Chapter 2

I have no idea how long I slept. I remember Taylor shaking me and it was still dark. He made me sip something with really sweet molasses like flavor and lots of stuff like cinnamon and ginger in it, it made my throat tickle and made my cough a bit.

I passed out after that and kind of remember the spices making me sweat as I was sleeping. The place smells awesome but It sounds busy downstairs. I look at the alarm clock and it’s 7:40 in the morning. I brush my teeth and toss on a skirt and a hoody spray on some Secret spray while getting into my black leggings and my powder blue Nikes.

I go downstairs to help out. To be honest as I apron up I’d rather wait tables and booths here than in a smokey bar full of perverts.

Holy crap we’re busy. I had this idea of I’d go down and we’d talk and work and stuff. Every booth was full, the counter was full and there were people lined up by this window. There were two girls running around waitressing. Taylor slides by “Morning, You wanna take counter and till?”

“Uhm okay?”

The day starts as a rush of chaos. Taylor’s and awesome cook and I’m snacking as we wait on people. There’s sandwiches being done out that side window. Turkey chop with bread dressing and bacon with extras like a club sandwich and tubs of potato salad or coleslaw or this bean salad as the sides, chicken salad sandwiches, tuna fish sandwiches, egg salad and others.

I make toast eight slices of homemade thick slices at a time. There’s fresh squeezed OJ and He makes marmalade off of the used oranges and , real grape jelly and who the heck makes their own…everything.

It’s quite the change from myself who can’t even make Kraft Dinner that well. Jaimes was catered to and pampered by his mom and step-dad. I get burned fingers, get splashed by coffee and I’m running since I get there up to about 9:15 and things die out with just a few customers. I sit with Holly and Njinda as we go over our tips and Taylor set’s us down some coffee’s and me a tall glass of …

“What the heck is this?”

It’s kind of an off sick purple pink.

“It’s juice, you’re sick and you need this.”

“I need this?” The girls started to laugh.

“Jenna…” He’s looking at me and nearly pouting with his arms crossed. I pick up my glass and do the standard blessing crossing myself. “Dear lord, thank you for this glass of Barney that I’m about to drink.”

It tasted really weird and more than a little funky.

“Taylor, what’s in this?”

He looks at me, then like he’s thinking. “Beets, orange, carrots and their stalks, radishes, cucumber, flax seeds and some yogurt and some soymilk.”

“I wan’t to see you drink this crud.”

He goes out back with the pitcher thing for the juicer and tips it back drinking at least 3 cups of the stuff.

“Okay, okay I’d rather have a V-8 instead.”

“I’ll pick some up, tonight.”

“Tonight?”

“I’ve got some things we need to do and pick up, okay?”

“Okay…” I’m a bit worried about being found out, made as it were.

The girls do some clean up while Taylor gets me helping him in the kitchen and the bakery part of things. I get a crash course on making bread dough and rolls and biscuits. He makes a chowder with butter and onions and celery and cream as well as white fish, canned clams and a couple bags of fresh mussels and two frozen bags of shrimp and a bunch of quartered red potatoes and frozen peas and carrots and corn. He makes a corn chowder and grates lots of baking and sweet potatoes together and breads some little fishes called smelts? He also get’s me to chop lots of onions and dice up cold potatoes he had cooked this morning while he slices up several corned beef lumps? He also cooked this morning. I learn how to fine shred up cabbage and heat it to where it wilts? I end up dumping in black pepper, ground coriander and mustard seeds into it and then halve some of it out into a 4 liter ice cream container and put in thin sliced red onions and caraway seeds?

It’s a lot of work, But I’m not getting flak for any thing I’m doing. I’m not getting accosted of pinched and I’m not walking through clouds of smoke.

We still have customers and while it’s not busy, it’s really not boring either. In fact I’m having fun. I’m having fun for the first time in a long time. Everyone calls me Jenna, a few of the older gents call me “Darlin” like Holly and Njinda get. Taylor lets the girls go and do their washing for free upstairs when they have some time.

I learn quickly how to make a basic pie. Taylor makes me make them on my own. Fruit pies are the easiest with frozen fruit, toss them in a bit of corn starch and tapioca flour and sugar then just bake it off. Even making apple isn’t that hard from fresh, or lemon pie from the box but I layer a thin bit of marmalade on the bottom of the pie shell and a bit of real lemon juice in it and lemon zest into the meringue. That was the hardest part for me. But you know, This whole learning to cook thing, waitressing and everything is really girly stuff. I even help Holly and Njinda with their laundry and before lunch rush we do each others make up a little and help each other freshen up.

Feels really good you know. Not being treated like a freak, or feeling threatened. It’s nice.

The lunch rush hits us and we’re selling the chowders and Taylor’s putting those grated potatoes mixes into the deep fryers like a fritter and the smelts to and these go with the fish chowder. The other chowder goes too and there’s corned beef in both sandwiches and cabbage on the grill and corned beef hash. It’s really gratifying to see people eating and enjoying one of my pies.

I like getting called, Miss and stuff like that too.

I’m a little beat after the rush though with not enough sleep the night before. Taylor tells me. “Hey Jenna.” he slides in beside me behind the counter. “Hey.” I say and give him a side glance and a smile.

“You had quite a night last night and you’re looking a bit hot.”

“Hot?” I turn and stare at him….”You think I’m hot…”

He puts his hand on my forehead.

“Yep you’re definitely hot, you’re going through what you did last night and walking in the rain while sick yesterday has really done it’s job on you.”

Great, just great. And here I talked myself into thinking he was feeling something like that for me.

“Come on.” He asks the girls to watch the till and the front and takes me upstairs.

He makes me another bath.

Okay I’ll admit to it feeling good, smelling good and I doze in the steaming hot water. He wakes me up and I’m naked in the water…He smiles at me and I try to cover myself, I’m nearly crying too. “Jenna…Jenna it’s okay. You look beautiful, you don’t have to be shy with me. I don’t bite.”

I stare at him. “No fair using my line on me.”

He passes me a big mug of really good smelling chicken soup and a couple of aspirin and something else.

“What’s this?”

“Multivitamin.”

“Taylor….” I roll my eyes.

“Jenna, c’mon when was the last time you really had anything decent in your system?”

I shrug and take the pills and sip the soup.

“Here, lean back.”

“What and give you a free show?” I’m actually nervous, hell I’m scared. He passes me a towel. There’s this feeling of relief yet this little bit of not relieved, like a little part of me wanted him to look at me. I put the towel over my meager chest then lean back giving him a skeptical look.

“Close you eyes.”

I take a sip of the soup and close my eyes, I’m wary, nervous and scared a bit.

There’s his hand tilting my head back and he pours hot water through my hair…Oh god, he’s starting to run his fingers through my hair, I smell shampoo and I can’t help but start to melt.

Having somebody shampoo your hair is heaven, and right now it’s so good.

I swear, I’m having a hairgasm. My nipples hurt, oh wow in such a good way. He rinses and puts in conditioner and takes the time to leave it in to rub my shoulders….

I wake up with him pulling the covers over me. “Hey get some sleep ’kay?”

“Hmmn, m’kay.” I snuggle into the bed, he kisses me on my forehead.

Okay he might not be all you know but he’s damned well the best man I’ve ever met in my life and the sweetest person I know. I fall asleep feeling cared for, cared for, for the first time in a long, long time.

Maybe even ever?

Did my parents even love me, Jaimes or just because he was good at sports, won trophies and glory and made them look good.

I’m Jenna, even with everything I’ve been through I still wouldn’t ever go back to being Jaime, James.

Here, warm, safe…Taylor makes me feel more real than anyone ever has.

I fall asleep feeling like a girl.

I drift into a new world of dreams and images.

***

I’m running dodging guys a lot bigger than me, football tucked under my arm. It’s my usual style of playing more evasive and speed based like Pin-Ball Clemens a guy hits me to take me down and I roll off the hit or even over his body. It’s summer and it’s hot as we’re playing and dammit my mascara and eyeliner is getting into my eyes, waterproof my ass. I take an elbow to my right breast…ow, ow, ow! But I make a touch down and spike the ball and take off my helmet…The crowd starts to boo, and throw things at me.

I’m in my bed and my step dad is there with the belt again. His first strike is like a whip and that big cowboy belt buckle seems to slow through time and hits me in my forehead with several ounces of steel, It cuts me over my right eye and the blood partly blinds me as he keeps hitting me as I fall onto my old bed and wail and scream. “You wanna be a little bitch! A cunt!, well I’m gonna make it so no matter what no one’s gonna want you!” I don’t really slip into as much shock as before as the belt and buckle turn my back to hamburger. I do remember the rape as he loops the belt into a choke chain like thing and tightens it around my neck from behind… “Bitches like you need leashes.” I feel him take me dry, I tried to fight but he cut off my air…It hurt, the pain sank in so deep into myself…it just seemed to keep going inside of me when it connected to the hurt and betrayal of everything I loved and trusted and thought kept me loved and safe….I remember my mother in my bedroom door staring as he violated me, Her words once on mute because I never remembered her being there came crashing into my memories… “Hit it!, Slap it, hit it again, teach the disgusting freak a lesson!”

I’m out front, My things are burning and I’m in nothing but bloody scars and heavy welts. And my mother is there screaming at me still and she’s got the gas can. She’s pouring it over me, over me, over and over again…

***

I wake up caught up in my covers and screaming The blankets are him holding me and hurting me again and something comes loose in my chest and catches in my throat…choking me. I fall out of bed, bam! Boobs first and grab the waste bin throwing up stuff, something greasy and green brown comes up first and the sight of it and my nerves do the rest.

Taylor comes rushing in and carries me to the bathroom and holds me as I freak out. He holds my hair as I get sick a couple of more times. He washes me off in a luke warm bath, he dresses me in some of his clothes and puts me back to bed.

I think I’m really sick, I keep drifting in and out of sleeping and Taylor washing my forehead, waking me to drink juices and teas, take pills eat soups and (Yuck ) yogurt. He helps me to and from the bathroom.

His clothes keep changing too I think.

I have nightmares and he’s there sometimes as I cry out holding me in the bed with me. He holds me and listens to me as I cried and bawled out what they did to me. How they betrayed me, how any of my once friends had turned on me, the web site and the vandalism of where I lived and that fucking flyer…really sick, tired bone deep and hormonal I think Taylor got to see and hear the absolute worst sides of me. I know I hit him, I know there where times that I woke hitting and beating him just because he was there.

I wake up a few times and we’re still sharing a bed, he usually has an arm around me when I wake up. I coughed so much I’d get those headaches from coughing so much. It’s actually what wakes me up this time. I got up and went to pee then shower and brush my teeth. I’m not a fan of Colgate, I’m going to need to get to a store. The place is quiet. I could say too quiet but well It’s not home as I’d gotten used to it, it was Taylor’s place and I’m not used to the sounds here. I find my meds and take them frowning, I’m going to need more soon.

I go looking for Taylor finding him in the laundry room sitting on the floor in the corner of where the dryers meet the washers. He’s got his head in his hands and he’s shaking…I settle in front of him on my knees and take his hands away. God his face is a mask of pain, there’s tears on his face and he’s bitten his lip. I can see fist, hand like dents in the metal of the washer. His eyes are glassy from the amount of pain he’s going through and he’s got this look in them that god help me I can read like a book. He’s scared this is too much for me. He’s scared I’m going to leave him like everyone else has. I move his hands away ignoring the blood on his knuckles and heart in my throat I give him my very first kiss. It’s just a kiss but so much more. It’s my thank you, It’s my promise. He’s the one with the tears freshly running down his cheeks. I break the kiss and move over beside him and pull his head down into my lap. I spend the rest of the night there covering us with bedding from the dryer and rubbing his temples and running my fingers through his hair, rocking him when the pain would hit so hard he’d turn and bury his face into my stomach. About four or five in the morning I sing him to sleep. I’m not a great singer but I still try to sing to him “In the arms of an Angel.”

The girls find us I guess after a few hours and just before opening and they help me get him to bed. I feed him a couple of Motrin and kiss him again lightly. “Get some sleep, the girls and us can handle this ‘kay.” He gives me this look that just melts me, this look like he’s this sleepy kitten and barely nods. “M’kay.” I give him another light kiss and he kisses me back.

Holly and Njinda both give me looks as we head downstairs and start getting things ready. I do things really as simple as I can while dosing myself with cough syrup and herbal teas and ricolla cough drops and just make scrambled eggs, bacon, hash browns, pancakes, toast and juice for the breakfast crowds. I do egg sandwiches, tuna, and baloney with cheese grilled if the want it for the pick up window and we make our apologies saying that Taylor’s sick and he might not be in today. I’m really impressed that we made it through stuff with no real idea what to do. I find out from the girls that I’ve been out of it for most of the week. I put my tips into the coffee can where I put my last ones after we swap out coin for bills and then I go and check on Taylor. He’s still breathing and in an exhausted sleep. Just how hard does he push himself so he didn’t have to think about dying. I kiss his forehead and then slip downstairs, It feels more natural than breathing to care for him like this, to be there for him, to love him?, do I love him? Can I love him?

For once I stomp on those daydreams and my really bad habit of over analyzing everything that I do, or everything that happens or what other people in my life are doing or thinking. I’ve ruined friendships and stuff like that before, or they would’ve been friendships and even hurt some of my online family of sisters when I get too out of control. I’m just going to try to live my life instead of think about it.

Speaking of them. I ask the girls to watch the front while I use Taylor’s office computer. Uhm wow what a old piece of garbage but it’ll have to do, my laptop got stolen when my landlord kicked me out. I go online and update my friends there and talk back and forth a few minutes and they send me several recipes to try and I thank them and look up a few more.

I go down and help the girls and decide to go for the basics to get ready for the lunch rush. Mac and cheese, a tomato sauce with lots of ground hamburger in it and some sausage and a whole lot of garlic and onions and any kind of Italian spices. I keep taste testing it with the girls and even testing it out on a random customer of three, I make a lot of sauce and even cook up a lot of extra hamburger for supper rush I‘m already seeing lasagna. I can cook dried pasta, hell before here I lived on it and those cheap ramen noodles. I make bread and…I make a double batch of it making rolls with lots of chives and real garlic in them and some garlic and onion powder in them and roll out a bunch of pizza skins and slice up some salami and pepperoni that was here for subs I think, I chop up some other toppings just using stuff up and grate some cheese.

Desserts….shit, shit, shit.

We whip up a couple of pudding mixes dump them into pie shells and cups out of desperation. In a weird idea fit, I fill egg roll wrappers with a mix of diced apples and canned apple pie filling and roll them in spiced doughnut sugar after they’re deep fried. I only make a mess out of the first ten, get spattered by grease and we’re so busy, I lose track of how much spaghetti we cooked and I guess $10 bottomless spaghetti bowls and garlic rolls went over really well. And apparently I can’t make pizza for shit, nobody really liked them that much. Still never having made pizza before it could’ve gone worse.

God by the time we were done, we’re steamed like clams and covered in sauce. Oh and we didn’t have near the parmesan cheese either. I check our supplies and end up making several lasagnas I use a lot of filler in them to make everything stretch out like shredded carrot, slices of tomato, zucchini, spinach with chopped basil and eggplant and throw in extra meat and I make a bottom layer out of something called polenta? I found it online. I make a pizza version of the egg roll too and garlic fingers.

I make some chocolate pudding and freeze it into ice cube trays then make some chocolate cake batter up and make cup cakes with a hot pudding center by putting in the pudding cubes. I had no idea what I was doing and it worked anyways so we can serve them with ice cream and whipped cream.

The rest of the afternoon I spend doing dishes, and laundry and going over the till and writing lists of what was used and what was needed and cleaning up his office, just putting things in order and in first alphabetical and then by date, everything I don’t get or understand I set into baskets. I dust and clean it too.

I look up from upgrading the software on his computer. Taylor’s up and looking at me leaning in the doorway. “Hey..” he says, smiling. I tuck back some errant hair away behind my ear. “Hey there feeling better?” I ask him. “Lots, actually thanks to you.” I can’t help but blush at the direct compliment.

I start to show him what I’ve been doing and how things are organized and honestly I ask a lot of questions as much as anything. We eventually end up him in his office chair and me on his lap as we go over things and the new software I’ve downloaded onto his computer. Tay’s got his arms around me and his chin on my shoulder the whole time. I look at him after a while over my shoulder. “Tay, I mean I’m really grateful for everything you’ve done but I’m…” He kisses me. I mean he really kisses me. I see lights in my head, I feel like I’m flying and my body starts to wake up on me singing, touch me, hold me, touch me.

He does, his hands caress my breasts over my shirt and my bra but oh my god it still feels so amazing, so perfect and right and true. If you’ve ever had breasts of your own there’s nothing like someone else’s hands touching you for the first time. If you’re like me, an girl in transition then it’s so much more. It’s crossing a threshold, like a kind of losing your virginity. There’s this cold certainty sometimes when you start this journey. I’m going to be alone, I’m always going to be alone.

Tay, meeting Taylor, feeling this way is something I never thought I’d have. Thank you god, Thank you.

He breaks the kiss and holds me close and tightly.

I can hear him whispering. “I’m falling in love with you Jenna, I’m sorry but I can’t help it. I’m falling in love with you.” There’s a tremble that runs through both of us as we hold each other, kiss and stare in each others eyes.

Oh God the images we see.