© 2012, by Susan J. Charles. All rights reserved
Edited by Holly H. Hart

Tuesday, I dressed in one of my skirt suits and put on a low cut green silk blouse under it. For some reason, I wanted to show off some of my now very real cleavage. I chose my emerald pendant and matching dangling earrings to match my top and contrast with my red hair. I slipped on three-inch heels and examined myself in my full-length mirror. Damn, I looked good!

Cindy was waiting when I arrived at the restaurant. The waiter rushed up to help us with our chairs as the hostess handed us the menus. He couldn’t keep his eyes off my chest, so I decided to tease him a little. I leaned forward a little towards Cindy, letting my top gape open a little more. The waiter’s eyes almost popped out of his head.

“What’s good here?”

“Almost everything,” she answered, smiling. She knew exactly what I had just done.

As the waiter departed with our drink orders, she said, “Lean forward again and we’re going to get the best service in the place.”

“So I’ve learned,” I said, smiling back.

“You really like being a girl, don’t you?” she asked.

“Honestly, I love being a woman,” I replied. “I can’t imagine being anything else. It’s so much fun.”

“Well, it has its ups and downs,” Cindy said.

“I know, but the ups more than make up for the downs,” I said.

We made small talk until our drinks arrived. Then Cindy raised her glass and said, “To, Jessica. A really remarkable woman whom I want to be my friend.”

“Thank you,” I replied. “I thought we were friends.”

“Well, we’ve met casually several times,” she said. “But I really want to get to know you better. I have to say I was stunned by your dancing and singing the other night. You were the hit of the show. You have such control of your body.”

“It comes from a lot of work,” I said. “The audience doesn’t see the hours and hours of practice behind a performance like that. Or the hours we practice for our football routines.”

“You are in such good shape,” Cindy said. “What else do you do?”

“I have a small catering business. I also do some financial analysis for a major financial institution, and recently started a new project which may lead to promoting a new software product.”

“So many talents,” Cindy said. “And who was that beautiful girl who brought you the flowers?”

“Oh, I met Deanna when the Sea Gals were making a personal appearance at the hospital. I’ve been trying to encourage her in her recovery.”

“She’s a beautiful girl,” Cindy said. “With that red hair, I thought she might be related to you.”

“Right now, that hair is still a wig I got for her,” I said. “She had a major head injury in an auto accident, and they’d been keeping her head shaved while she recovered. Her own hair is growing back now, but it’s still shorter than she wants it to be.”

“You really seem to like her.”

“I love her and her sisters to death,” I replied. “I’m so glad I’ve gotten to help the family get back on their feet after their mother was killed.”

“It sounds like you have a busy life,” Cindy said.

“I do,” I replied. “Like most people, I’ve had issues I’ve had to work through, including some bad relationships. But I really have come to like myself and am having the time of my life right now.”

“I’m so happy to hear that,” Cindy said. “Now, I have something to confess.”

I looked at her expectantly.

“Did you know,” she said, leaning close to me, “that all legal actions, such as name changes, have to be posted in the newspaper classified ads?”

A cold chill went through me. Cindy knew!

“Don’t get upset,” Cindy cautioned. “When I saw that notice, it answered so many questions for me. And I do want to be your friend.”

“What do you mean?” I asked cautiously.

“It answered my questions about what happened to my marriage, for one thing,” Cindy said. “It answered my questions about what happened to my best friend and why I hadn’t been able to find him.”

I sat there, numb.

“Look,” Cindy said. “Back in college when I first met you--or Mark--whatever, it was so great. I found someone who shared so many of my interests that it was almost like looking in a mirror. We had so much fun together. We helped each other study. We went places together and were just so connected. I’ve never had so good a friend.

“Then the boy-girl stuff got in the way. Somehow, when we began to relate as a man and a woman, things changed. We still had fun, but somehow we weren’t as close. We were still so close that we ended up in a marriage, but it wasn’t the same. In some ways, I lost my closest friend when I gained a husband. But now I understand why. You started hiding Jessica.

“Before, you just been you and I’d just been me. Then, as it became apparent that we might be headed toward a man-woman relationship, you pulled the Jessica part of you back. As you did, I lost a big part of my friend. I still loved you enough to want a life with you, but you kept shutting down.

“I thought at the time it was the pressure of school. We both were under a lot of that. Then you started your business, and helped me start mine and we got busy with those and you shut down even more.”

“I thought if you knew about Jessica, you’d leave,” I said. “And I didn’t want that. I loved what we were.”

“Me too. I just didn’t know a large part of what we had was Jessica. Yes, we probably would have moved in a different direction if I’d known, but I loved you. I love that whole package that is you, Jessica.

“No, I probably wouldn’t have married you,” Cindy continued. “But I do want what we had at first. We shared something special, and I want it again.

“Don’t get me wrong,” she said, holding up her hand. “I’m not a lesbian. Men do have their uses. But women have one or two special friends, I think the current term is ‘BFF.’ It is someone who they can relate to on a very deep level. Men may come and go, but these friends go on forever.”

“But why all this stuff we went through?” I asked.

“I was angry,” Cindy replied. “When we married, I lost my friend. You withdrew so much that I couldn’t relate to you at all. Then Jake came along and I realized what I was missing in a male-female relationship, so I left. But I didn’t mean for you to be completely cut off from everything. When we saw all the bills for women’s clothing and accessories come in, I thought you’d been seeing someone behind my back, so I agreed with my lawyer to initiate actions to stop you from giving all our money to some gold-digger.

“But it was you buying things for Jessica, wasn’t it?”

“Yes,” I replied, “I was so deep in depression that Karen convinced me that Mark had to take a vacation and I needed to be Jessica 24/7. And she was right. I’ve come to realize I never should have been Mark in the first place.”

“After I realized how successful my lawyer had been in denying you access to anything, I tried to find you,” Cindy said. “But Mark had disappeared. You had a very good disguise.”

“It was touch and go for a little while,” I said. “But I survived and now I’m grateful for my experiences. They really shook me out of my rut. I lived with a guy and was kind of his mistress. Then I got involved in a lot of other things and my life really changed.”

“On some level, I think I must have suspected something,” Cindy said. “I was attracted to Jessica from the first time I met you and felt we could be friends.

“It’s funny,” she continued. “The more I looked for Mark, it seemed the more I started running into you. Now I understand why.”

“When did you suspect?”

“Not for a surprisingly long time,” Cindy replied. “It actually didn’t start until that last time at the lawyer’s office when you were wearing those ridiculous ‘Clark Kent’ glasses. I really looked at you for the first time in a long time.

“At first, I thought I was nuts to think such a thing. Then I remembered that, after we’d started to date, I’d heard some people at college asking whatever had happened to Jessica. Since I didn’t know Jessica, I didn’t pay any attention. But when I first met you as Jessica, I did wonder if you might be the same person they’d talked about in college.

“I really didn’t put things together until I saw that name change notice in the paper. So, you’re Jessica for good now?”

“Completely. I’m Jessica now for the rest of my life. It’s who I should have been all along. I’m just sorry it took me so long to realize it, and I hurt you along the way. I’m so sorry.”

I reached over and took Cindy’s hand. She squeezed back.

“It was tough,” she said. “But a lot of good had come out of it. If it hadn’t been for our relationship during our marriage, I probably wouldn’t have pushed myself to become what I am today. Every once in a while, I pinch myself to be sure I’m not dreaming. I never thought I had it in myself to do what I’ve accomplished. I have you to thank for that, rough as it was.”

“I’m glad some good things have come out of all this mess,” I replied. “I do want us to be BFF’s. I’ve missed you too.”

We stood up and hugged, not in a sexual way, but as two women friends greeting each other after a long absence.

“We’ve got so much catching up to do,” Cindy said. “But I’ve got a meeting in a half-hour I can’t miss.”

I was surprised to see how late it had gotten.

“One other thing,” Cindy said. “Now that we’ve gotten everything out in the open, I have something to ask of you.”

I raised my eyes questioning.

“Jake and I are going to be married next year. Would you be my maid of honor?”

I was floored. Cindy wanted me to attend her wedding, on the other side of the aisle.

“Of course,” I said in a daze. “I’d love to do this for you.”

We hugged again and Cindy whispered in my ear, “I’m so happy you’ve finally gotten where you needed to be.”

I left the restaurant with tears in my eyes. I’d reconnected with a very, very dear friend and we were finally on the path we should have been all along. I had no doubt that we’d be friends for life.