Constant in All Other Things 2, Chapter Four
by
Fakeminsk ([email protected])

“Friendship is constant in all other things
Save in the office and affairs of love:
Therefore all hearts in love use their own tongues;
Let every eye negotiate for itself
And trust no agent.”
Much Ado About Nothing

Synopsis:
Despite David's best efforts at hiding as Cindy, his disguise has been found out by a jilted ex-girlfriend, leaving him scrambling to convince her to keep his secret. If only he'd ended thing better with her ten years ago....

What has gone before:
David Sanders saw something he shouldn't have: his boss, pharmaceutical magnate Jeremiah Steele, murdering an underworld rival. Placed in protection, an assassination attempt forces David into the disguise of Cindy, a pretty, young girl. Left on his own, living a life he never chose and despises, but promised an eventual escape back to masculinity, the new Cindy struggles through several months and experiences of feminine existence... until a drunken encounter with an ex-girlfriend throws his life into peril once again.

***

Alone, a girl walks through the bustling crowd. Friday night, and some strange impulse drives her off the bus several stops early. Storefronts gleam in the night, luminescent auras seeping lurid glows across pavement. The air is warm but cooling with the encroaching darkness, and most are dressed, like her, for the day’s earlier heat. She hesitates outside a restaurant. She sees herself in the glass, a ghost of a girl—slim, blonde hair, short skirt—trapped, suspended in reflection in the window; outside, gazing in. The comforting clink of cutlery, murmur of conversation, and of music envelopes her as a trio of patrons leave the restaurant, cut off abruptly as the door closes.

A couple: young man, broad-chested in a white shirt, tie loose and cuffs rolled back, gesticulates with a fork, a piece of meat impaled on its tines. Opposite, a woman listens with a hint of a smile. Her eyes sparkle as she raises a glass to glossy lips. The man mirrors her, reaching for his wine. The woman’s gaze dances away, down but then flitting aside, looking outside, and there notices the girl watching through the reflection in the window. They make eye contact. The woman raises an inquisitive eyebrow. The girl outside feels a suddenly, nearly overwhelming yearning; heart pounding, she scurries away.

Pools of intermittent light dropping from streetlamps see her home as she walks the several remaining kilometers, alone, back to her empty apartment.

***

The young woman—more of a girl, really—a pretty little thing, sat alone at a small indoor table in a secluded corner of a fashionable boutique café. On this blisteringly hot and bright Sunday morning, she consciously projected a look of youthful femininity: dainty, open-toed, high-heeled sandals sparkled at the ankle strap; white stockings, patterned with flower blossoms, disappeared beneath a short skirt in burnt orange, high-waisted and tight, cinched in by a row of heavy buttons. Her makeup was glossy, bright and youthful. Her top, black and sheer, form-fitting and buttoned at the back and ruffled at the shoulders, hinted at the bra beneath and emphasised her curves but left her slim arms bare, with a pair of delicate bangles glinting at the wrist. Twin, curved strips of silver twirled like DNA strands at her ears. Her lips, shiny and pink, glimmered in the subdued light of the café. A narrow, pink hairband decorated with tiny bows pinned back her long blonde hair.

The girl sighed impatiently.

She sat as far away as possible from the large windows at the front of the café. Her attention switched frequently between her phone on the table and her image in one of the many small, round mirrors that decorated the café walls. Her reflection seemed to her as delicately wrought and precisely painted as the mirror’s filigree frame of intertwining metal threads. She smiled, weakly, nervously tucking an errant strand of blonde hair back behind her ear, and tried again—better, she seemed to think, giving a satisfied little nod.

A small porcelain cup of cooling green tea sat on the table. A faint semi-circle, rose-tinted, stained the edge of the cup where she’d taken a sip. She turned the cup so the lipstick smudge faced towards the empty seat opposite. Squirming slightly, she crossed her legs at the knee, sitting straight, chest out, head turned slightly to one side to present what she hoped came across as a particularly feminine profile for anyone—a specific someone—walking through the door. Poised, but not prim; composed, and calm. But she couldn’t maintain the posture for long, and slouched, and flicked a glance at her phone and once again at the mirror and wondered, For fuck’s sake, Julia, where are you?

The waiting was killing me. Hours! Hours I’d spent preparing for this, searching for just the right outfit, crafting the right look for this meeting with Julia. Hour spent online, brushing up on makeup and fashion tutorials, trying to decide just what the “right look” could possibly be for meeting an ex-girlfriend who’d discovered the man that dumped her a decade ago was now a young woman—more of a girl, really—a pretty little thing she’d found curled up and puking in the toilet of a nightclub last Friday night.

I hadn’t even noticed the text from her until late Saturday afternoon. I’d no memory of getting home. The last I remembered, clearly—far too clearly—was kissing Dan on the mouth. It was pretty sporadic after that, until waking up in bra and panties in my bed late Saturday morning with a howling headache and a case of the shakes, my clothes in a pile on the floor. There’d been plenty of remorse in the early hungover hours of Saturday morning, vivid and lurid flashes of indistinct memory as I huddled under bedsheets, hiding from the painfully bright daylight: the bright contrast of painted nails against the sharp crisp whiteness of a man’s work shirt, my hand, his chest; the intense scent of bamboo and earth as he leaned close; our lips, meeting, parting; his tongue, and mine…

But I was beyond feeling sick at the thought of kissing him. Too much drink, not enough food. Mixing medication, mixing booze. Stress and exhaustion. Fuck it! It was in the past. I’d been enjoying myself until that point. Sort of. After weeks of social isolation, getting back out into the public had felt—good. Necessary.

Most of Saturday was spent lurking in darkness in Cindy’s little apartment, hiding from sunshine and the world and nursing the worst hangover I could remember suffering in years. It was at least noon before the shakes subsided and I could even sip water or contemplate nibbling at some leftovers surviving in the fridge. Eventually I thought to check my phone. And after scrolling and studiously ignoring a pair of texts from Dan, the message:

Meet me at Café Sporus. 11am Sunday. Let’s talk about D. Little Caesar.

The words were without meaning when I first read them. Shrugging, I’d tossed the phone aside and lurched towards the shower, eager to wash away last night’s filth and the lingering phantom of Dan’s touch. And the moment the first cold spray slapped my naked body I gasped as another memory from the night before came crashing back.

The stall. Throwing up. Pungent sting of vomit. A woman, helping – somehow familiar. Taking control – fixing my makeup – putting me back together to get me home with some semblance of dignity intact. And then a name, tumbling from the distant recess of memory…

Julia.

She’d said my name: David.

How the fuck had she recognized me?

And if her, who else?

***

I take the front and Tom takes the rear.

She’s on all fours on the bed, tartan skirt up around the waist, stockings rolled down to her shiny black heels, tangled around the ankles. Her bra is tossed aside and her tits out. Her soft flesh ripples with each wet smack as Tom rhythmically thrusts into her. She moans; Julia’s moan is muffled around my cock and feels wonderful. She looks up at me pleadingly and I deliberately ignore her. Across the pale expanse of her back, Tom grins and briefly releases his grip on her waist. She’s still impaled on his thrusting cock as he gives me both thumbs up. I return the grin.

It’s ten years ago and it’s the last time I saw Julia.

We’re all young and stupid and very, very drunk. It’s been my first year of real work, my first year after getting off the street, calling in some favours and picking up the fake name and the credentials needed to make my start in the “real” world. This night is the culmination of months of hard work on a contract, my first real professional success, and it’s turned into a night on the town, one that started earlier as a quiet, intimate dinner between Julia and me. At this point we’ve been dating for—what, two month, maybe three? And I know it’s time to end things, that she’s getting seriously invested into me and that I’m just not looking for something serious. And I’m thinking—David’s thinking, the fucked-up me of ten years ago is thinking—why not end it with a bang?

Despite the passage of a decade, the memory of that night remains clear. I hadn’t thought of Julia specifically in ages but I remember the event with absolute clarity, spit-roasting the girl with Tom, high-fiving him over her bare ass as we skewered her on our dicks before groaning and grunting and spewing our load deep into her. I remember the night with more than a little pride and maybe a little guilt.

I mean, she knew what was coming. I’d been working on her for days, building her up to this. By the time we reached the elevator, I think she wanted it as much as we did. And that’s where it started, before we’d left the ground floor, with my hand gently stroking her inner thigh and kissing the nape of her neck and then a moment later Tom holding her hand and kissing her gently on the lips. Before we reached his floor, I was fingering her pussy and he was groping her tits under the blouse and she was panting like a bitch in heat. We were a tangle of limbs as Tom fumbled with the keys and we all but fell through the door into his home. We paused long enough for each of us to swiftly tidy up in the bathroom, catch our breath and enjoy a stiff drink and some heavy petting on the sofa before I picked Julia up and carried her into Tom’s bedroom.

So it was all consensual and a fucking load of fun. But I guess to this day I still carry some regret that I didn’t handle the aftermath better. I left her in Tom’s bed and walked out into the late night and walked for hours until I found my way home a little before dawn, passing through some questionable parts of the city, searching and hoping, I think, for a fight, for some idiot to try and mug me or something. Instead, when I got home, I sat and drank and stared out the window until the sun rose and then I picked up my phone and dumped Julia, by text, and made it clear that I never wanted to see her again and that I was disgusted by what she’d done.

To this day I can’t really explain why I did it. Thinking back on that final night together now, I remember a moment in our threesome with startling clarity. I gaze down at her. She looks up and our eyes meet. Her eyes are wide, and her lips full, a brilliant crimson O pursed around the tip of my penis, until a thrust from Tom pushes her forward and plunges me deeper into her mouth. Her voice, a vibration humming up the length of my cock, feels amazing. I smile lovingly down at her. And my emotions at that moment are genuine. I do love her, or at least feel as strongly about her as I have anyone in the past year. I admire her willingness to do this for us, to submit to Tom and me; I’m in awe of both the strength and confidence it must have taken to put aside her misgiving and fear and follow both of us back to Tom’s apartment.

But any feelings I had for her were a betrayal to the woman I had lost a year ago. The ghost of Sephy rose even as I came, and maybe that explained the twisting bitterness and hatred I felt for Julia afterwards.

I remembered Julia as a strong-willed woman, passionate and ambitious, and yet she’d nevertheless yielded so compliantly, so easily to us. Having fought my whole life for—everything, then and now, I’m mystified, the me of ten years ago and of now, by her total surrender. Awe and respect so quickly turn to scorn and spite: how could anyone ever give themselves over so totally to someone? How did she embrace her own vulnerability so completely?

Wearing stockings and heels and with ample tits of my own, I wriggled at the edge of my seat at the uncomfortable kinship I suddenly felt with the girl of that memory. I squirmed with shame, at the contrast between the manliness I’d embodied then and the girlhood I now lived. From distraction, the consequence of wearing the most feminine underwear I could find: a pretty, long-length bra; thigh-highs and a thong—all white and pink—deliberately chosen as a constant reminder of the role I had to convincingly play today. And finally, unsurprisingly, I squirmed with pain as erotic memories reminded me that underneath all these frills and lace there lurked a penis, straining against its confines, tucked and taped away to maintain the illusion that was Cindy.

That illusion had to be absolutely, totally convincing today. My life depended on it.

Had Julia told anyone about me? Probably not. At least, not yet. What little, discreet research I’d managed online suggested my testimony against Jeremiah Steele hadn’t gone public. My disappearance from the job at NeoPharm might’ve been unusual, but people left their jobs all the time these days. Julia had the day after I dumped her – she just quit and disappeared, just as I had after witnessing the murder. She had no reason to report her discovery of my identity to anyone.

On the other hand, she didn’t need a reason to blab about Friday night’s debacle. A mocking word to a friend, overheard by the wrong person, or microphone; an errant dropping of my name online, picked up by some clever AI scurrying back to Steele with even a hint of my disguise – and I was fucked. Probably literally considering what those maniacs at the Clinic had done to me. The fact I was still alive was probably evidence enough she hadn’t done anything stupid yet. I had to make sure it stayed that way. Had to convince Julia to keep my secret, no matter the cost and by whatever means necessary. Because if Cindy’s words couldn’t convince her, then David’s violence sure as hell would.

I’d sacrificed too much already to fucking lose now. My fingers curled into a tight fist and the prick of longer nails digging into my palm proved a fitting reminder of what was at stake. Whatever sick plot I found myself emmeshed within, I had the navigate some way through it, come out the other side and take my revenge on all the sick bastards who’d ripped my life away and left me …

“Cindy,” I whispered softly under my breath.

***

I’d rehearsed the script the night before and on the bus ride into town this morning.

“Please, call me Cindy Bellamy,” I’d say. “Thanks for last night,” I’d add. “I’m Cindy,” I’d insist. On that final point, Julia had to be completely convinced. Preparing Saturday night and this morning, I considered deeply what, exactly, I needed her to believe; and what image would best support the lie. At first I’d considered dressing a touch more masculine, a subtle reminder of the man Julia had dated. Then I tried going the full opposite, an explosion of full-on femininity that bordered on drag queen exuberance. Eventually I scaled it back to something more suitable, a carefully crafted performance of Cindy’s girlishness—of a life chosen, not forced, but simmering with concealed doubts and concerns.

Because I couldn’t trust her with the truth. At least, not the full truth. I didn’t know this woman, this ten-years older Julia; and I wouldn’t have trusted the one I knew, let alone this stranger. She had more than a little reason to be upset with me, I had to admit, and though ten years is a long time, I understood all too well how some grudges can linger and fester. If she was still angry, would it be enough to turn me in for a price on my head?

No. At least, I didn’t think so. But I couldn’t risk it.

And of course, more than anything she’d probably want to know how or why her boyfriend of ten years ago had, rather than keep pace with her in age, instead shed a few years and, yeah, his gender along the way. My plan, galling as it might be, was to convince her that this was by choice, that I’d made the decision to live as a woman – that I was a woman, and always had been, though I’d been in denial about it for some time. I just needed to convince her to respect the new me – to not mention David or bring up my old existence – to just let me live this new life I’d willingly crafted for myself and keep my secret.

I stood as she entered the café and waited bashfully by the table. Julia was dressed for comfort in loose-fitting harem pants and flats, a plain, camo-green cotton t-shirt clinging to her with sweat from being outside in the heat. She pulled off her sunglasses and tucked back her long, black hair with a flick of the head and quick stroke of the left hand, and I found myself smiling at the remembered, familiar gesture. I envied not only her comfortable clothes but also the unconscious confidence she exuded as she strode purposefully towards me. I’d been too drunk on Friday night to really notice, but Julia seemed to have embraced her thirties with conviction. She looked good. Like, really good.

Smiling openly, I extended one hand gracefully to greet her. “Hi! Please, call me—”

“Sit down and shut the fuck up,” she said, cutting me off.

Stunned, I dropped into my seat as Julia, with surprising intensity, took the chair opposite.

“You don’t get to talk. This is my moment, not—” and here, she waved her hand in a vague gesture taking in my appearance, “…yours, whatever this is.”

“But—”

“Shut it.” Her voice was firm and controlled. She leaned close. “You have no idea how many times I’ve rehearsed this.” She swallowed, and I could see the tightness in the ropes of her neck. “With my therapist. In my head. To the mirror. How many times I’ve dreamed of confronting you. How many times I’ve written down what I wanted to say.”

She took a deep breath.

“You hurt me,” Julia said. She said it softly, momentarily uncertain, as though she didn’t quite believe this thing she had dreamed of so often was actually happening. “You hurt me,” she repeated, her voice growing in confidence. “Ten years ago. I was in love with you.” Her hand briefly reached out towards me, as though to pull me close, but instead fell to the table and gripped its edge tightly. “I loved you and you threw that away, threw me away after you used me, like skin peeled from a fucking piece of fruit. When I woke up in another man’s bed and read that you’d dumped me – by phone, you cowardly, insensitive prick! – it destroyed me. Do you understand? You fucking broke me!”

I licked my lips nervously and went to speak, though I had no idea what to say, and hesitated at the slick taste of lip gloss.

“No!” She banged the table with her first, and my cup clattered noisily. “Still my turn!”

I nodded.

“It took me years – years! – to get over that night. I gave up my job, friends, my goddamn life to get away from the memory of you and start over. And I hated myself for it!” She took a deep breath, and when she continued her voice was low again, controlled and firm. “Do you have any idea what it’s like to hate yourself so thoroughly you want to die?”

Yes, I wanted to say. I do.

“For years I hated myself for letting you talk me into that night with… with, what’s his name?” She sighed with frustration. “Whatever. Your friend. I fucking gaslighted myself, saying it was my fault, that I should’ve been stronger and just said no. Or I told myself it wasn’t a bit deal, it was just a threesome, I must’ve wanted it, right?

“But it wasn’t my fault. It was yours.

“And I didn’t want it; you did.

“But I did it anyway, because I loved you.” She stared at me, at the girl sat opposite and her eyes widened slightly with disbelief. “I loved… you, so deeply and totally that the thought of losing you drove me half-insane and so I convinced myself to go along with it and what happened…? You dumped me anyway. You dumped me and told me it was my fault, that I was disgusting, and you never wanted to see me again.”

For a moment, the soft lighting at the back of café sparkled at the corner of her eyes. She glanced away angrily, and then back, and her gaze was clear and hard. “And I fucking believed you. It was my fault and I was disgusting, and I hated myself so thoroughly I wanted to die, and the thought of never seeing you again left a hole inside of me, a pain so deep inside of me I wanted to disappear into it.”

Julia took another deep breath. “You have no idea what that kind of pain feels like,” she said.

I wanted to laugh; I needed to speak. The desire bubbled up from somewhere deep inside. But taking a deep breath and feeling the tight constriction of the bra, I kept silent.

“Something you want to say?” she spat.

I shook my head, earrings jouncing against my cheeks.

“It took me years to recover,” she continued. “And therapy. And drugs. And at first I hated myself for that too – for being so weak, for needing help, for letting the pain sink such deep roots into me, as though it was a choice, something I wanted or did to myself.

“But you did that to me: you.”

She fell silent, sinking deeper into her seat, staring at me over steepled fingers. Storm clouds gathered at her brow. A waiter, a sharply-dressed young man closer to Cindy’s age than Julia’s, took the moment to surreptitiously slide up to our table. “Uh… ladies?” he said, voice low and deferential, directing his attention ever so slightly more towards her than me, “Can I get you anything?”

Julia started. “Ladies?”

“Miss?”

Her lip curled in a sardonic smile. “Whatever. Yeah. I’ll have whatever … whatever they’re having,” she said, waving her hand at me.

We waited for the waiter to return. Julia seemed momentarily content to sit, silently appraising me in silence. Meanwhile, I tried to regain some of my composure, reaching for that place from which I could convincingly perform as Cindy. A twisted laugh, short and sharp, lurked somewhere dark and deep within, at the absurdity of this scene and the pain we echoed. I hadn’t expected this, not this… anger, this bitterness and pain, not after ten years; and Julia’s rant had left me scrambling for some way to claim control of the situation.

The waiter returned, deposited Julia’s drink, and silently withdrew.

She quietly picked it up and took a long sip. “Good choice,” she murmured, sounding a little surprised. She then sighed and put the cup down. “So… this,” Julia said, and waved her hand at me. “What’s the fuck’s all this, then?”

She sounded exhausted, and for the first time I noticed that she looked tired, too. She must’ve had a sleepless night, maybe rehearsing what she wanted to say, as I had. Her makeup was light, and I could appreciate that she’d made some small effort to conceal the dark under her eyes, and the hint of wrinkles that had started to worm their way into the thirty-something flesh of her cheeks. My makeup was considerably heavier, but there were no signs of aging, no flaws to hide… no trace of errant masculinity. I fairly glowed with feminine youthful vigour. What must she think, how must she feel, looking at her boyfriend of ten years ago and seeing twenty-year old Cindy, a girl even younger than the man I’d been then?

“Please,” I started. “Call me… -” but my voice trailed off, and died, and I swallowed heavily over an unexpected lump in my throat. I held up a finger to signal I needed a moment.

The previous script wasn’t going to cut it. I could see that she yearned for something from me: an apology, mostly, for some recognition of what I’d done to her and remorse for the pain caused over all those years. Every tense, angry line of her body made clear that she wanted me to say: I’m sorry. I’m sorry for hurting you. I was wrong.

That is what she wanted. But beneath that I detected a darker, more primal desire: an unrealized need far more potent than the want for some apology. In the stormy embrace of her gaze, in the way her eyes drank deeply of the image of her feminised former lover, I saw, restrained but not entirely supressed, an almost feral hunger.

She wanted me to say sorry and disappear from her life again, past trauma resolved. But what she needed was to consume me, utterly, to gorge herself in an attempt to fill that void of pain and loneliness left by my departure ten years. She needed – me.

And that desperate a need? I could work with that.

“It’s good seeing you again, Julia,” I started, tentatively.

She laughed. “Is it? Really?”

“It is.” I offered a gentle smile. “I haven’t, you know, really seen anyone from… before.” Truer words were rarely spoken, and I would’ve happily kept it that way. It’s not like I went out of my way to catch up with ex-girlfriends; that sort of encounter is awkward enough at the best of times and this… this wasn’t the best of times.

This was a bad time to be confronting Julia. It’d been two months—two whole fucking months of dresses and skirts, of taping my cock back and shoving my balls up inside, of makeup and heels and wearing a bra and simperingly soft conversations and smiling, smiling, smiling so much I wanted to scream sometimes. I hated it, ever goddamn minute of it, but if I was brutely honest with myself it was also getting easier.

It’s like, I couldn’t go around all day fucking freaking out because I had tits, right? At some point I sort of stopped noticing them, just as the stockings, or earrings, or makeup faded into the background—well, for short periods of time, anyway, until jabbed by an underwire or because the goddam bra strap kept slipping off my shoulder or, most likely, I caught some dude staring at me. Sometimes I could go for, like, an entire hour without really thinking about the misery of my existence, just absently floating along with Cindy as she went about her day, silently observing her from the outside. The darkest hours were usually the alone hours, after work or on weekends, when the comfort of being out of the public eye was made agonising by the freedom to see myself for what I’d become. It was so much easier, in some ways and perversely so, during the busy hours of a workday, caught up in the bustle of work. Bound tightly into routine, there was some relief from the anxiety of simply existing as something I wasn’t. Through repetition, the unfamiliar habits of this unwanted life were becoming… normal; part of me; and therefore familiar and easy, if no less hateful and embarrassing.

But meeting someone who knew me as the man I was less than a year ago brought that all crashing down. Under Julia’s probing gaze, I found myself acutely and painful aware of how far I’d fallen, and keenly felt every feminine trait I’d taken on as part of this disguise. Makeup that had faded to an invisible, weightless mask once again felt heavy and thick; longer fingernails become ungainly; and I felt myself doubting every motion. The familiar once again became foreign, and the performance teetered back towards pantomime.

“You look good,” I said, and took a calming sip of lukewarm tea.

“And you look…,” I could see her reaching for an appropriate word, “different.”

“I imagine it’s a bit of a surprise.”

“You could say that.” Something akin to a smiled twisted her face, trapped between wryness and bitterness. “Let’s just say it’s not quite how I pictured this moment.”

“What did you expect?”

She flicked her hair back, smoothed it down over the left shoulder. “I don’t know. That you’d gone fat, maybe? Or balding? That the past tens years had worn you down to a place where you could look at me and think – damn, I wish I’d done thing differently.” She shook her head in disbelief. “Instead, fucking hell, David, look at you.”

“Cindy,” I said. “My name is Cindy Bellamy.”

“Whatever.” She shook her head. “Jesus, what’re the girls going to think when I tell them?”

“Please,” I said, allowing a note of pleading to enter my voice. “I’d really prefer it if you didn’t tell anyone.”

“And why the fuck, David,” she said, all but spitting out the name, “should I care what you ‘prefer’?” She said the last in a mincing, little-girl voice.

I winced. “Please, Julia,” I said pleadingly. “It’s not nice.”

“Nice?” She stared at me. “You want me to be nice?”

I nodded.

“And were you being nice when you manipulated me into that threesome ten years ago? Was it nice to string me along like that and drop me in your friend’s bed when you were done with me?” She leaned in close. “You used me like a fucking toy; you fucked me and dumped your load in me and then you left me. So, yeah, maybe deadnaming you isn’t particularly ‘nice’. Maybe bringing up the past isn’t ‘nice’. But tell me, please, why the fuck should I be ‘nice’ to someone who destroyed years of my life?”

Very deliberately, I meticulously pushed the sweep of my long, blonde hair back over the left shoulder, and tucked an errant strand behind my ear. “You’re not the only one who’s suffered, you know,” I said softly, and swept one hand across my body. “Do you think this was easy?”

She stared at me for a long, quiet moment. Her hands clenched, knuckles whitening, then relaxed and she released a heavy breath. Somewhat unnerved by her reaction, I looked away and towards the front of the café and blinked at the dazzling bright afternoon sun. Part of me suddenly wished I could trust her with the truth, yearned to share my secret with her – with somebody, anybody. The desire bubbled up within, inexorably growing, like an illness needing to be expelled: this isn’t me! I desperately wanted to shout. I don’t want this! Trembling briefly overtook my hand, and I dug my nails into my palm, and wished for something more painful, like a fork to jab into my thigh, to bring me back to myself.

But when I looked back to her, something akin to momentary doubt or confusion swept across her face, and she sat back and studied me, really looked at me, and under her appraising eye I nervously fidgeted.

“Goddamit,” she muttered under her breath. “This isn’t what I wanted.” She took a deep breath. “This isn’t good. I can’t afford another fucking relapse.” She was turning inwards, and in the way she shifted in her seat signaled she was about to leave, about to storm out. I couldn’t let that happen, not yet, not with so much unresolved.

“Julia,” I called out.

“What?” she snapped, almost distractedly.

“I’m sorry.”

She went rigid, momentarily – staring at me – and for a moment Julia seemed as though she might cry; and then instead she all but collapsed into the depths of her chair.

“You have no idea how long I’ve wanted to hear that,” she said.

I reached out tentatively, furtively, reaching for her hand with mine. “I mean it,” I said. There was something surreal in the appearance of my hand, slender fingers and carefully manicured fingernails, painted a rosy pink, resting over hers. Julia’s nails were unpainted, maybe even slightly gnawed—I’d forgotten she used to chew her fingernails, and apparently still did.

“No,” she said, withdrawing her hand.

“But I…”

“No!” She cut me off. “Why the fuck would I want an apology from some… some, fucking caricature of a girl? I don’t want -your- apology; I want -his-!”

Around us, the café buzzed with activity. Patrons had been steadily flowing in throughout our talk: young couples, sat at small tables; individuals in smart business attire striding in and out with coffee in takeaway cups; a gaggle of schoolgirls, cutting class; a man, sat alone and incongruously dressed in tweed, reading a newspaper, apparently an anachronistic specialty of Café Sporus. Our booth, distant from the entrance, remained secluded and our conversation remained private, though we’d attracted a number of curious glances, many of them young and male.

“I’m not a caricature,” I said. It took some effort – though less than expected – to summon the promise of tears to my eyes. “This is who I am.”

She eyed me suspiciously. “A girl.”

I nodded. “I’m Cindy,” I said. “And I wanted to thank you for Friday night.”

Julia couldn’t suppress a tiny smile. “You were a mess.”

“I know, right?” I gave a small, self-deprecating laugh. “It kind of snuck up on me. It still catches me by surprise sometimes, how… small I am now. A lightweight.”

“Yeah. I noticed.”

“Yes, you did,” I said, and she picked up on the shift in tone. “How?”

“What do you mean?”

“How did you… you know… know?” I leaned in closer, and all but whispered conspiratorially. “How did you recognize David?”

She laughed. “It’s really bothering you, isn’t it?”

I nodded. And it was. Not for the reasons she probably thought. But I needed to know where I’d gone so disastrously wrong. This… disguise, this girlish frame those Asklepios butchers had hacked from my masculine corpse, was so far removed from the person I’d been that it just didn’t seem possible that someone could recognize me. Especially once you layered in all the work I’d poured into this… this costume, the endless hours of practice: voice and speech, walk and posture, the clothes, the makeup and hair, perfecting Cindy’s behaviour…. How had she seen through my disguise? Because if she could do it, then one of Steele’s fucking agents would damn well be able to do the same.

“Yes,” I said. “I’ve worked really hard to, to be….”

“Girly?”

I frowned. “Me. And I thought this—” and I passed my hands over my curves, “and this—” as I gestured at my face, hair and makeup, “and all of it was, you know… pretty convincing?”

She gave a little smile. “Oh, it’s very convincing,” she said. “And there’s no way I would’ve guessed. So, Friday night, after I bumped into you waiting in line for the toilet, there was… something.” She tapped the table with one finger, thinking. “I couldn’t say what it was. Maybe the way you said something, a gesture. I dunno. I’d had a few drinks as well. But it just seemed familiar, somehow, but I couldn’t place it.

“And I’ll admit I kept an eye on you from then on, although I couldn’t really say why. My colleagues were pretty fucking boring, for one. Caleb kept going on about the new dataset and…” She trailing off, and drummed her fingers on the table. “Mostly I was curious; believe it or not, there’s been a bit of talk on my floor about the new girl at V.I.”

I smiled weakly. Inside, my stomach twisted. “Really?”

“Yeah.” She laughed. “Fresh meat, right?” Seeing my expression, she cocked her head to one side. “I mean, you must’ve realised the guys are all eyeing you up, right?”

I shook my head.

“Really? ‘Cus you wouldn’t have done the same?” she added.

I nodded mutely. In all likelihood, I would’ve had Cindy in the sack by now.

“Anyway, when I saw you rush to the toilet I figured you could use some help. And you did, and then some. But what I wasn’t expecting was for you to suddenly call me by that fucking stupid nickname.”

I shook me head. “I… don’t remember,” I said, and genuinely didn’t. “I was pretty drunk on Friday.”

“No shit,” she said. “Surprising, really. You used to really be able to pack it away.”

Sighing sadly, I said, “Not anymore, not like I used to. I think it’s a hormone thing or something.”

Julia paused momentarily, as though processing that, and then shaking her head she continued. “So you called me Little Caesar. Remember that? Like, a week after we’d started dating, we were at this pub quiz and you were terrible at it, like at every category, general knowledge, movies, even the easy stuff, you didn’t know shit. And so you just started drinking, and got really obnoxiously drunk. And then a question came up, I can’t remember, maybe something about crossing the Rubicon, and I shouted out ‘Caesar’ and you looked at me with this stupid drunk grin and shouted ‘Julius!’ at me. You seemed really pleased with yourself, and I laughed, because it was good seeing you finally enjoying yourself. But then you just wouldn’t let it go. You started calling me “my Little Caesar’, especially when you saw how much it pissed me off.”

I stared blankly at her. I had no memory of calling her that on Friday. I barely remembered calling her that ten years ago.

“I’m… sorry?”

“Whatever.” She sighed. “Anyway, when you said it, your name just kind of popped out of my mouth in response. I mean, I didn’t for a second think it was really you.” She frowned. “I mean, how could I? Everything about you is totally different. Like, even your skin tone’s paler, your hair’s gone blonde… you’ve got tits, right? But then at the same time… I don’t know. Maybe at some gut level I suspected something, like you were his sister? Or maybe there was something about the way you said the name—the way you looked at me—your eyes?” She leaned closer, staring intently at me. “Maybe that was it. Under all that makeup, there’s still something of the old you in the eye.”

I self-consciously traced the side of my face with one finger, suddenly intensely aware of my own skin, the heaviness of mascara on lashes and the carefully applied eyeliner and colours accentuating those features.

“You recognized me because of my eyes?”

“Yup, that.” She grinned. “Well, that and the fact you then put your hand over my mouth and then said really, really loudly, ‘Shush! Don’t tell anyone, it’sh’a secret!’ Then you leaned in really, really close and whispered ‘I’m David!’” She gave a burst of laughter. “Total fucking meltdown.”

“I did not.”

“I shit you not.”

“So I just told you.”

“Yup.” She took a sip of tea. “Then you passed out.”

At which point, she went on to explain, she pretty much escorted me out of the bar, telling the guys from work that she’d get me home. Apparently, Dan had offered but Julia insisted and bundled me into an auto-taxi and rode home with me, finding my keys and getting us into the apartment. Which brought her to a final point of evidence.

“Of course, the final proof was when I stripped you for bed. You can imagine what I found hidden away in those ooh-la-la panties of yours.”

“You didn’t.”

“I did.” Her grin was positively cat-like. “Everything else about you might’ve changed, but you can bet I recognized that cock of yours.

“Anyway, I left you in your bed, had a little look around your place, and went home.”

At that point I should’ve been all over her, for violating my privacy, for stripping me naked. And I was angry. But the anger was directed entirely inwards. Putting aside the objectively disconcerting fact she thought she could identify my penis a decade on from last seeing it, or that she’d let herself into my home and stripped me naked; I couldn’t believe I’d just… told her who I was. I’d drunk myself to the point of stupidity, to absolute, incoherent idiocy—and left myself totally vulnerable.

I’d fucked up; I’d fucked up huge, and I couldn’t remember any of it.

And I couldn’t even really blame her for any of it. In some ways, she’d probably saved me from a possibly far worse outcome. Ultimately, the fault was my own and I had to own it. But how was I going to make sure this kind of thing didn’t happen again?

I sat in silence, and Julia seemed quite pleased with herself, slowly slipping her drink with a self-satisfied smile, her eyes flashing with pleasure over the rim of the cup. She clearly enjoyed my discomfort and dismay at having been found out. She had something over me, now: a secret she knew I’d rather keep buried, though not for the reasons she thought.

“Listen,” I said. “I’d like to start fresh. I’d like to thank you for looking out for me on Friday. But mostly, I’d like to… I don’t know; maybe get to know you again.” I gave her what I hoped came across as hopefully, pleading eyes. “Please?” And I stuck my hand out to shake on it.

She eyed it for a second, took my hand in hers, and gave it a firm handshake. And then she laughed, and it sounded genuine. Shaking her head, she seemed to visibly relax. She took a deep drink from her tea and sighed contentedly. “And so, now your name really is …?”

“Cindy,” I said firmly. “Please.”

“That’s short for Cynthia, right?”

I shook my head. “No. Well, yes, it can be, but not mine. My Cindy’s short for Lucinda – you know, like “Lucy”? As in “light”? But yeah, please, just call me Cindy.”

“Cindy.” She paused, as though testing the feel of the name on her tongue, and once again drank me in, absorbing the fastidiously arranged details of my female self. “You look…,” she started.

“Pretty?” I interrupted.

She laughed. “Yeah, sure. Like a fucking doll.”

I winced. “Ouch.”

She shrugged. “I mean, look at you. You’re dressed like what a thirty-year old man thinks a twenty-year old girl dresses, or like something copied off a glossy website. How long did it take you to get ready this morning?”

“A while.”

“Yeah, I bet.” I preened slightly under her gaze. “And… you enjoy it?”

“What, the getting ready?” I shrugged and lied. “Yes. No. Oh, I dunno. Some of it?”

“Like what?”

I raised an eyebrow. “Like what—what?”

Julia shrugged. “I mean… like, what’s so enjoyable about femininity? Because I really just don’t get it. Don’t get me wrong,” she said, raising one hand to forestall any comment. “I’m totally happy with the way I am. Well, mostly. But I’ve been a woman all my life, and you know what? There’s just so. Much. Bullshit, to deal with, every fucking day.

“And then I see guys, and how easy they’ve got it, and I think, we might be able to send a woman off to Mars, but when she gets back here on Earth? We’re still going to treat her like shit. Half a dozen waves of feminism, and we’re probably further back than we were a couple decades ago. We still earn less money than men for the same job. We’re still getting smacked around at home and murdered in parks. We’re still held to hypocritical standards of beauty and dress and behaviour and... and…” She took a deep breath. “And it’s exhausting, sometimes, just so very fucking tiring. So… yeah. Frankly, I can’t see why anyone, given a choice, would give up the joy of male advantage to deal with this crap.”

Confronted by her passionate words, I thought a very long time before answering. “Shoes,” I said.

She groaned.

“No, seriously—I love the shoes.”

“Oh, c’mon, give me a break. You’d give up all the benefits of the brotherhood for a fucking pair of heels?”

Stretching out my legs from beneath the table, I modelled my fine, slim legs for her, sleek in their ivory stockings, and the open-toed, slingback sandals that arched my feet into their delicate pose. “They look good?” I asked.

“Sure. Whatever.”

“No,” I said, “not whatever. This is serious. How tall do you reckon these shoes are?”

She shrugged, looking utterly uninterested “How the hell should I know?”

“Seven centimeters. It’s about the highest I can comfortably manage for a day. I can go higher, but not for very long, at least not yet. I’m sill practicing.”

“Good for you. But why? High heels are bullshit. Just more crap girls have to deal with, more impossible standards. Okay, fine, you’re a girl; doesn’t mean you have to wear heels. Or makeup, or skirts.”

“Sure. And that’s easy for you to say, because you are a girl, have been seen and accepted as one your whole life. No one’s going to question that.”

“Cindy,” she said, shaking her head. “Nobody’s going to question you, either. You look… totally convincing.”

“Maybe.” Under my makeup I felt suddenly hot, flushing crimson at her words. “But I don’t always feel that way. I still feel like a fraud; I’ve felt like a fraud most of life, playing a part, pretending to be someone I’m not.” And I had to pause for a moment, swallowing uncomfortably at how closely my impromptu words hewed to the truth. “And now I’m Cindy, I’m a girl and the thing is, wearing heels and yes, makeup and a skirt, well, it convinces me just as much as anyone watching that this is who I really am.”

She considered that for a moment. “Fine. But you love them? They’re bloody instruments of torture!”

I shrugged. “C’mon, they’re not that bad. Especially as I’m getting used to them. I don’t know if I’ll ever manage the really high one, but even those, maybe someday, right? Because—I’ll be honest here—I like the bump in height. Do you remember, back in the day, how you didn’t like wearing heels because you’d be taller than me?

“I was always short, and you know… that can really suck for a guy. You talk about double standards, right? Well, it’s fine for a girl to be short. Desirable, even? But for a man, somehow it makes him less of a man, right? It’s a stupid fucking power thing. And it used to piss me off. You have any idea how many bitches won’t even date a guy if they’re too short? It’s literally in our language, we ‘look down’ on someone we don’t respect and that kind of thing is worse for a guy.

“So… yeah, I guess there’s this kick out of making myself a bit taller, you know, strutting around with a bit of confidence.”

She still seemed bemused. “So, wearing heels makes you feel more… manly?”

I laughed. “I hadn’t really thought of it that way.” I considered for a second, especially since—yes; in a weird way, I guess Julia’s point was true. I fucking hated Cindy’s footwear, these ‘implements of torture’ as Julia so aptly described them; but at the same time, by wearing them I reclaimed some of those precious centimeters the Asklepios surgeons had cruelly chopped away from me. With more practice and higher heels, I’d even surpass my old height.

“But no, obviously,” I continued. “And I can’t say I understand it, but… well, wearing them, on the one hand, yeah, it fills me with confidence, it’s just such a feminine thing to be able to do, right? These shoes are like the epitome of girly. And then, at the same time, well… I get what you’re saying, right, these things, they’re stupid. I could barely stand in the things at first! And even this pair,” I added, gesturing at my shoes, “I can walk in them all day, but I wouldn’t want to have to run in them. I still wobble if I’m not careful. I can’t tell you how often I’ve nearly twisted my ankle in the past few months.

“But shoes like this, you know, the delicate heel, the way it forces me to take smaller steps, even the way they’re impractical… I guess that’s how it makes me feel, wearing them: delicate, small. Vulnerable.”

Julia raised an eyebrow. “And that’s a good thing?”

I gave an enthusiastic nod. “God, yes!”

“For fuck’s sake,” Julia said, and her voice was a potent mixture of scorn and frustration, “you sound like some stone age misogynist’s wet dream.”

“I’m not,” I said softly. “You said being a woman was exhausting. Fine. But so’s being a guy, Julia. I always felt as though I had to be strong, had to fill the room, had to be… be, I don’t know, invulnerable. And it was exhausting. So. Fucking. Exhausting.” I pointed at my shoe. “And now? Now I get to be like these things: pretty and delicate, and you know what? You’re right, sometimes it’s not easy. And yes, it can be exhausting.

“But it’s wonderful to finally step back and let somebody else fill the room, you know. Someone else can step up and be strong. And so maybe I’m tired, and sometimes even terrified, but I’m also… happy.” And I smiled for her as convincingly as possible, shyly, lowering my eyes demurely, whilst inside I died a little.

We sat like that for a few minutes, in silence, finishing our teas. Café Sporus continued to bubble and froth with life. The schoolgirls were gone; so were the corporate minions, replaced by nearly identical replacements in dark suits and ties, power dresses and pantsuits. Only anachronistic Mr Tweed remained, slouched behind his broadsheet newspaper, through which he seemed to be making steady and methodical progress.

“So you’re trans, then, right?” Julia said, and my attention snapped back to the table.

“I’m Cindy,” I said.

“And when did you…?”

“A few months ago,” I said. “That is, that’s when I made a total break from the past, moved here and got a job and started living openly, full time, self-identified under a new name. But if what you’re really asking is when was Cindy ‘born’, well…” I waved my hand in an indeterminate gesture taking in me, her, the café and the world around us. “I guess I’ve always been Cindy. I just didn’t, or couldn’t, admit it to myself.”

And God, it wasn’t easy, feeding this steady stream of bullshit to Julia. She’d caught me out a few times, but this part I’d rehearsed for, a fine line about a burgeoning awareness of my real self, a female identity denied for most of my life. Hours of surreptitious online research had given me the broad strokes of my own story, cobbled together from genuinely moving stories of admission and revelation, of denial and coming out and heart-rending struggles. But I felt… uncomfortable, telling her this story; squeamish, becoming in her eyes this trans-woman Cindy Bellamy, only just recently escaped from the masculine shell of David Sanders she’s presented for all these years. Telling this story, I felt strangely embarrassed and acutely aware of the clothes I wore, both outer- and under. Seeing myself through her eyes and feeling her frank appraisal of this feminine distortion of the man I’d been was like torture.

“It’s hard to wrap my head around,” she said. “Like you said earlier, you were always so… manly, you know? Like always working out, muscles, all that stuff. And so confident, so domineering.”

“Domineering?” I answered, genuinely bemused by her comment. “I was… over-compensating, I guess. Took me years to figure that out. But I guess you could say I wore all that muscle like a suit of armour. It was protection. Against anyone seeing the real me; against… me, seeing the real me.” Which was a half-truth, I guess. It was a shell; it was protection and years of honing my body had served me well in the past against very real and very physical threats. And even after I’d left that life behind, well, I continued to do well by being in good shape. Being strong was just part of who I was, the working out an almost instinctive routine of daily life, familiar and comforting despite the pain and effort.

Yeah, it was a massive investment of time and energy, but it always paid out dividends: in the girls I took home most weekends, mostly, but also in the simple, mundane benefits of being fit and strong. And in so many ways it made me fucking furious that being Cindy required an equal investment of time and energy, squandered daily on ephemeral beauty, on developing vain proficiencies in hair and makeup and walking in heels. What was the fucking point when a stiff wind could knock me over now, and I needed help to open a heavy goddamn door? The benefits of an hour at the gym were tangible and functional and meaningful; but where was the advantage in spending an hour meticulously painting my face when I was just going to wipe the shit away a few hours later. So much of Cindy’s time seemed consumed by the frivolous demands of simply keeping up appearances, distracting me from more meaningful accomplishments.

She shook her head. “Now look at you.”

I extended one slender arm, turning it this way and that for her, the bangles at my wrist glinting and chiming. “I know, right?”

“I could take you in an arm wrestle, no problem,” she said.

“I’d rather not.”

She laughed. “I bet. Could you, I dunno, stand up for me? Give me a little twirl?”

“Sure.” I pushed back from the table and found my feet. My skirt flared out a little as I spun delicately on tiptoe, risking a tantalising peek of stocking tops. I gave a little bow and sat down again.

Julia shook her head in disbelief. “It’s not possible,” she said.

“Yet here I am.”

“No,” she insisted. “We used to be the same height,” she said, holding up a finger. “I remember that clearly. Like you said, I didn’t like wearing heels with you because you didn’t like me being taller than you. But now you’re the one in heels and I’m taller than you?”

I winced. “That’s not…”

“Two,” she cut me off. “We’re both in our thirties; you’ve got a year and a bit on me. Or should have. But you look younger now than you did ten years ago.”

“It’s makeup…?” I suggested.

“It’s not makeup,” she retorted. “For fuck’s sake.”

“Good genes?”

She grimaced. “Cut the bullshit. Listen: you’re not the first trans girl I’ve known, alright? And as beautiful and wonderful as some of them have been, none of them shrunk by a half dozen centimetres and shed ten years when they transitioned. None of them magically transformed into their idealised twenty-year old fantasy girl self, no matter how much they might’ve wanted it.

“So maybe this is who you are, and who’ve you’ve always wanted to be – but it just. Isn’t. Possible.” She punctuated each word with her finger, pointing it aggressively at me.

“Yet here I am,” I insisted.

She nodded. “And I want you tell me where you came from.”

“Tell you what,” I answered. “I’m starving. Let’s grab a bite to eat somewhere that serves something stronger than tea. I’ll tell you over lunch.”

***

I started with the story of the wedding dress.

So, I’m seven years old and with my mother. We’re out shopping. I can vaguely remember feeling… excited? or maybe simply wanted? being out with her instead of dumped on a baby-sitter or an irritated friend, or just left at home on my own. She’s with a friend, that friend is getting married soon, and they’re shopping for a dress. And I can remember – how to put it? – this tiny, tight knot in my stomach as we step into this store, with its ivory-clad mannequins, and racks of white dresses, all glittering and shimmering in the bright summer rays of the late afternoon sun. In my memory, the whole room is bathed in a ruddy, warm glow in which seasonal charmeuse and ivory brocade cascades off the slender figures in the window. Swathes of gauzy tulle traps the light of the setting sun in its delicately sheer weave. Embroidered pearls and sequins glitter in the vividly coloured bridesmaids’ dresses. And it feels wrong, being a boy in that place, this intensely female space, like sneaking into the girls’ bathroom at school. It’s a land of lace and veils, but to my prepubescent self it feels as though a mask is pulled from his eyes for the first time. I stand, speechless, as my mom and her friend bustle into the shop and shove me to one side, out of the way.

And I remember wandering, stupefied, among those mystifying clothes, crawling and hiding under the skirts of the larger dresses, or threading between those hanging on the racks and losing myself in the sensation of foreign fabrics softly sliding against my arms and face. For an indefinite time, I explore this garden of taffeta femininity. Emerging from this forest of satin and silk, I see my mom’s friend step out of the changing room wearing her first choice of dresses.

And it’s strange, so very strange that for all the vividness of the memory, the dress itself remains vague and indistinct. There is a powerful impression of ivory, a corona of petticoated pearlescence and effervescent fabric that seemed to draw in and hold the light, and she is made nearly incandescent by her clothes. I stare, utterly enraptured, and a single, absolute certainty burns itself into my young consciousness.

I want to wear that wedding dress.

“That really happened?” Julia interrupted.

I nodded, spearing a morsel of delicately flavoured soy chicken. She’s brought us to a trendy restaurant-slash-bar a short cab ride away from the café. It’s definitely out of Cindy’s price range. Julia chose the seat, and so we’re sat uncomfortably close to the large windows at the front of the restaurant. A steady trickle of people flowed past outside, some pausing and unnervingly glancing in at the patrons. The heavy, tinted windows absorb much of the brutal afternoon heat, but increasingly I’m regretting my choice of clothing: the heavy skirt and fancy underwear might keep me feeling all girly for the encounter, but I could feel what might be boob sweat pooling in my bra, and those damned stockings kept threatening to slip down to my ankles. It felt like my face was going to slide off, and meanwhile Julia seemed totally unfazed by the filtered glare of the sun, perfectly comfortable in her loose and breathable clothing.

And I couldn’t help but gaze enviously at her steak and potatoes, and at the way she wolfed it down with obvious relish. She’s got a frothy pint of beer to wash it back, something craft and local. Meanwhile, I’ve got a plate of fake meat with a small salad and a glass of white wine. Still, as painful and humiliating as the whole act was to maintain, the charade appeared to be working. My ex-girlfriend was buying the lie that her former boyfriend had always been, deep down inside, this prissy and dainty girl….

“And that’s when you knew,” she said.

I swallowed, washing down the chicken with a sip of wine. “Yup.”

“But it was just a dress,” she said, sounding doubtful. “Couldn’t you have just, I don’t know, dressed up in your mom’s clothes when she was at work or something? Like, how did you know you weren’t just a cross-dresser, or just curious or something? We grew up at the height of gender fluidity, right?”

I laughed – an inadvertently genuine one, not one of Cindy softer, controlled giggles. “Where I grew up? Like fuck I could’ve swished around in a dress. I’d’ve been killed.”

Her eyes widened, and she stared at me wordlessly.

“What?” I asked, suddenly self-conscious. “Is it my makeup?” I reached for the phone to check.

She shook her head. “No. No, you look…” She trailed off, and then: “Jesus Christ, you sounded just like… -him-, the way you said that.”

“Sorry,” I said. “It slips out sometimes. I’m working on it but… you know.” I shrugged. “It’s hard.”

“No,” she said, and she shook her head. “I don’t know. Tell me.”

With a little nod, and a lighter voice, I resumed. “But no, that dress changed everything.” So I told her another story, and the whole time I was watching her closely, trying to read her response, trying to bring her to the place, emotionally and mentally, I needed her to be. My story picked up a year later, and how afterwards I shared my secret with a young girl I knew from school called Amelia, a friend who took pity on the small, scrawny, half-foreign kid who so often sat on his own in the playground. How she took me home after school one day, and let me try on one of her party dresses—a frothy, bright red thing—and looked at me sadly, and said: no.

It isn’t right, she said. Boys don’t wear dresses.

And I realised that she was right: boys don’t wear dresses. But wearing that dress that afternoon felt so right and comfortable; it was the most comfortable and right I’d felt my whole life. I knew then that even if boys didn’t wear dresses, that I most certainly would. And by that logic, the only thing that made sense was that for me to be able to wear a dress, that I had to be a girl. Once I was a girl both inside and out, no one would question my right to wear a dress, be it for a party or wedding.

By this time Julia was polishing off the last of her plate. I watched enviously as she speared the final morsel of red meat disappeared between her lips. She knocked back the last of her beer and signaled for the waiter. “And thus Cindy was born,” she said.

“More like killed,” I said, and brought the half-fictional story of my childhood to an end. I told her how Amelia, a few days later, after we had a minor falling out over… something—who knew what trivialities eight-year olds fight about—well, the girl went and told some of the bigger boys in our grade about my love of dresses. She even had a picture on her phone; she hadn’t told me she’d taken in. Cue the age-old story: they called me a sissy and a faggot, they pushed me around, they made my life hell until I snapped and tried to fight back, and then they absolutely destroyed me and I ended up in hospital. It was there during recovery that I learned the best possible thing to do was to leave Cindy behind in that antiseptic palace. I buried her deep, so deeply I nearly forgot about her, and made damn sure nobody was ever able to hurt me like that again.

Julia expression was unexpectedly stony and withdrawn as I wrapped up my story. I couldn’t quite read what she was thinking behind veiled eyes, but when she finally spoke she sounded genuine. “Da…. Cindy. Christ, I’m… sorry, I had no idea.”

I shrugged. “Why would you? I’ve never been one to talk about the past.” Which was the truest thing I’d said that afternoon. “To be honest, the worst thing were the hospital bills.”

The whole story danced flirtingly with the truth, filtered through the fictional pink lens of Cindy’s past but hewing close enough to actual events so that I could remember the story for the future. The conviction of delivery doubtlessly would’ve suffered without its foundation of honesty. My mother did bring me to a bridal shop when I was seven. I may or may not have wandered around a bit before growing bored; I certainly didn’t remember any transcendental revelation beyond the fact her friend looked like too much meat stuffed into a too-tight sausage casing.

And there really had been an Amelia, a seemingly friendly girl who’d taken pity on the lonely, scrawny, half-foreign kid who sat alone in the playground, and she brought me home one day. She showed off her party dress to me, excited about her coming birthday party. I’d been excited as well and held her hand and tried to kiss her. A few days later, when she told me I wasn’t invited to her party anymore because her parents didn’t want me there, I got upset. Then she told some of the other boys that I’d kissed her. They beat the shit out of me and put me in hospital, but I was already a mean little bastard by then, and I brought one of them with me.

And that’s where Sakura found me.

Which, it seems, ultimately led to me sitting here, squirming and sweating, in a skirt. So thanks a fucking lot, Amelia.

“So,” I tentatively asked, in the brief pause as the waiter took away our plates, making room for some desert.

“Yes?” Julia answered distractedly, scanning the drinks menu. “I shouldn’t,” she muttered to herself. “Gotta work tomorrow. Then again: fuck it,” she decided, and when the waiter returned, she ordered desert for both of us, and a Macallan for herself. “Make it a double.”

“I can trust you, right?”

“Depends.”

“On?”

“On what you’re trusting me with.” She leaned back, arms crossed, again impassive.

“My life,” I said, sweeping my hair back over the shoulder with a flick of the head and smoothing it down with my left hand, avoiding her gaze. “Please,” I continued, softly, “These past few months, they’ve been… difficult. Like, really difficult, learning to live this new life. I’ve always known this is who I was meant to be…”—and I had to stop here for a moment, to swallow a momentary pang of disgust— “but actually being me, it’s… hard sometimes.

“But I’m getting there!” And here I looked up, locking eyes with her. “I’m learning. Every day I’m a little bit more me, and little bit less… who I was. And then to suddenly meet someone who looks at me and has these memories of who I was, I feel like it knocks me right back to where I started.

“And then if others knew….” I shook my head. “I think it would destroy me.”

Julia stayed silent as the waiter returned, with two thin slices of cheesecake, her whiskey and another small glass of wine for me. She picked up the tumbler and inhaled deeply, and sighed, as she swirled the glass and its golden contents.

“Maybe so,” she answered evenly. “But you still haven’t explained why I should give a fuck.”

“But—”

“No,” she interrupted. She suddenly surged forward in her seat, leaning over the table, her face close to mine, and she spoke in a cold whisper. “Fuck you, David. Or Cindy. I don’t give a shit who you think you are. And I don’t care how hard your life is. Why should I?

“You say your life’s difficult. Welcome to the party, girl. Yeah, life’s tough being a woman. And you’ve been one for what, two months, and you’re already complaining? Thirty years of living it up with the patriarchy, and now after a couple of months of guys staring at your tits, you’re already complaining?

“That’s not—”

“Fucking deal with it. Like, sure, it sucked that you had a rough childhood. It sucked you didn’t get to wear all those pretty dresses you wanted to wear. And yeah, I get it, maybe that made you into the twisted pile of toxic masculinity bullshit I fell in love with ten years ago. I get it.

“But the fact remains: you hurt me. You wrecked years of my life, years I’ll never get back, and I don’t fucking care what happened to you that made you into such a colossal prick. And maybe you can sit there, all dolled up sexy, and sure, it’s a new you, but it’s still you, you who hurt me, so sorry, Cindy, if I’m not particularly inclined to forgive and forget tonight.” There was an almost chilling intensity to her delivery, a clipped, rapid monotone; was this, at least in part one of the speeches she’d practiced over the years? Were we just performing rehearsed scripts tonight, engaged in a melee of prepared dialogue and practiced emotions?

“So again: why should I give a fuck what you want?” Her eyes blazed and her cheeks were flushed, and there was something wonderfully sexy in her anger and her closeness that suddenly had me sitting uncomfortably.

Just as suddenly as she’d moved in, she sat back, and was all smiles again. Very deliberately, she sliced off a piece of her cheesecake and stabbed it with her fork. She took a bite. “Mmm,” she sighed, momentarily closing her eyes. “So good.” Gesticulating with her fork, pointing the tip at me, she added, “You really should try it.”

Carefully maintaining Cindy’s façade—her mouth a little ‘o’ of surprise and horror, eyes widening and near tears—and with a slight tremble to my hand, I reached for my glass and took a desperate sip of wine. As though unable to meet her hungry gaze, I looked aside and outside. There was a young man there, silhouetted against the setting sun, watching us through the window and my reflection in it. Our eyes met; he grinned and made an obscene gesture; and laughing, walked away.

“I… I need the toilet,” I whispered, standing up, smoothing down my skirt, reaching for my clutch, fumbling as the strap got tangled in the chair, the very image of feminine distress.

“Yeah, whatever.” Julia waved one hand dismissively. “Take your time. I’m in no rush.”

***

Clattering heels pursued me into the women’s washroom, where I locked myself into a stall and sank exhausted onto the toilet. Skirt up, panties down; cautious release of cock and balls; a deep sigh of relief. Making the decision to leave my bits free, I trusted secrecy to the tightness of the underwear and the heaviness of the skirt.

The women’s washroom oozed gentle coziness, suffused with gentle lighting from sunken recesses. Soft music tinkled in the background and a faint scent of rosewood drifted on the air. The mirrors were brightly lit and I leaned close and stared at my reflection over the counter, as I had so often these past few months. An attractive young woman stared back, though truth be told, the strain of the past few hours was beginning to show, in her makeup, around her eyes. She smiled tentatively. Her smile widened into a grin, into a grimace; a sudden, mad impulse to laugh, to scream, to smash the mirror and howl shuddered through me with an intensity that left me panting.

Deep breath. Instead, I reached for makeup. Dabbing gently, I started cleaning away the afternoon’s sweat with blotting paper. Leaning in close to the mirror, glittering emerald stared back. “Under all that makeup, there’s still something of the old you in the eye,” she’d said, and if so, memory-me, that old-I, watched mockingly as I fumbled for a little pot of cream blush.

And I can’t believe this is happening, dotting and blending spots of colour into my cheeks, that Julia’s resentment runs so deeply, what the fuck is wrong with that woman? Yeah, sure, I’d ended thing poorly. And she was right: dumping her the way I did was cowardly, weak, wrong; unmanly. Wrong, but for fuck’s sake, it’s hardly like she was the only one who suffered. A year on from her death, the memory of Sephy was still too fierce, the guilt and the pain and the loss, all twisted and mixed in with the sense of betrayal and resentment and fury at the way I’d been dumped on the streets for a year, a whole goddamn year lost to hard pavement, indifferent cruelty, and callous anonymity that nearly annihilated me. Even now, with a determinedly steadied hand, smoothing out the fine lines where concealer had gathered under the eyes, I struggled to suppress the residual rage that remained a decade later.

I never promised her anything! We were together for what, a few months? Three fucking month. I never told her I loved her. I never asked her to move in with me or offered to marry her. We went out to nice restaurants, I paid for good food and drink, and then we fucked. It was fun. For a couple of months!—and then it was over. It was over and she must realise that, for all the time and energy she’d poured into practicing furious, empty speeches over the years—that I had barely thought of her at all.

Eyes were tricky: a touch of shadow in the crease to bring some colour back and I left it at that. What, exactly, had she fallen in love with, anyways? What, exactly, had I offered her then that was so fucking special? A deeply damaged soul in need of repair? An up-and-coming corporate star? Had she seen potential, a gemstone in the rough in want of polishing before mounting, displaying, possessing?

I suppressed a laugh. No. Picking up some powder, quickly and lightly setting my face, I knew it was so much simpler that that. Julia, twenty-two years old Julia: fresh and young in her first real job out of university; innocent and bright, ambitious and hungry; but also… just a girl.

Just a fucking girl, truly on her own for the first time in her life. And that girl of ten years ago had succumbed to the same primitive, instinctive need that filled so many others, that they secretly yearn for: to lose themselves wholly to a man, a real man, to his dominance and strength, confidence and will. And as fucked up as I was, I’d given her all that, and more. And maybe Julia looked back on that with regret, with anger and spite; maybe she hated me, or her younger self, or both; but I’d been everything she wanted back then. And I’d bet what little pride I had remaining that she still loved me, still yearned for me, because at some level she probably could not admit to she still craved to give herself over, utterly and completely, to someone once again.

A touch of lipstick, a darker shade than before, crimson that bordered on purple like a fresh bruise, and the job was done. I stared at my reflection and an attractive young woman stared back, her face fixed, confidence returned. She posed in the mirror, swept her long hair back, made a little kissy face and grinned.

Fucking hell. It was time to bring this performance to an end.

***

I returned to the table to find Julia, a little red in the face, silhouetted in the rosy-hued fading light streaming in from outside, polishing off the last of both the cheesecakes and her whiskey. Sliding into my seat, tugging my skirt down, and facing her, I opened my mouth to speak. “Listen--” but she cut me off.

“So,” she said, and grinned wickedly. “You like cock now?”

“Excuse me?”

“You heard me. Like, I know you’ve still got yours, but then things were getting pretty hot and heavy with that guy from the office on Friday night, so I was wondering: you into guys now?”

“Jesus. Julia!”

“Oh, don’t be such a fucking prude.” She shrugged, gesturing for the waiter. “You certainly weren’t before.”

“I’m not a prude.”

“Then spill, girl. You’ve given up oysters for sausage?”

I frowned. “No,” I admitted, reaching for my warming glass of wine. I stared at it for a moment, giving it a little swirl and watching as it sparkled in the ruby light of the setting sun. Fuck it. I knocked it back in one and grimaced. “But even if I had,” I continued. “It’s not something I’d want to talk, is it?”

She laughed. “Like I care?” The waiter sidled up to our table at that moment, and she ordered another double. She raised her eye at me questioningly.

“Yeah,” I sighed, “why not?” and ordered another.

Julia watched the waiter leave and looked askance at me, before leaning in conspiratorially. “So that doesn’t do anything for you?” She nodded towards the waiter. He was a young man, probably about Cindy’s age: white button-down shirt, fitted black trousers, trailing end of tattoos slithering out from under his sleeve cuffs and lurking at his collar. I hadn’t noticed anything else about him, generally a sign he’d been efficient and skilled at his job. “I mean, he’s got a pretty tight ass, right?”

I looked more carefully, trying to see it from her perspective. Tall, slim, dark-skinned; short, spikey hair, hint of muscle beneath his shirt. Like, maybe? If the waiter’d been a girl, yeah, I would’ve paid more attention; and if that’d been a female ass, I’d probably be a bit more into it. She’d be wearing tighter trousers, for one, with maybe a hint of thong threading those cheeks. Crossing my legs tightly under the table, I turned my attention back to Julia. “Sure. I mean—”

“So you are into guys!”

“I don’t know!” I lied. “It’s all new to me, alright?”

“So what was that on Friday, then?”

I groaned. “I was drunk.”

“And loving his tongue down your throat?”

“Please, Jules…”

Julia was still eyeing the waiter, who still seemed blissfully unaware of our scrutiny. He was chatting to an older woman behind the counter. “He’s got nice hands,” she said. “You had strong hands, remember? I like that in a man. Can you imagine him touching you? Firmly, by the shoulder? Sliding down your side, gently? From behind, cupping your breasts….”

Inadvertently, I shivered. And as she continued, she leaned in closer, crossing the distance between us and I could smell the whiskey on her breath as her voice shifted in timber, deepening. Julia sounded eager as she whispered in my ear. “Imagine him behind you. One hand on your boob, the other softly stroking, fingers caressing their way down, across your skin…” Together, heads nearly touching, blonde and black hair pooling at the edge of the table, we followed his movements as he walked nonchalantly to the back of the restaurant. Our gaze followed him, but as Julia continued mine slide further back, to the far end of the restaurant. “He touches your belly. His fingers press into you. He pulls you back, your tummy tightening under his touch, and his breath is hot on your skin, his cock pressing into your ass.”

“Stop,” I breathed.

“Imagine him kneading your tit, thumb on nipple, on your thigh, and his tongue…”

“Stop it!” I hissed, and without looking back my hand snaked out and grabbed hers. “For fuck’s sake, Julia.” I squeezed, hard. “Stop!”

“Hey, ouch! You’re hurting me.”

“Then fucking listen. You see that man?”

“The waiter?”

“No! Past him, back of the restaurant. Don’t stare. See him? Now, sit back – look at me.”

She followed instructions with a bemused look on her face. She gave her hand a little shake. “What the fuck, Cindy, what’s gotten into you?” Her eyes began to slide towards the back of the restaurant.

“Keep your eyes on me, you stupid bitch!”

Her eyes widened. “Excuse me?”

“You heard me,” I said. And as I spoke, I shifted for her eyes and ears only: the timber of my voice, the way I held myself in the seat; Cindy fell away momentarily and for the first time in weeks, I spoke as myself. “Now listen. That man back there. Did you recognize him?”

“What? No, why would I?”

“Back at Café Sporus. Did you see the man with the newspaper?”

“Why are you—”

I cut her off. “Shut the fuck up and answer the question, Little Caesar. Did you see the man with the newspaper?”

She hesitated for a moment. I could see in her eyes as she thought back, through a slight haze of whiskey and conversation. “Yes,” she said.

“What was he wearing?”

“How the fuck should I…,” she started then trailed off. “Tweed suit?”

“And the man at the back of the restaurant—don’t look!—what’s he wearing?”

“I…” Julia’s eyes widened. “Tweed suit?”

“Yeah,” I growled, calmly reaching for my wine. “Got it in one.”

“But that doesn’t mean anything,” she said. “It’s just a coincidence.”

Raising the wine glass to my lips, looking at her over the rim, I slowly shook my head. I knocked the wine back in a single gulp. “No,” I said. “It’s not.”

“Cindy,” she said, leaning closer. “What’s going on?”

“David,” I said, and grabbing her hand I squeezed it hard. She winced; I took some small pleasure in her pain. “My name is David,” I said. “And I’m being followed. We’ve got to get out of here.”

She stared at me blankly for a moment, the nodded.

To her credit, Julia played along beautifully as we escaped the restaurant. We finished our drinks quickly—but not too quickly—and she ordered a cab, which duly arrived as she settled the bill. Laughing, chatting, tossing back our hair as we slid handbags over shoulders, we left the restaurant and slid into the waiting car.

“What the fuck—” she started the moment the door shut, but I cut her off with a look and pointed at the sign on the back of the seat: all rides were audio and video recorded for the safety of the customer and the company. Driverless, the vehicle acknowledged and confirmed our presence, and hummed into the early evening, winding its way to Julia’s apartment.

“Not the day I expected,” Julia muttered.

I laughed. “No kidding.”

“Here. This is for you.” She passed a slip of paper, a number scrawled across its back. I raised an eyebrow. “The waiter’s number,” she said, and despite the tension her eyes sparkled with mirth. “Guess he noticed us checking out his ass.”

We lapsed into silence. I stared out the window, a tight knot in my belly. Outside, the city suburbs slid by, awash in artificial dawn as shop fronts and restaurants, bars and shops spilled their light onto the pavement. Swiftly, we wound our way towards the centre, ever-taller cathedrals of cement and glass clawing the night sky. The moment felt inexplicably familiar—sat in the back of a cab, next to Julia—slipping into the night—though the sleek legs emerging from the short skirt, crossed at the thigh, and the painted fingers clutching tightly at the knee, and the shoes sparkling in the dark, all belonged to the wrong person. And yet despite the incongruity, this moment raised a ghost of shared memory.

We paused at a junction, traffic light momentarily painting us red, headlights strobing from turning cars. A pedestrian, crossing, glancing in would see two attractive women, possibly girlfriends, sat close in the rear of the car.

“Hey, you remember?” she suddenly started, snapping me out of my reverie as the car slid forward.

“The gig?”

She nodded.

“Why’d you suddenly think of that?”

“Dunno.” She shrugged. “Back of a car, it’s a hot night… one of us is wearing a skirt.” She chuckled. “You were remembering too, weren’t you?”

“Harry,” I said, feeling a sudden pang.

She laughed. “Yeah, you loved that old guy, didn’t you? Wasn’t really my thing.” She paused in recollection. “Was a pretty awesome gig, though. Guy knew how to put on a show.”

“Yeah,” I said quietly. “Longman was pretty awesome.”

Sensitive to our words, the car started up some music, not so loudly as to interfere with conversation. It was the classic title track from his second album: Beautiful Losers. The opening melancholy chords filled the space between us.

“Didn’t he…?”

“Yeah,” I answered. “First encore.”

We sat there like that for a moment sharing the music and the memory, and I felt the space—short centimetres, long years—separating us. A crazy impulse to reach out nearly overcame me, to hold her hand or pull her closer. It was the music and the day’s drinking and the darkness outside the car, and I knew she felt it too. Almost too quietly to hear, I heard her whisper: “I didn’t rehearse for this.”

Her words triggered an assault of—not guilt, exactly, but still something like a physical cramp in the belly—discomfort and doubt. Julia didn’t deserve this. Whatever anger and bitterness she felt over me was her own, and she’d clearly worked hard over the years to move on from our past. I could just jump out of the car and disappear. She might reveal my identity; she might not; either way, she’d probably be fine. But if I went home with her now and saw this through, I’d be binding her to me once again. It wasn’t fair to her.

On the other hand, waking up alone with tits and an identity I never chose wasn’t exactly fair, either. Losing my job, my income, my home; losing my self, my sex, my privilege—in exchange for… what, exactly? I glanced down at the paper in my hand, sighed and slipped it into my handbag.

The song ended, surging though the crunchier second half, the intense, short guitar solo that underpinned the lyrics of loss and yearning; and then something else started, somehow recognizable but still unknown. It was definitely more contemporary—dirty beats, layered synth underscored by harsh guitar that briefly surfaced from the aural wash—maybe a sample from Longman?—but then the vocals kicked in, the woman’s ethereal tones ordering the crafted cacophony.

“Turn it up,” Julia commanded, and the car dutifully obeyed.

“What’s this?”

She looked genuinely surprised. “Really? It’s been on constant play like… everywhere. Huge.”

“I’ve been a bit distracted lately.”

“Cindy,” she said. “That’s her name—well, like you, I guess. Spelled differently, though: ‘sin’ in the religious way; capital D – I at the end. SinDi. She just popped up a month ago; major push by the label, we’re doing a bit of work with them, but this track’s just really grabbed the zeitgeist. To be honest, at first I thought she was just another pop starlet of the moment, you know—you should fucking see her! Sexy little thing—but seems she might have traction.”

The song’s appeal was clear: catchy hooks, but with depth; crafted rather than processed. I could already imagine the bass-heavy remix pounding away at a club or relaxing to it in the dark with an acoustic version at home. You could dance to it; you could fuck to it. I liked it instantly, even if the girl’s voice was a little breathy for my taste.

“Song’s called ‘Broken Flowers’,” Julia said, and lapsed into silence as I listened to the opening lyrics:

You’ll miss me when I’m gone
She said
There was a girl
She said
Lip gloss and lilacs
And the moon.

The song was just beginning to open up, the lyrics pulling back as the layered soundscape started to assert itself—and then it faded and disappeared, leaving me wanting more.

“We’re here,” Julia announced.

The cab turned down a short cul-de-sac, leafy and affluent, past a row of terraced houses, and then disgorged us at the base of a turn-of-the-century building, a towering slab of glittering glass, sharp-angled porches and red-brown brick. The car purred off into the night. Drinking in the details of her home, I followed Julia as she led me past the concierge—the bastard’s eyes on our asses as we walked past—and into the elevator. I could sense her assessing me as we surged upwards, feel her growing desire to demand answers. We stopped at the twelfth floor, a few floors shy of the top penthouse. The hallway was silent, brightly-lit, and smelled sharply clean, with only two doors at opposing ends. She led me to the one on the left, tapped the lock and led me into her home.

The door had barely clicked shut before she spun on me, eyes flashing. “What the fuck!” she shouted. “What’s going on—”

Anticipating her outburst, I clapped my hand over her mouth. “Quiet.”

Her eyes glared at me over my fingers.

“Speakers.” I indicated towards one I could see. “Smart appliances.”

Her eyes widened slightly with understanding. A few taps on her phone, and she nodded. “Off.”

“Good,” I breathed, sagging with relief. Heels clicked on the hardwood entrance as I looked around. “Nice place you’ve got here.”

“You’re going to tell me what the hell is going on here – David.”

“Yeah, sure.” I waved her off and sank into the nearest seat, a long sofa in slate grey, lamps responding to my movement and lighting the way into her home. I fumbled with delicate straps and tossed my shoes aside and gave a deep sigh of relief. “Oh, thank God,” I said, stretching out aching arches. “Goddam implements of torture.”

“I thought you loved them.”

“I hate them,” I growled. “And these,” I added, slipping off the bracelets decorating my wrists, unclasping the bauble at my throat.

She watched me quietly, and I ignored her. Julia had a nice place: large, open plan, very contemporary, taking up half the floor. Large windows, blinds pulled aside, granted a view towards both the city centre and opposite, the sprawl of suburban streets stretching towards the horizon. It was darker now; the commercial monoliths cut dark silhouettes in the distance, washed from below in garish street-level glows, glittering along their edges and tops with safety lights. Her furniture looked new and sleek. What I could see appeared startlingly clean. Aside from some token decorations that spoke of the girl remembered from a decade ago, the place felt strangely impersonal, like a show room for a new block of condos. There was a dull comfort and familiarity to her home, like a hotel room you’ve visited a hundred times before in any number of cities. The odd blandness of the place went some way towards tempering the stab of jealousy I felt at the contrast between Julia’s slick accommodations and Cindy’s tiny apartment.

Julia padded into the kitchen, the lights softly rising at her entrance. She pulled a bottle of wine from the fridge and two glasses from a shelf. “You lied to me,” she stated, returning, dropping into the far end of the sofa. She passed me a glass.

“Yup.”

“How much?”

“Almost all of it.” She twisted the bottle open and I held out the glass and she poured a generous serving of Riesling. She kicked off her shoes, legs curling beneath her. In contrast, I sat with my legs spread as wide as the skirt would allow. It felt good to spread out. “Like, 90% of it.” I considered a moment. “Maybe 80%.” The day’s emotional exertion suddenly caught up with me. Given a moment’s peace, I could so easily close my eyes and fall asleep here, like this. Instead, I stared blankly at her ceiling, waiting.

She frowned. “You’re not trans.”

“Ha! No.”

“Makeup?”

“Hate that shit.”

“And that story about the little girl and the bullies and…”

“Ah. That one’s true.” I took a drink of wine, a long one, relishing the crisp coolness of it. Julia served quality stuff. “Except for the bit about the dress.”

Julia took a sip of wine, then carefully placed her glass down on a coaster on the coffee table by the sofa. I could see her struggling; her hand clenched and unclenched and the tension was clear in the tendons of her arm. She struggled to keep her voice neutral. “Then what the hell is going on, David?”

And here it was: my leap of faith.

“Witness protection,” I answered.

“Witness--?”

“Protection.” I took a deep breath. “I saw something I shouldn’t have, and instead of keeping my mouth shut like a sensible person, I told the cops. They kept me in hiding until calling me as a witness.” I took another long drink of wine, nearly finishing it, putting the glass down next to hers, mine holding the reddish half-moon lip mark on the rim while hers didn’t. “Afterwards, it became very clear, very quickly, that my life was in danger.”

Julia raised an eyebrow. “Death threats?”

“I wish,” I answered drily, and told her in minimal details about the attempt on my life outside the courtroom: two bullets, one jacket, and bruises and broken ribs.

Her mouth dropped open in horror. “No way.”

“Yeah.” I pointed to where the bullets hit. “Here and here. Scary shit. And so my handler—that’s the agent appointed to keep me alive—she decided to smuggle me away to somewhere safe to recover. In a dress.”

“No!”

I smiled ruefully. “Yes. Well, sort of. Tight jeans, stuffed bra, heels and makeup, wig. Enough to fool anyone from a distance while she escorted me.” The events all seemed a lifetime ago. After all, these events belonged to the story of David Sanders – not Cindy Bellamy. But telling the story brought it back vividly, those bizarre, synthetic breasts K stuck onto my chest at the start; the impossible bio-engineered pussy that came later; and K herself, stern and sexy and twisted. The short, intense time we spent together. The drive and the hotel room. The Clinic.

“But it didn’t work. There was a man chasing me. He found me. He broke my arm,” and I held out the injured limb, delicate and smooth, bare to the shoulder, for Julia to see. “Here, with an iron bar.” I gestured without touching at my face. “Smashing in my nose and jaw. He tossed me through a glass door, he cut me, he shattered my leg. And then he shot me in the side. I think he tore a hole in my lung; I don’t really remember. There was a hell of a lot of blood.”

Julia looked a little ashen, shaken as her mouth hung open. She turned away, silently grabbing the bottle and refilling our glasses and passed one back to me. I took it gratefully and drank deeply.

I hadn’t really reflected on my near assassination since recovering from the attempt, nor had the opportunity to share the experience with anyone. Doing so brought a flurry of conflicting emotion: mostly, and most vividly, I remembered the sheer joy of the fight, of cutting loose after so many years of playing nicely according to the mundane rules of David’s life. Even hampered by ridiculous clothing, matched against an opponent enjoying every possible advantage… I’d held my own; gave as good as I got; and yeah, I should’ve died then and there but I took the fucking bastard with me. The vivid slash across the neck; the gurgle and crimson froth; eyes wide with the realisation of his own death: there was a savage satisfaction to it all.

But he’d killed me. At least, I should’ve died. It would’ve saved me the living death, the slow, painful humiliation of inhabiting Cindy’s life. But for the unlikely intervention of the Asklepios Clinic’s freaking Frankenstein science, that would’ve been the end of the story of David Sanders: ten years the corporate stooge; what was the fucking point? And I probably should be shaken, deeply traumatised by the experience of brutality and pain and the reality of my near death. It was the stuff of nightmares.

But I already had my own nightmares and they weren’t so easily displaced. It wasn’t my first brush with death. And other than a visceral thrill at the memory of violence, I couldn’t summon up anything greater than apathy at the thought of David’s demise. It was almost as though he’d hardly existed to begin with.

Julia was watching me carefully, studying the play of emotions across my face. She was clearly carefully considering what to say next.

“You’re lying again,” she said.

“Nope.” I shook my head, blonde tresses falling about my face. With a flick of the neck, I sent my hair back over my left shoulder, and smoothed it down with a quick stroke the hand. “This part is true. They got me. I was a goner.”

“But…”

“You said it was impossible for me to look this way.” I smiled wryly. “Maybe you’re right. But everybody knows there’s some pretty crazy shit out there these days. Like, there’s a goddam factory on the Moon, right? We’ve got people half-way to Mars. There was all that medical voodoo shit they did when the last pandemic hit a few years ago. So, yeah, I got to experience some of that stuff up-close, I guess. They dunked me into some kind of tank, a bleeding wreck of a corpse; and I came out like this.”

“A girl!”

“A disguise,” I insisted. “Remember that scandal last year, at the Olympics, the gene doping one? It’s like that, I think, something like that but instead of expressing all those genes for strength and endurance and whatever, they went for—this.” I cupped the soft flesh of my chest. “Tits and soft skin and long hair and… all the rest.” I could feel the anger creeping into my voice, the frustration and sense of betrayal, the intense humiliation.

“And this all happened a few months ago?”

“More like six, going back to the very start. The tank was about four months ago.”

She shook her head. “But it’s not possible. If what you say is true: shot, cut, broken, bleeding out. Nobody heals that quickly, not even with crazy voodoo science.”

“Like I said before: here I am.”

“Show me,” she said.

I raised an eyebrow. “What do you mean?”

“I want to see,” Julia answered. “Stand up. Strip. Show me.”

“Didn’t you see enough on Friday?”

But she hadn’t, and so I did. In the dim lighting of Julia’s living room, I stood there, carefully undoing the heavy buttons until I could wiggle free of the skirt. The wine, on top of the day’s earlier drinking, rushed to my head and I fumbled with the buttons and my longer nails again felt ungainly. The skirt pooled at my feet, revealing smooth, shaven thighs over lacy stocking tops. With some awkwardness, I reached for the buttons running up my back, and shimmied out of my shirt, and in doing so found myself standing in nothing but my underwear—pink push-up bra, bulging thong, white thigh-high stocking—and earrings and makeup, in front of my ex-girlfriend, and I trembled very slightly despite the warmth, a deep flush slowly crawling up my chest and throat.

Julia circled me, drinking in every detail of my femininity, and I saw in her gaze the same ravenous hunger, the insatiable desire, that I sensed earlier in the day. Clearly, it was all she could do to refrain from reaching out and touching me, and stroking the smooth, whole skin. I felt acutely aware, for the first time, how she was larger than me now, taller as I stood there barefooted; and uneasiness fluttered across my belly.

“No scars, nothing,” she said.

“I know. Crazy, right?”

“But you were… shot?”

“Right fucking here,” I said, and took her hand. She jerked slightly at my touch but allowed me to bring her to a place over my ribs halfway between hip and armpit. Her touch lingered there, hot, uncertain, but then she tentatively pressed at the spot. “Does it hurt?”

“Not at all.” I giggled, involuntarily. “It tickles a little, actually.”

Her hand slowly traced a path down my side, towards my waist. She was standing directly in front of me now, our foreheads nearly touching. “There isn’t a mark on you.”

“Nope.”

Her fingertips hovered at the edge of my abdomen, at the waistband of my panties. “You used to have a birthmark here.”

“Gone.”

With gentle prodding, she urged me to turn. Her touch explored my shoulder, my back, a finger traced down my spine. “You had scars here,” she said, “and here, and here.” She punctuated each with a touch.

“All gone.”

She stood so close I could feel the heat from her body. Her hand briefly, tantalisingly brushed across my ass, bared and supple, split by the thong wedged between both cheeks. I felt her presence, her touch, with painful intensity, and trembled with arousal. There was a faint smell to her—a miasma of memory—that carried with it recollections of intimate times together.

“Unbelievable,” she whispered.

I took her hand in mine again, turned to face her. “You should check this out,” I said, and brought her hand to my breast.

She pulled her hand away.

“Hey, it’s fine,” I said, bringing her back.

Her breath tickled my collarbone and sent an errant strand of hair dancing. Her hand rested tenderly, almost nervously, over my boob, the gauzy fabric of the bra a flimsy barrier between her touch and my flesh. At her nervous touch the flush felt earlier, the embarrassed heat crawling up my neck into my face, now rolled downwards, hotter than before, intensifying as it flowed into and filled those tits. There was a sudden urgent need for someone—for her—to grab my boobs. Almost incoherent images of Julia, grabbing, fondling, sucking flesh and nipple flared across my eyes.

The immediate reaction to her touch—a weakness in the knees—ache in my balls—a sudden tightness at the centre of each breast—surprised, unsettled me with its intensity. What I now felt was disconcertingly different from my own rough handling, the drunken groping of infrequent lonely nighttime masturbations over the previous months. Julia’s touch brought sensations that differed in magnitude from those experienced with the fake tits of before. Dan hadn’t quite reached second base, last Friday… would it have felt like this if he had?

And the realisation that this was the first intimate contact I’d made with anyone for months flared through me. Her hands were the first to touch these fucking udders other than mine. Her shy touches were waking in me a desperate yearning that threatened to overwhelm any control.

How much of my torment did she even notice? Did the corner of her mouth twitch into a hint of a wicked smile? Eyes downcast, she watched her own hand as it grabbed more firmly. She felt their weight in her hand. “How big are you?” she asked, gently kneading.

“B cups,” I gasped.

“Amazing,” she said, and looked up. Her eyes found mine. “You’re… beautiful,” she breathed.

A shudder coursed through the entirety of my body at her words, her touch, and at the force of her look. We were so close I could feel the warmth flowing from her, smell the day’s heat in her hair. And then suddenly, my lips found hers. My mouth crushed against hers and I groaned into Julia, leaning fully into the kiss, arms rising to encircle her, to pull her closer. Fleetingly, I felt the softness of our lips’ meeting, mine slick with lipstick and gloss, a hint of berries and a taste of wine, and she seemed to collapse into me…

“No,” she cried. The hand at my breast shifted: her fingers abruptly pinched the nipple and twisted, painfully. I cried out in surprised pain. She shoved me away, fiercely, and I stumbled, tangled in the clothes at my ankles. Julia lurched back, eyes shadowed and glittering like obsidian. She passed the back of her hand across her mouth, wiping away the tacky hint of gloss left there.

“Fuck!” I instinctively crossed my arms over my chest, seething at the ignominiously throbbing of my nipple.

“No!” She was breathing heavily, flushed and her whole body quivered like a plucked, taut string. “You don’t get to kiss me,” she said. “You don’t get to touch me.”

“I—”

Her hand lashed out with surprising speed. Even had I wanted, drunk and discombobulated, off kilter and distracted, arms crossed, there was no way I could have blocked or dodged. Her slap took me fully across the face. I reeled back, face smarting, eyes watering.

A moment later, she had me up against the wall. Taller, bigger, stronger, she grabbed my wrists and held them above my head with one hand. Her body pinned me to wall. Her other hand found my tit again, squeezed, finger and thumb pinching the wounded nipple through the thin fabric, twisting once more. Redoubled pain erupted under her grip, hot and intense and I struggled briefly against her grip. Without releasing my wrists, she slammed me back once more against the wall, and her hand released my aching boob and snaked up between us and latched around my throat.

And I could’ve thrown her to the ground, broken free, easily. She wasn’t a fighter. A little bigger and stronger, sure, but a subtle shift of weight, a twist from the waist and she’d go down. I could’ve headbutted her in the face and smashed in her nose; kneed her in the crotch; reversed her sloppy hold and popped her shoulder out of its joint or snapped her elbow. This bitch wasn’t a fighter, but I submitted passively to assault. I was curious; I’d anticipated something like this; and truth be told, the roughness and hell, even the pain was sort of exciting as her fingers curled around my neck.

“You…,” she breathed. “You goddam, fucking bastard.” Her mouth was right up against my ear. “I hate you. I hate you so much.” She bit down, once, into the cartilage above the earring. I inhaled sharply from the pain. Spinning me around, she dragged me sideways towards the window.

“Look at you.” My reflection mocked me as she held me before the framed night, a feminine image caught between the light inside and the outside darkness. “So small, so weak,” she murmured. “So pretty.” She released my wrists, and I felt her fumble at my back and then yank the bra down my arms. My tits popped free, momentarily, before she seized both roughly, shoving them upwards, displaying them rudely in reflection.

“Did you want these?”

“No,” I whispered.

Her hand snaked into my hair, fingers curling deeply into my mane, grabbing a fistful, and then pulling harshly. I gasped. “Did you want this?”

“No.”

“You make such a pretty girl, David. Is this what you wanted?”

“No!”

Next I knew, she had me pressed up against the window. My tits flattened against the cool glass. God, what must this look like from outside? Then she spun me back around. “Good,” she hissed. And the kiss that followed was fierce and angry and passionate, her tongue forcing its way in, and her hands were on my ass, squeezing, then groping at my chest again, or grabbing a fistful of hair, or at my neck, and then back at my ass.

And she would pull me forward into her and then shove me back, bared ass smacking rudely up against the cool windowpane. And my cock strained against its confines, and my balls ached for release, and I groaned as she attacked me in her anger and passion. All those months of stifled, frustrated desire swelled up and it was all I could do to restrain myself from throwing this bitch face down across the back of her sofa and show her just how manly I remained, how a disguise of tits and ass and long hair didn’t make me any less a man.

But I didn’t. Instead, I dropped my arms limply at my side. Behind the blonde curtain of hair I hid my face, and when she next kissed me, savagely, I let her. Her breath was hot and angry on my face, my neck, my shoulder; she bit; her entire body coiled around me as she straddled my leg, thrusting against me, sliding back, pushing again, riding my thigh. Her thumb pulled at my lip, smearing lipstick, forced its way into my mouth. She buried her face into my hair and her thighs suddenly clenched tightly, painfully around mine one more time.

Julia shuddered, and with a long, rapturous moan she came.

She held me there, pinned against the glass, panting heavily. Her touch lingered, briefly, lightly stroking, as though trying to trace a forgotten pattern within my flesh. Then she withdrew, and Julia appeared momentarily stricken and aghast; but the haunted look quickly disappeared.

“Not a word!” Julia glared and stalked towards me, now a predatory gleam to her dark eyes. There was a wet patch at the crotch in the thin fabric of her trousers. Her fingers hooked the waistband of my panties and tugged.

“Easy!” I complained.

“Get those fucking things off,” she said, and her fingers curled around my throbbing, erect cock.

I hastened to do as she ordered, kicking them away, but as I went to roll down the stockings she slapped my hand away. “No, keep those,” she said. “You look cute in them.” She gave my member a little tug, leading me towards what I presumed was her bedroom. But such was the turmoil of emotions I felt in the instance—raging desire, profound shame, weakness, surprise, drunkenness and anger, a seething, toxic slurry roiling in my belly —that my legs gave way and I stumbled, pitching forward.

Julia caught me and I fell into her. We sank to the floor together, her arms suddenly wrapped around me, strong, confident. And it felt unexpectedly good being held by her: I felt suddenly both small and protected, delicate and precious, in the comforting folds of her arms. Confused and sickened by this weakness, I furiously suppressed a sudden desire to tear up and sob. There wasn’t time to even consider where this surge of feminine emotion originated as Julia’s boobs pressed up against mine though her thin shirt. Our hair pooled together, black and blonde. “Jules…” I gasped.

She pawed at my painfully erect cock once more. “I’ve wanted this thing inside of me since I saw it last Friday,” she whispered into my ear. Her grip on the shaft tightened, thumb sliding across the smooth lip of the helmet. “You want it too, don’t you?”

Breathing heavily, I nodded.

“Then fuck me, David, like you used to,” she said.

***

Laying in the tangled mess of bedsheet in the dark, Julia’s languid body curling into mine, I marvelled at how great sex felt after months of deprivation. A man trapped on a desert island for months, denied proper food, rediscovers the glorious riot of flavours denied for so long. Deafened, then with hearing restored, a woman realises a taste for music previously absent, relishing in the purity of tones and the crystalline cadence of sound. How could sex be any different? My body still thrummed with the intensity of it, the release, the fullness of giving and receiving pleasure. And though I’d admit to being a little out of practice, I more than made up for it with effort, keeping up with Julia’s voracious appetite. Damn those doctors for what they did to me, but an unexpected benefit of this whole-body reboot was that I could fuck like a twenty-year old again.

Luxuriating in post-coital contentment, I stared up at the ceiling, listening to the quiet sound of her breathing and the distant murmur of the late-night city. I felt both exhausted and exhilarated. I lost count of how many times she’d panted, moaned, juddered and cried out in orgasm. I’d managed a hat-trick of my own, pacing myself according to the brief breaks she’d allowed: here, a few minutes for a piss and to scrub my face clean; there, a glass of water; we’d kept it going into the early hours of the next day. The sliding door to her bedroom patio stood ajar—we’d fucked out there too, her moans drifting into the dark—and now the breeze caressed my legs still in stockings; she’d insisted I keep them on all night. Goose pimples rose and fell across my thighs; nipples tightened in the cool air. A crescent moon, its sliver of brightness hidden behind gauzy shreds of cloud, extended pale ivory tendrils into the room.

And then, perhaps as a consequence of the quiet and calm and the woman resting in the crook of my arm, I remembered a girl called Molly.

***

One night the street, curled up in a doorway shivering through the long hours of cold loneliness. The next night a stained mattress in a tiny room over a nightclub. One more and now a soft bed, the faint scent of perfume, cheap framed poster of sunflowers and a girl, gently snoring through to morning.

How did it happen, this transition? I can’t remember. I purposely forgot what it was that drove me to cash in the favour that got me off the streets, only that one day I made the decision to bring that period of my life to an end. There was a year of living death, of hollowed existence drifting through empty days, of cold and bitterness and hunger and anger and sadness; though everything, actions and emotions, events and thoughts, seemed muted and distant. Time, obliterated. Then suddenly a morning in which I walked up to one of Tahir’s nightclubs and asked for help.

The guy owed me from a thing a few years back, and the only problem was convincing the staff to let me talk to him. He took one look at me, nose and thin moustache wrinkling with disgust, and led me to the showers. Brutally hot water hammered my emaciated body, carving rivulets through the thick dirt and caked grime. The water ran brown and I stood there insensate, watching the past year slough off and circle the drain, until he cut the heating and the icy spray shocked me back to life. He had fresh clothes for me: jeans, a t-shirt, underwear still wrapped in packaging, clear socks. Food and a place to hole up until I found my feet.

I’d wondered at the time whether he knew what happened to me, about Persephone’s murder and my failure to prevent it. I didn’t ask; it didn’t do to pry. Tahir wasn’t one for extended conversation anyway. Tall and taciturn, with an odd predilection for velvet suits, once presentable he invited me to sit with him.

“You have come to me,” he said, over steepled fingers, long and precise. “You have given me a problem to solve.” He frowned. “I do not like this problem.”

I shrugged. At the time, asking for anything beyond a shower and a free meal seemed presumptuous. I’d saved his life, once; now, he offered the same in return.

“Your problem,” he continued, “is your past…,” and here, he called me by a name I no longer use. “For one so young, you have a very troubled past. Many skeletons. Much darkness.” He shook his head. “And of course, a woman we both know.” He opened his hands, revealing a single, pink petal.

“Sakura.”

“But perhaps,” Tahir continued, “There is a solution to our problem.” And he slid a large, thick envelope across the table to me.

I opened the envelope, shaking out its contents. There was a flutter of documents, a brief shower of hard plastic, a key. I picked up one of the cards. It was a drivers’ license, with an unfamiliar name: David Sanders.

“This man,” Tahir said, “this David, he does not have a troubled past. He is a young man with a fine past. He is a young man with a bright future. A fine future, with much potential.”

The offer was clear. Tahir would set me up with a new identity. He’d put me up for a year in a little apartment above one of his clubs, and in return I’d work for him, first as a bouncer, then as a bartender, possibly even as a manager. Afterwards I’d be free to go; David Sanders would be free to step away from the ruins of another man’s past.

“But you must agree,” he said, gently drumming the table with his fingers. “To say farewell to that past. Your past, it remains far away, yes? Like a foreign country. It is no longer yours to visit.” The implications were clear: if I accepted his offer, the person I’d once been was effectively dead—gone—twenty-two years of my life written off as a bad debt and forgotten. What family I had: gone. Friends: gone. Sakura, Persephone…

An easy choice to make.

That first night, head swirling at how quickly everything had changed, I sat at the bar in borrowed clothes, drink untouched, feeling absolutely lost, watching as the first patrons arrived. Nominally, I was there to learn something about the job but really it was just to experience normal—ha!—society again after so long out of it. And this girl came up to the bar, ordered a drink, and after a pause turned to me.

“Hey there.” The girl seemed impossibly pretty, dark-skinned and curvy with a beautiful smile, her outfit glittering with a thousand sequins and I wondered why she’d speak to somebody like me. “Haven’t seen you here before.”

At a loss as to how to react, I tried copying her. My smile felt like an ill-fitting mask dragged over unwilling features. Opening my mouth to speak, nothing came out. Annoyance flashed across her face, but also disappointment; she began to turn away; and it seemed as though the mask I wore was no different from the one she wore, too. Sadness simmered beneath the surface, loneliness and hurt, an echo of my own. And though it seemed the hardest thing in the world, I answered her.

“Hi,” I said.

She smiled. “I’m Molly.”

Later, laying in her soft bed, her plump, beautiful body warm and comforting lying next to mine, I bid farewell to my old life. Maybe he was still out there somewhere, cold and alone, sleeping rough, his existence coiled around an emptiness, a loss and a mistake that could never be fixed. He could stay there, that sad, broken boy. I looked down at the girl nestled up to me, the source of my newfound solace. David, I swore, would never be alone again.

She stirred in my arms. “Hey there,” she murmured, eyes still closed.

“Hey.”

The girl spread one hand flat across my pectoral, and she nestled deeper into the crook of my arm, sighing. With her other hand, she patted my cock once as though congratulating an eager puppy. “That was fun.”

“Yeah.”

“You never even told me your name.”

“David,” I told her. “My name’s….”

***

“David. Mmm,” Julia purred, her hand sleepily sliding its way back to my breast. “I like this,” she said, squeezing the soft flesh.

“I noticed.”

“And this.” Her knee gently prodded my exhausted and semi-flaccid penis.

I grunted.

“We’re going to have so much fun together,” she mumbled.

I smiled, and lightly danced my fingers down her side.

“I’ll help you,” she said.

“Help me?”

“Teach you.”

“Teach… what?” My fingers hesitate at her thigh.

“To be a girl,” she said, and she stirred against me, turning onto her side and opening her eyes. “To be my girl.”

“Jules…,” I started, a warning tone entering my voice.

“Oh, I just love you like this,” she continued. “Small and soft. Submissive. So much better than the arrogant prick you used to be.”

I went to pull away from her, but her hand at my breast, her leg over mine, restrained me. “And you, hating every minute of it! It’s more, so much more and better than I could have possibly hoped for. The man who fucked me and ruined me and left me—trapped! Living a life he despises, living as a girl, experiencing everything he’s looked down at and derided his whole life.” Speaking like this, she slowly slid on top of me, her whole body pressing down on me, breast to breast, her hands seeking mine, fingers interlacing, holding me down.

“You’ll be my little doll for me, won’t you, David, wearing what I choose for you; my little puppet, mincing and prancing when I pull your strings? I’ll pick the prettiest outfits for you, David, the sexiest clothes, and show you off at all kinds of fun places.”

I tried to push her off but she had me pinned to the bed. “Fuck you, Jules, I’m not going to—”

But she cut me off with a deep and passionate kiss, stifling my protest. Then she kissed my cheek, lightly licked the edge of my ear, and whispered: “But of course you will,” she said. “Or I’ll tell your secret.”

Going limp beneath her, I hissed, “you wouldn’t.”

Kissing lightly down the neck, across my collarbone: “Wouldn’t I?”

“I’ll be killed. You’re not a killer.”

She paused, and when she spoke her voice quavered with momentary weakness. “No, I’m not,” she said. “Even after what you’ve done to me, I don’t wish you dead.” Then she resumed her tender ministrations, small wet kisses and darting tongue, as she worked her way towards my tits, her whole body sliding down my length. “I’d much rather have you like this,” she said. Her tongue flicked across my erect nipple; my whole body tensed; I released a sharp intake of breath. “You could enjoy it too.”

“I hate this,” I snarled, or tried, voice inadvertently squeaking as her tongue flitted out again. Throughout our night of frantic screwing, she’d largely abandoned her early fixation on my tits, other than the occasional, almost haphazard grope. Now, she was awakening sensations in my breasts that were new and, because unfamiliar, distinctly uncomfortable; on the threshold of painful, despite this new tenderness; and yet somehow also intensely pleasurable.

Pleasure this feminine, I didn’t want to indulge; but shit, it felt so good, like something hot and fluttery cocooning in my belly, working its way free.

“Good,” she said, her breath hot against my skin as she slowly circled the nipple with the tip of her tongue. “And here’s the thing, David. I’m still angry with you. I want to hurt you the way you hurt me.

“And you’re right: I probably wouldn’t give away your secret. Purposefully. But in anger? Or when I’m drunk and bitter? What then? I can’t promise I wouldn’t… slip, wouldn’t forget, just for a moment.” Her hand spidered up my side, her thumb flicking across my other nipple; and my whole body twitched in response. “Like you did on Friday.”

Intended as an angry grunt, the sound that escape my parted lips was a moan: softly sighed, distinctly feminine, intensely embarrassing; and in hearing myself, it suddenly seemed as though I could see myself, or rather Cindy, imagine her pinned beneath this larger, supple woman playing with her tits. A switch flicked: the cocoon split; heat blossomed; and warm pleasure suddenly coursed through me as I submitted to Julia’s touch.

“Don’t you think,” she said, “It’d be better if you kept an eye on me?” and her lips gently closed around the nipple, and softly suckled, her tongue still indolently circling; her other hand picked and plucked and pulled at the other nipple; and my whole body quivered, back arching. I was instantly hard, again. Her mouth was at my teat; one hand at the other breast; and the other curled around my shaft and slowly began to pump.

“Julia….” I bit back an unmanly whimper, squirming beneath her.

“Will you be my Cindy?”

“I—”

Her hand slowed, even as I ached for release. “We could have so much fun together,” she said. “Imagine going out together, dressed up all sexy, high heels and tight dresses.” She slowly resumed stroking, and continued the nipple play, and darted down for quick, sharp kisses between words. “We could drive the boys crazy, couldn’t we, tease them all night long? And each time we touched, knees beneath the table, a finger caressing a bare shoulder, and in the toilet fixing each other’s makeup, we’d know, wouldn’t we, we’d know what’s waiting for us when we walk away from those pricks?”

And again she slowed, stopped, bringing me painfully close to climax, but this time to rise up over me, her wet pussy hovering over my throbbing member. And in the moonlit darkness of the room I could make out Julia’s hungry, fierce grin, her eyes sparkling in the ivory glow. “We come home and fuck,” she said, and she grabbed my tits and clenched tightly as she impaled herself on my cock.

I gasped, and she cried out in exultant pleasure.

And as she rode me, she told me what we could do together, how she’d take care of me, teach me to be the best Cindy possible, her Cindy, a girl nobody could ever possibly recognize as that wicked, nasty, piece-of-shit man from her past. I’d be hers, she’d be in charge, but she’d keep me safe and protect me. She’d check in on me at work, take me out for dinner, watch me blush as the boys hit on me, watch me squirm, watch me blush, and smile as I was forced to play the part of the girl I’d once have fucked. Another notch on the bedpost, used and discarded, but this time, this time, oh this time I was the fluff, the flirt, the little bitch, her bitch, her slut, and—

If we hadn’t woken up the neighbours earlier, she must’ve gotten them this time. Gasping and grunting her filth into my ear, her whole body went rigid as her voice rose through its bitter hiss into a triumphant yowl, eyes rolling back into her head as she rode my cock to climax.

She collapsed onto me, gasping for breath, utterly spent. A few minutes later her breathing eased, softened – and Julia fell asleep, snoring slightly. I sighed, still skewering her sopping wet cunt, ignominiously pinned to the bed beneath her weight. My erection wilted and after a half-hearted effort to shift her, I gave up and resigned myself to an uncomfortable night.

I grinned.

Goddam stupid fucking cunt bitch. Enjoy your little games, Julia. Have fun with the fantasy. Enjoy it while it lasts.
Everything had gone—more or less—as I’d expected. The man in the café, and the one at the restaurant: two different men, of course, but it was a stroke of luck they’d been wearing something passably similar. It’d been enough to convince Julia of danger, trick her into bringing me home. And once we’d crossed the threshold into her apartment, sex had been an inevitability.

And yeah, she’d been a bit more… dominant, than I liked but fuck me if I hadn’t needed it. She wanted me; God damn, she wanted me so badly! There was a fierceness and purity to her desire that bordered on the manic, but it paired up perfectly with my own needs.

Reflecting back over the past few days—or week, or months—I could now recognize how loneliness gnawed at me. Admitting this was more difficult than expected. But it was true, and it was affecting me in odd ways. Stepping off the bus early to walk kilometers home, indulging a fleeting experience of being part of a human crowd. Staring through windows, imagining myself sat at the tables within. Even working late, arriving early, simply to be around others—even if being around others reminded me, intensely, of the role I was forced to play and the severe humiliation of my appearance and performance.

I’d kissed Dan—another man!—willingly!—and in my drunkenness might’ve gone even further out of a desperate yearning for physical contact. I’d followed him to the bar that night out of need of companionship, for the sounds and lights of the city, for a beer and a chat, out of a profound desire for society, in a desperate bid to recapture, even if from the female perspective, the simple pleasure of going out on a Friday night. I’d long considered myself above such petty needs. But as days rolled over into weeks into months, trapped in Cindy’s diminutive body and life, it became clear these needs couldn’t be ignored. Cindy was a social creature; apparently, so was I.

I’d lied to myself for too long. Looking back over the years I could see that scorning other people’s company had always driven me to find solace in the arms of whatever slut—bitch—woman—of whatever Molly I could find for the night.

Six months since this whole goddamn ordeal has started, six months without physical intimacy, without social contact—without a good, solid fuck. No wonder I’d slipped up so badly last Friday. No surprise, really, that I’d let slip my secret and told Julia who I was. At some level, I must’ve been desperate to share, to reach out to someone; to maybe find an ally. Frankly, it was a miracle I hadn’t snapped earlier. And if something didn’t change, I’d mess up again, probably worst than before, and end up dead.

Julia’s face was buried between my tits, her quiet snores a secret whispered across the hills and valley of my chest. Our hair mingled in a dappled wave across the pillows. I needed her just as badly as she wanted me. She’d keep my head clear, keep me focused as I figured my way out of this pantomime. I believed her promise to teach me, and as galling as it was, having someone to share the burden of pretending to be Cindy would be… helpful; good, even. Having someone with which I could drop the façade, even if only briefly and be myself—be David—would make it that much easier to hold on to what remained of my masculinity.

So I’d let her play out her little revenge fantasy for a couple of months. I’d fuck her on demand, prance around in the pretty dresses she bought for me, and when the time finally came—well, goodbye and fuck you, Little Caesar, I’m dumping your ass once again. Get yourself back into therapy, you crazy bitch.

After all, a few more months and I’d be done with Cindy, right?

To be continued…

***

Author’s Notes:
What to say after a thirteen-year gap between chapters? I only hope that some of those who enjoyed it in the past, and waited patiently, are able to pick it up again. After posting chapter 3 there were significant changes in my life that led to me abandoning the story. Well, not just
the story. I didn't really write anything for the next decade, aside from a brief period in which I started to revise the whole thing, from the beginning onwards; made some progress; and then dropped it again. And then a few months ago I suddenly found not only the urge but the
willpower to write again and started on Chapter 4. I hope it still matches the original style of writing and lives up to expectations. I enjoyed writing again and am already making good progress on the next chapter.

Of course, comments and feedback are always appreciated, whether positive or critical. I can’t overstate how much it means to know people are actually reading this stuff—otherwise, why write it?

A few changes of note:

•David's dead ex-lover, referenced in a number of flashbacks throughout the story, is now called Sephy.
•Julia, prominent in this chapter, was mentioned in earlier chapters under the name Tammy.
•In earlier chapters, David was written as a man in his twenties. He's picked up a few years in the redraft and is now in his mid-thirties, to leave more breathing room for backstory.

Once I've reached the end of the "season", I'll be going back and reposting the revisions to earlier chapters and hopefully bringing a little more coherence to the whole novel-length text. There are ten chapters planned for season two, and once complete I'll publish it as a single document again.

Finally: when I started this in 2006, it never occurred to me to monetise something like this; now, it seems common. Constant will always be free (if a little... slow, in getting published), but if you enjoy and want more: leave a comment! And if you really like it, why not show it at patreon.com/fakeminsk.