startling, but I wasn’t sure that I should push my luck and tried to be modest about it. For all her casualness, I still wasn’t sure if Desiree actually liked me. Sure, she had taken interest in what I had to say before, but there was always something about the woman that had left me a little on guard.

  “You know, I did the gender thing a bit back in high school and college,” Desiree casually lit the fme on her silver-encased lighter, “I knew a ton of trans men and gender queers—real underground, semi-closeted shit—back then, actually. Well, still do, but you know how hard it is to get together with friends once you’re a working adult.”

  I knew of it, and I knew that I wasn’t looking forward to having to face the reality of bancing a social life with a career.

  “Eventually, you meet a guy, kinda wanna try the whole white picket fence shit, then before you know it you’re supporting two kids and a mortgage all on your own,” Desiree flipped the lighter lid down, killing the fire beneath it, “You don’t regret it, of course, but you wonder if maybe there wasn’t—isn’t—more to life, you know? Adventures that you’re missing out on, that sort of thing.”

  Hearing my boyfriend’s mother wax poetic about roads not taken provided a Lynchian quality that I was far too immature to comprehend. Swallowing as hard as I could, “Mrs. Summers, I’m not sure if I understand—”

  “—We both know that you and Michael are in love, girly,” Desiree’s wry grin was a wicked one, “And I’m not saying that that’s a bad thing—the opposite, really. I want you two to go on all those adventures together. For as long as you can, y’know?”

  The unspoken difference between my situation with Michael and I hung over my neck like a Sword of Damacles. Clearing my throat, I took a risk and indulged in some bluntness, “You know that I can’t give Michael children, Desiree. Why are you saying all this to me?”

  Much to my surprise, Desiree’s face morphed into a curious portrait of what seemed to be embarrassment, “I’m well aware of that, Candace. I don't think that's going to be a problem, either. What I’m trying to tell you, is that Michael asked for the ring his father gave me.”

  My blood turned to ice faster than I had ever experienced before. Suddenly, I could feel the endless abyss in my stomach stronger than I had ever felt it before, “He…what?”

  “He asked for the ring that his old man gave me, Candace.”

  “What did you say?” My voice cracked as my eyes remained completely frozen in an open position.

  “I told him…‘that ring’s mine, go buy your own,’ duh!” The older woman flipped open her lighter once again and finally lit the cigarette in between her lips. Sitting the lighter down on the coffee table, I could finally read the engraved text:

  “Here’s to One More Adventure,

  Love Des”

  Returning to Desiree, I felt my throat go as dry as the coldest dry ice, “Huh?”

  “He bought an engagement ring, Candace,” a drag broke her sentence just as her words broke my heart, “I think he’s been pnning to propose to you today.”

  Any resistance to ruining my makeup colpsed like a house of cards in an earthquake. Desiree’s sudden embrace wasn’t enough to stop me from weeping, so I kept at it despite the harm to my immacute work. Soon enough, fear that Michael or Sarah would overhear me over the noise they were making in the kitchen overtook me just enough to silence myself.

  “Jeez girly, try to save some for when he actually pops the question,” Desiree cracked, rubbing my shoulders as I sniffled nearly face-to-face with her.

  “Y-yeah,” I whispered weakly, “Sorry, can you excuse me? I need to fix my makeup in the bathroom.”

  “Of course, Candace,” the suave dyke replied in the quietest of voices, just short of qualifying as a whisper.

  Picking myself off of the couch, I grabbed my purse off of the coat rack and immediately walked as quickly as I could to the first floor restroom, the path to which I had grown so intimately familiar with over the years.

  Once inside the vatory, I locked the door and wept in strained silence for five more minutes, mourning the wedding I would never have.

  ***

  December 25, 2017:

  I had learned from a little bit of internet research that the easiest way to make sure that nobody would notice if you were not eating was to actively py with your food and shuffle it around the pte every so often to appear as if you were still actively engaged with the food before you. It had been a trick that I found that I could only employ every so often, so as to not eventually ruin the effect and have people noticing that I wasn’t eating.

  Today was not going to be an eating day, I feared.

  Desiree’s revetion occupied my mind while I pretended to pay attention to Sarah’s robust recounting of what she had been doing at college since st I had seen her. I might have overheard something about how well her basketball team was doing, but the more I processed my pn, the more I tuned her out. Between thinking of just what the fuck I was going to say to Michael when he popped the question, I also had to focus on making sure it looked like I was eating.

  Staring at Sarah, I was just barely able to process just how little she seemed to realize that I wasn’t hearing a single fucking thing she was saying. Finally, a familiar warm palm touched the back of my right hand, knife still in hand.

  “Candace, are you okay?”

  “Huh?”

  “Candace, how are you feeling?”

  The more Michael spoke, the less I felt like I could understand his words, “I’m sorry?”

  “Candace,” then the voice got smaller, “Your pte.”

  I looked down at my pte. I had cut the fowl on my pte into a ridiculous number of pieces, each soaked in whatever the hell else was on the fanciful circle.

  “Oh, silly me,” I lied, turning to Michael with a truly terrible smile, “I can’t do this anymore, Michael.”

  “Candace?”

  Before I knew it, I was up, at the front door, putting on my jacket and purse, and then leaving the house. Before I knew it I was halfway down the block before I felt Michael’s weak grasp on my shoulder, pulling me around to face him.

  His face was flushed from running, “Candace, are you okay? Talk to me?!”

  “I can’t do this right now, Michael,” my voice sounded as dead as I felt on the inside, “We’re done. I’m breaking up with you. Goodbye.”

  I had done it. I had free him. I had freed myself from the constant reminders—the lifelong reminder of what I was.

  I turned around and continued my silent march away, even though I knew that I had no idea where I was going. I just needed to put some distance between Michael and me.

  Michael appeared in front of me, wrapping around from my left, panicked with tears streaking down his reddened face, “Candace, please, we can work this out—I love you!” The fool got down on one knee, even. As he presented the brilliant little diamond ring in the cute little box to me, I felt like a stranger in my own body, watching someone else’s pitch perfect life py out. “Candace, you’re the girl of my dreams, please m—”

  The worst anger I had ever felt before in my life boiled to the surface. I knew that the anger was mispced, but I couldn’t bring myself to not take it out on Michael, “What the fuck would you know about fucking a woman? You’ve never fucked one before, you fucking faggot!”

  It felt good. It felt good to hate him. To feel the absence of that sorrow was the closest thing I knew that I would ever feel to ‘good’. So, I hated him: I hated his fucking guts, and I would make sure that he would never try to change my mind.

  Michael was too stunned to do much more than flinch in pce, down on his knee, ring still out. Even his breath seemed to stop. Good—I hoped that he would die from the ck of oxygen, there on the spot.

  I needed a reason—any reason to make him hate me: “I know that you’ve been telling Ashley about what we do during sex, Michael.”

  “Candace, it’s not—”

  “Yeah, telling that bitch about how I tell you to call me a girl and treat me like a girl during sex? Real fucking mature of you, faggot!” The anger became more real the longer I faked it, “What, too fucking pussy to fuck a boy, so you need to make me be your perfect little princess doll girlfriend? Well guess what asshole, fuckin’ a tranny still makes you a faggot!” The chill air wrapped its hand around my throat, squeezing it tightly to the point of blissful masochism as I continued to scream out Michael, “Fuck you, you goddamned piece of shit!”

  Michael said nothing, for which I was grateful.

  Thirty seconds ter, I walked around Michael and kept walking for three hours before I finally stopped to order a rideshare back to my apartment.

  ***

  December 27, 2017:

  The rays of sun hit my face in the form of a gre bouncing off of—something—through my damaged blinds in my apartment’s living room. With a groan, I rolled over on the floor to get my eyes out of the morning sun and struggled to open my eyes. Looking up at the high ceiling of my apartment, I groaned yet again before picking my stiff and sore body off of the ground. Bottles of wine and tequi were still spread all over my living room, exactly where I had left them over the bender I had been on for the past thirty-six hours.

  Rubbing my eyes as I crawled onto my couch, I looked for my phone—assuming it still had any juice left in the battery—and eventually found it on the kitchen floor with a freshly cracked screen and—surprise, surprise—no juice left.

  “Motherfucker,” my voice was hoarse from the countless hours of drinking and, worse yet, I felt like complete dogshit, but that wasn’t really the point. I wasn’t sure when, but I had put on one of my favorite dresses—a pink cocktail dress that I used to wear out to the club with Michael and our friends.

  ‘Our friends’? Pfft. Not anymore.

  Plugging my phone in to charge, I shuffled over to my kitchen to retrieve a bottle of water from the fridge. Reaching out with my right hand, I finally noticed the violent cuts and swelling on my hand. At some point, my now discolored hand had been used to punch something. Hard. I could only hope that there wasn’t a hole in an apartment wall or door that I would have to find the money to pay for now. God knows I wasn’t going to be getting any more money from my parents after the party.

  Opening the fridge—with the hand that I could barely grasp the handle with—I reached in with my left and pulled out the bottle of water that I so sought and was greeted with yet another lovely fact: hands, plural.

  Fuck. Fuck. Fuck!

  The bottle was not long for this world, of course, and I was much too exhausted to not just toss the empty pstic into the sink, where its fall would be cushioned by a dozen or so broken ceramic ptes.

  Divorced from my empty bottle, I shuffled my way over to the bathroom, so as to shower and make myself presentable enough for an urgent care visit. After all, I couldn’t just let them think that trans women looked like hell, even if I wasn’t really a—

  —oh, for fuck’s sake. It doesn’t matter. It doesn’t fucking matter. It never fucking will!

  Stopping in my tracks, I pressed my face into my palms and screamed, both at my own frustration and at the pressure I was now applying to my swollen, potentially broken, hands. Once finished, I continued my stiff, wobbly walk toward the bathroom, before being interrupted by a knock at my door. Staring at the door from afar, I prayed to god that it wasn’t my ndlord—or worse, my parents.

  With the mousiest of steps, I quietly approached my apartment’s single entrance and peeped through the hole. Suffice it to say, I had not expected to see who I saw on the other side of the door.

  Taking the roughest gulp of my life, I unlocked my door—keeping the chain in use—and opened the door just as much as I could, “Clive?”

  Standing before on the other side of the door was my older cousin, Clive—the surgeon. Looking up upon noticing that the door was opened, Clive looked at me with an uncharacteristic amount of concern, “Hey, Harrison. Mind if I come in?”

  Christ, the st thing I needed was for my smarmy cousin to—well, actually, he had been at the party. Hell, he had seen and heard me shouting from the roof tops that I was gay, what the fuck did it matter at this point if he saw me with tits and in a dress? I couldn’t hide anymore. I was done. Drained. Broken.

  And Clive was a fucking doctor, surely he would at least not assault me, right?

  With great hesitation, I shut the door and undid the chain before reopening it, “I guess?”

  Clive’s reaction was, at the very least, not to break my nose, upon sight of my minute—but quite undeniable—cleavage, “Jesus Fucking Christ Harrison, you’re a transsexual?”

  “I prefer transgender, but yeah,” I retorted dryly, backstepping to allow my cousin inside, “I’d rather my neighbors not see me looking like this, so do be a dear and hurry on inside.”

  Clive entered post-haste and headed immediately for my kitchen, almost looking like he knew what the hell my apartment’s floor pn was. Clive retrieved a water bottle from my fridge and made shorter work of it than I had mine before finally taking in the tornado zone that had become of my apartment during my bender and then finally let his eyes settle on me as I sat down on the arm of my couch that was closest to the kitchen. It was like his eyes were scanning my body like he was an android sent from the future to kill me before I could get a sex change.

  “You know, you made a real fuckin’—Jesus Christ, Harrison, put something else on!”

  “Stop staring at my legs and it won’t be an issue, Cousin Clive,” I sassed back, hangover too formidable to put up with any misogyny from a cishet white guy, let alone my own fucking cousin.

  That made Clive drop the topic real fast, as he picked up his eyes and looked at me in mine, “Okay, but—Harrison, Uncle Arthur is pissed.”

  “That was kind of the point, dearest cousin,” fuck, I should have had another bottle of water after that first, “So, tell it to me straight: are you here to evict me? They’re paying for this pce, after all. I don’t have a job of my own, either. I’m fucked, right?”

  Clive looked like he wanted a drink, but I was pretty sure every bottle of liquor left in the apartment was not emptied out into my raging bdder, “You’re moving in with me.”

  “What the fuck?”

  “Of fucking course they’re evicting you, Harrison—you embarrassed the Woods family in front of its business associates and family friends, what the fuck did you think was going to happen?”

  “Of fucking course,” I mocked back in a grating, pitched up voice, “I expected to be disowned, what I’m confused about is why the fuck am I moving in with you?”

  “That’s not important, just pack your bags and—Jesus Christ, what in the unholy fuck happened to your hands?” A dark expression overtook Clive’s face that I would have never expected such a self-centered pretty boy to make, “Did your boyfriend do this to you?”

  “No!” I shouted back, almost shrieking. “I chipped a nail,” I corrected curtly and with restraint, adding in just enough sarcasm to hopefully dispel the air between us.

  Clive pulled back his lip into his mouth and quickly closed the distance between us before taking my hands in his, starting with my right, “Does this hurt?” He pulled on my fingers, trying to get them to ftten out.

  “Ouch! Yeah, of fucking course that hurts!”

  “Christ, okay—fuck,” Clive turned around and poured his reddening face into his palms. Turning back to me, “Get dressed, pack your bags, and we’ll hit up the hospital so I can take a better look at those.”

  I didn’t much feel like letting Clive push me around, but he was—much to my chagrin—clearly in doctor mode, “I’m not going outside without a shower, Doc.”

  The celebrity doctor looked like his head was going to transform into a turnip, “Make it quick, Harrison. Please.”

  “Doctor’s orders,” the joke came out like I was auditioning for a musical. Standing from the couch arm and finally making my way to my—soon-to-be-former—bathroom for the final time, I spent extra effort on making sure that my body moved as femininely as possible, just so that he wouldn’t think I was faking being trans.

  Whether or not I actually was faking being trans, I sure as shit no longer knew.

  ***

  December 27, 2017:

  The x-ray machine at the hospital that Clive regurly worked out of was quite swanky. Watching my hands being scanned had been a hell of an experience, although I dreaded whether or not my state insurance pn would cover the expenses.

  Clive joined me in his office after keeping me waiting. Entering the room with a manil envelope, Clive opened the envelope and took out my x-rays and put them up on the backlit box.

  Staring at my own skeleton was kinda freaky.

  “You’re goddamned lucky Harrison, these should heal up fine,” Clive sounded exasperated in ways that I had never heard him before. It was almost endearing, “Fuck me, don’t do this again.”

  “Sure thing, Doc,” I replied, waving my casted hands around.

  The wrapping on each cast was a cute, bright pink that I was quite happy to have not even needed to ask for.

  Clive crashed atop his backless rolling chair thingy and rubbed his eyes, “God, Beth wasn’t lying about you being a pain.”

  Rolling my eyes, “It sounds to me like she’s projecting, personally.”

  Rubbing his eyes, Clive opened a drawer at his desk and pulled out a bottle of pills, “Take one, it's Vicodin.”

  “Yummy,” ‘deadpan’ seemed to be the mood to go with, “Am I getting a script?”

  Typing away at his computer, “Yeah, I’m putting it at the pharmacy near my pce.”

  That curious plot point was still befuddling me, “What’s with the altruism? You and I have never been all that close, and I’m even more surprised you’re inviting me to live with you after learning that I’m—”

  “—Elliot begged me to,” Clive wouldn’t even look at me as he cut me off, still staring at his computer monitor.

  But wait, “I didn’t think you two were…?”

  “Well, I figured that it was time I started acting like a doctor, right?” Clive finally turned to me, his facial expression a shade of dour I hadn’t seen on him before, “I can’t say that I fully understand it—” the successful surgeon gestured with his right hand up and down the length of my body “—of course, but it’s your decision and we are family.”

  I had once chastised Clive for how little he took the responsibility of his chosen career seriously, and I wondered if my words had managed to stick with him, if even a little. The Clive that I knew took his craft seriously, but still viewed it as just that: his craft, not something that he was doing important stuff with.

  Downing the Vicotin with a provided bottle of water, I realized how having to hold a bottle of water between two hands in casts was going to get old very quickly, “Christ, how am I supposed to drive?”

  “Maybe consider bed rest until you can use your hands again?” Clive’s sarcasm was hardly welcomed, but I elected to not bite the hand that fed me painkillers.

  “I guess I won’t be going on any hot dates for a couple of weeks, anyway,” with a bit of a struggle, I adjusted my bra strap beneath my floral patterned romper and then let my arms hang at my side.

  “Your boyfriend didn’t do this, right?” Clive asked yet again, a hint of caution in his voice.

  “I broke up with him two days ago, it wasn’t him,” I said matter-of-factly.

  “He wasn’t the problem in the retionship or he didn’t nearly break your hands?”

  “The tter,” I huffed, irritated by having to expin my love life to a man who I was pretty sure kept avoiding eye contact with me because he now saw me as a shemale. “Michael’s a petting zoo goat, trust me.”

  “Well, that’s…better than expected,” Clive intoned very slowly, “I got a pretty good look at him at the party, the guy was jacked.”

  “Yeah, he is a lineman,” my voice was small, just above a whisper, “It’s whatever. We don’t need to talk about him anymore.”

  “How long?”

  “Four years this month, actually.”

  “I’m sorry, that must have been…devastating. Christ, I don’t know if I’ve ever even hit twelve months with a girl before.”

  “It was whatever,” don’t cry.

  “Harrison, he was your boyfriend for four years, that’s not ‘nothing’.”

  “What do you know, straight boy?” Bile nearly burst from poison-tipped tongue, but I kept my voice to a low rasp, “Come on, say something homophobic, Clive! Call me a slur! I know you want to!”

  Clive finally turned from his monitor and looked me in the eyes, his eyes almost sad, “You need to see a therapist, Harrison.”

  I stood up, ready to run out of the office, “Yeah, the tranny needs to see a shrink! Real fuckin’ good bedside manner there, Doc!”

  “That’s not what I mean, Harrison,” Clive stood to match me, his height not eclipsing mine only because of the heels I was wearing, “You’ve been through a lot, you need to talk to a professional about it. I can get a colleague to also prescribe you something for depression until you get a—”

  I hated how soft his voice was, “Fuck off, Clive,” I picked my purse off of one of the spare chairs and made for the door.

  It wasn’t hard for the bastard to cut me off, “Harrison—”

  “—Candace!”

  “What?”

  “You’re going to get me killed if you keep calling me that name, dumbass! Christ, you’re a fucking doctor, how do you not know this?”

  “Sorry, sorry,” Clive refused to budge from blocking the door, “Listen, Harri—Candace, I’m not going to be an asshole to you, okay? I’m just worried about my little cousin, okay?”

  “We’ve never—”

  “—Three years ago!”

  “What?”

  “Three years ago, I…had a patient. A teenage girl. She lost her breasts in an accident. She was devastated, Candace. It has never occurred to me that I could help someone in that way, until you said what you said to me that one Christmas—Christ, that was four years ago already!”

  I held my tongue, taking in the surrealness of Clive’s little confessional, “Listen, I’m just—I want you to know, you helped me, y’know? You changed how I saw myself and what I did. I wasn’t just giving some hot middle-aged women boob jobs or new noses, nor was I helping some millionaire athlete with a sports injury. I was helping a young girl feel comfortable in her body, and I couldn’t see her as anything else.”

  The pit of tar in my stomach churned more and more at Clive’s confessional. That the arrogant bastard was experiencing such a human emotion infuriated me in ways that I could hardly piece together as I stood before him. Humanizing himself in front of me only made me wish that I could hate him all the more.

  An unpleasant air hung in the cramped office for what felt like eons. Finally, Clive pced his right hand on my left shoulder, “Come on, let’s grab a bite to eat before we get back to my—back to our pce.”

  I hadn’t eaten in three days, and was beginning to feel it, “Fine. Fuck.”

  ***

  December 27, 2017:

  I abhorred the idea of being at the mercy of Clive’s goodwill, but this was off-set by the nature of his dispy of restraint by taking me to a sports bar grill thing, rather than some high-css restaurant where I would be surrounded no doubt by people who had probably seen my outburst on Christmas Eve.

  Settling into our booth—the casualness with which Clive unbuttoned his suit jacket before sitting down struck me as irritating—the server left us our menus and made off with her little company-provided ordering device to fulfill our drink orders. As much as I wanted to knock back a shot of everything in this sports bar grill, I had thought better of it, and restrained myself to a thankfully calorie-less ice water. I was happy to actually pn on eating today, considering how the st thing I needed was for Clive of all people to hassle me about it.

  Nevertheless, I was thankful for the low calorie options present on the menu.

  “I have to say,” Clive began, just barely looking over his menu, “I barely recognize you. Hell, even the other day, at the party.”

  “You skipped st year, that’s right,” I replied, keeping my voice measured with caution. What was Clive getting at?

  “The hormones really do a lot of heavy lifting, don’t they?”

  “I’m pretty lucky,” I sighed, resigning myself to the uncomfortable questions from a straight, male retive. I suppose I was going to have to get used to it, if I ever hooked up with a guy and had to expin the whole ‘having a penis’ thing. “I still need a round or two of FFS, though.”

  “Facial feminization surgery, right?” God, I hated the gleam in his eye, “Damn, I bet I could do something killer with that!”

  Clive’s shift from curiosity into surgeon mode was more than a little grating, but I bit my tongue somewhat, “Unless you’re willing to do it for free, I’d say don’t even bother telling me. I don’t need to think about this fucking thing,” I waved my right hand around my face in a circur motion, with little precision, which inevitably made my hand look like a limp wrist gone wild.

  “You’re beautiful, Candace. There’s a lot of potential there, too,” he wasn’t going to drop it, I could tell. “Sorry, I guess that sounds weird coming from your cousin. I just can’t not see people’s faces like that sometimes.”

  “It has more to do with you being, y’know, a man,” I went for a more politically diplomatic response as I sat my menu down, lunch already decided on. “Thanks, though, I guess?”

  “Aah, yeah, no, no, I get it,” Clive sat his menu down on the table atop mine and reached for his water, which had appeared while I wasn’t paying attention, “Honestly, though, I don’t know how nobody noticed the other day.”

  “A little bit of creative fashion and some careful makeup and people will see what they want to see, dearest cousin.”

  “I mean, they were probably just ignoring it, but I get what you mean.”

  There was a strange surrealness to having such a casual conversation with the man who had spent our childhood either ignoring me, chastising me for acting like a girl, or just straight up being everything my father had ever wanted in a son. The pydates between the various branches of the Woods family had been little more than an opportunity for the mothers to gossip—or go off on spa trips unencumbered by children—and as a result, I had learned at a young age just how much of a bck sheep I was. My dearest Clive and I had conversed more today than we had ever had before, and I wasn’t sure I liked the somewhat more friendly take on the man compared to the ass I had grown up around.

  Eventually, the server thankfully returned from her other rounds and took our orders.

  “So, any pns for after college?”

  “Well, I’m majoring in being a high school English teacher, if you can believe it.”

  Clive carefully looked down at my hands, wrapped in all of their bright pink casted glory.

  “Yeah, yeah, I know, I know,” my sigh was hardly even exaggerated, “I’m probably never touching a bottle of liquor again.”

  “It suits you, though.”

  “Being an alcoholic?”

  “Being a teacher, Candace,” Clive chuckled, settling into his side of the booth more casually, “Yeah, yeah, no—definitely fits you to be a teacher.”

  What the hell did he know about me to be able to make that kind of judgement?

  “You were always really creative growing up, so I figured you would have either become a writer or something, assuming you could convince Uncle Art not to force you into business.”

  “Well, I kind of just wung it and ignored him.”

  “No shit?”

  “A couple of business courses were good enough to pcate him, so long as he didn’t look too closely,” a sip of my water shook awake my poor eyes, which still felt mildly drowsy from the ck of proper sleep—and the hangover, of course.

  “That takes balls,” I must have changed a shade or two purple at the remark, because Clive quickly followed up with, “Aah, well, probably not the best thing to say of a dy, yeah?”

  “Yeah,” I signed back, “I’d rather we not talk about what’s in my romper, if you catch my drift?”

  “Right, right, sorry,” Clive apologized, before immediately continuing on anyway, “Good luck on the—y’know, the thing. Down there. Surgeries and stuff.”

  Ugh, men.

  Spotting the server approaching our table with what appeared to be our orders, I turned back to Clive, “So! Seeing anyone?” Let’s see how he liked being asked uncomfortable questions.

  “Not at present, no,” two ptes quickly bridged the gap between our two sides of the table, “Which is fine, or whatever. You can only date so many beautiful, famous women before you need some time to yourself, you know?”

  “I haven’t had a girlfriend since high school, and I was pretty bad at it, so no, not really.”

  Clive paled up a bit at that, “Aaah, yeah, I guess you would probably only be into men.”

  “Trans women can be bisexual or lesbian, I just happen to be straight,” I corrected, looking down at the sad I had ordered. I just needed to eat it. I was hungry. It shouldn’t be that hard—just stab it with a fork and bring it to your mouth and then put it in your mouth and then chew it and swallow it. Easy peasy.

  “How long have you known?”

  “That I was straight?”

  “Well, you know, the other thing,” Clive’s haphazard gesturing was beginning to show just how out of his element he was, “But I guess…both?”

  “Four years. I met my ex-boyfriend and stuff started making a lot more sense.”

  “And he was cool with it? The whole—” Clive gestured weakly with his right hand, at a loss for words, “We started dating prior to me transitioning, so yeah, I guess I can probably make it clear that he’s bisexual.”

  “Aaah, right, right, that’s a thing, too” Clive went at his steak with his knife and fork like it was a face he was performing a surgery on. It was a thing of beauty. “God, I don’t know how I’d react if my girlfriend ever wanted to become a man.”

  “Break up with him, I hope?” I offered.

  “Aaah, well…who knows?” Clive seemed terribly non-commital to the idea, “I kind of doubt that the type of woman I like to date would ever want to become a man.”

  I couldn’t hold my tongue any longer, “Not exactly a great way to frame it, Clive. Trans people are the gender they identify with before they realize it or come out, unless they say otherwise.” Ugh, look at me, putting the shit I had picked up over the past four years to good use.

  A hint of red took hold of Clive’s cheeks as he brought a piece of steak to his mouth, “Right, my apologies, Candace.”

  Perhaps the whole, “Lie about being trans to get on HRT thing” had its merits, after all.

  Christ, why couldn’t I just admit the actual truth to myself? Who was I even kidding?! The only people who want to be seen as women and get bottom surgery are women. I’m not pretending to be a trans woman, I am a trans woman! I needed to believe that now, or else there was no way I was going to survive becoming a working woman—pfft.

  Fuck, I just needed to be normal for once and actually be okay with this part of myself, “You could always wind up with a feminine gay trans man as your boyfriend, though?”

  “That…is a thing, isn’t it? Much to ponder.”

  Jesus, this conversation was taking a weird turn, “I suppose if you ever get any transgender patients you’ll know how to handle yourself around them now, yes?”

  The poor schmuck seemed awfully small now, nodding politely as he swallowed his steak, “Yes ma’am, that’s right.”

  “Good boy,” it was hard not to ease into the conversation now. Was it always like this with Michael? Just be comfortable, because I was comfortable, so long as I was seen as a woman? The thought of Michael and Ash being any kind of correct about me only made me more disgusted with myself.

  Fuck them.

  ***

  December 27, 2017:

  Clive’s condo was, simply put, massive. Sparsely decorated with his own personal effects—a living room bookcase of what appeared to be medical books, Mariners memorabilia on the walls and in dispy cases—it occurred to me that this was what a single man’s condominium looked like when he had the cash to throw around.

  With continued assistance from Clive, I brought my suitcases into his guest room and took in the sight of what would be my living space for the next however many weeks while my hands recovered. The room was standard issue and had clearly been left pin, so as to not offend any guest who would have to sleep in it.

  I was, of course, going to gay it up as much as possible.

  Well, no—not ‘gay’. I wasn’t really gay, was I? I was—fuck—I was a woman. I was a—a woman. I was straight. Christ, all this trouble and I was straight back where I started, only this time as a woman. Good grief, was I going to have to toss out all my rainbow fg stuff so that people didn’t think that I was a lesbian?

  Well, fine then! I was going to girl this shit up!

  ***

  December 27, 2017:

  Unpacking had not taken long, which left me with plenty of time to just y on my back on a surprisingly comfortable bed and finally check the twenty million notifications I had gotten when I finally turned my phone on earlier at the hospital.

  Most of the notifications were from Michael, trying his best to text and call me, only to fall on deaf ears. I marked the messages as read and then promptly blocked Michael’s number. He was going to have to learn to move on and find himself a different woman, if that was what he wanted. I couldn’t be there for him anymore—especially not in the way that he wanted.

  Breaking up with him was the best thing that could have happened—for the both of us.

  Messages and missed calls from Megumi also filled my inbox. With my hands being what they were, I turned on talk-to-text and sent Megumi a reply:

  “I’m doing fine. I’ve moved in with Clive—yes, that Clive. Going to get some rest now, talk to you ter, sis.”

  Plugging my phone back in on the nightstand next to the bed, I switched it to silent and stood up from the bed to get changed into plush pajama shorts and a tee shirt before heading to sleep for the night.

  Tomorrow was going to be the start of the rest of my life.

  A life that I was going to live as a woman, intentionally and not as some sort of lie.

  After waking up tomorrow morning or afternoon or whenever, I was going to be Candace—and only Candace—for the rest of my life.

  It was the only thing I had left.

  TO BE CONTINUED…