Encrypted-16

Chapter 16

Brandy gives me this sort of sweet smile but there’s some of the whole bits there I can tell that she misses her son. But she reaches out to me and pulls me out of bed sort of by just leading me by my fingertips and I go with her to the kitchen and she does go to the fridge to get us some juice first and I smile as I reheat the food I made.

But part of me is wondering just how do I ask her about such a thing? I don’t like that she’s hurting and I’m pretty sure that the whole dream I was in was a memory dream that I had tuned in of hers.

So do I just come out with it?

I need more time, I do not definitely have enough information about this thing that I’m a part of or discovered. I need to learn and know more about that and I need to find that girl if I can to do that and I need to know more about the legal situation between her and her ex and the custody arrangements.

I do?

Yes I do. Brandy should at least have the chance to be with her child even if she’s transgendered.

I do not like that woman very much and I think there is a very high probability that she had done or said something very underhanded about Brandy.

So.

Taking stock there are only a few things that I can do really.

And given last night’s memory dream or maybe nightmare from her perspective I think that the best thing that I can do is to love and provide.

I know that she has gone without so much. It seems like there is very much of this whole “making do” with what you have for her and others like her.

I have the chicken out of the roaster and I take out the baked potatoes. I stare at them while I try to think of a good way to use them now that they’ve passed the best cooked state. The chicken is easy actually but what can you do with cold and hard baked potatoes?

It hits me in one of those classically mentioned Eureka moments and I stare at the food and I shift my sight to study the equation and do the math in my head to account for heat degradation versus time and the changes to the structure of the food.

I look at the energy inside of me and I sort of extend it out by just a touch and I “turn on” the program that’s the food and I scroll back in the equation until I get to the point of where the chicken is just right and the potatoes too.

And I shove more power into that until it delete’s the code that comes after it.

In an odd sense I just hit the refresh button on supper.

There’s a feeling too from doing that like I definitely used energy from myself doing that however it fits right in with my yawning and having just woken up after our intimacy and sleep.

The chicken is sizzling and the smells waft up from it and I smile. This, this is a good thing. I’m getting more proficient at using the encryption around me. And it smells very good which makes me feel proud of myself because my standards for feeding myself were not very flattering just mostly me set in my way of doing things it is a whole other matter to cook for someone that you love.

Brandy slides up beside me. “Mmmm…even reheated this smells incredible honey.”

“Thank you, but it is very close to the top of my cooking ability. I’m a much better baker.”

“Really?”

“Yes baking is easier for me since it tends to be more precise. Unless it’s bread I have never really gotten the art behind working with yeast.”

“Well this is amazing.”

“You’re worth it Brandy and so much more. Perhaps us finding each other is the equation trying to balance itself out for all of the negatives that we’ve had?”

She smiles and she kisses me and does so several more times before stopping and pulling off some of the skin off of the chicken. I just shake my head at that. It’s something I think if you have crispy skin on a chicken that is almost universal. I even do that, and some how the thought or the normality in that shared thing makes me smile.

I pull off a little more and feed it to her and it kind of just becomes this very, very strange thing. I’ve never really eaten a meal like this. But we use our fingers to pull off the skin and the chicken and feed each other while leaning on the counter and against each other sucking the juices and such off each other fingers and even to where we cut the baked potatoes and slowly feed the wedges we cut them into to each other.

I’m smiling because it’s sexy and fun and so totally not me and at the same time it’s so new to me that my brain and all of her issues isn’t screaming it’s OCD issues at me and I’m just able to enjoy the moment.

It is so nice to shut off all the busy stuff in my brain. I mean that because other than sex and sleep and sometimes not even then it rarely happens.

“Brandy?”

“Yes Love.”

“Are we having lesbian food sex?”

“No love I’m not sure that you’d like the food as a prop in sex. It seems too messy for you.”

“Oh…I’m really enjoying this. So what is this that we’re doing?”

“We’re showing biological mate behaviour.”

“We are?”

“Mmmm…don’t a lot of animals feed their mates? It’s us getting back to that.”

“I like that idea, that this is some how just proof that being with someone we care about and love is more encoded into our programs than what gender or what sexual preference we have.”

“Mmmm…sort of like love first?”

“Uhm….yes, I think so. I love you and I’m certain that the form wouldn’t matter.”

“I so love you Maddy. It’s so amazing that you are just so technically minded and yet you still get things about love.”

“Thank you but before you it wasn’t a variable that I thought that I would ever experience.”

We kiss some more and I am very happy because Brandy gets me. And who I am and the way that I am doesn’t scared her off and it doesn’t turn her off and she can see the me that I want to be instead of the me that I can’t help to be and she somehow is able to make me combined in her head in another whole different equation.

That’s another thing I think might be true. I’m not sure that we write our own code when it comes to how we are perceived. I think that some of our outside programming space is loosely established by the perception of us in others.

Like how I thought I was and others seen me as and how that was sort of the way that I was until Brandy met me and her perceptions opened up the parameters of what I was/am?

She looks at me. “So what are the plans for today?”

“Research on Vancouver.”

“Really like?”

“You and I looking at places to go and to do things and where to stay and where to shop and then we can make out reservations and get our tickets and go.”

“This soon?”

“Yes, I was thinking that I can use some of my vacation time and that we can get better acquainted with the city before I have to be at the meetings to go over my plans and findings about the submersible.”

“Really!?”

I nod but blink a few times. “Yes…did I not just say that was what we are going to be doing? I was pretty certain that you were paying attention to me weren’t you?”

“Yes…..” she has that huge lighting up her area smile on. Then she ducks her head still smiling but shy at the same time. “I’m not used to this Madds; I’m not used to having something this good.”

“I know, and while I might not be a man. I do see part of us together as me giving you things that you have not had since you are doing the same for me.”

“I am?”

“Yes.” I kiss Brandy again and the break it to start the dishes. There’s not many but I have to do them up and she helps me and she puts on some music and she dances with me too.

I love the way that she slips behind me and I feel her breasts against me and the way she slips her arms around me and helps me wash and dry the dishes stopping only at times to hold onto my waist and to guide my hips into the so right back and for hip motion that she has so adapted to.

I even relax and go with the flow of it and record the data as it’s coming into me through my nervous system. I’m slowly getting better but nothing I think compared to the mystery girl.

We finish there and we change the sheets and we make the bed and I get one of the big easy chairs from the living room and carry it into her bed room and we sit in front of her computer snuggled together in that chair Googling and looking things up about Vancouver and the places to go to and things to do and there’s actually a lot of them.

There’s shopping of course and that seems to be big in both of our minds since I am woefully lacking any real female clothing. There’s some galleries that she wants to see. I want to go to the aquarium because I always have wanted to go there ever since I seen my first show of “Danger Bay.”

There’s place to eat and whale watching tours and the Olympic village and just all these things that are things that I would never do on my own. I would have turned down the trip and the chance to leave Toronto before Brandy.

What this does remind me of though….Of how I was actually excited as a child when I could sit with my mother and read through the Sears Christmas Wish book. I really liked some of the toys in there especially the Transformers or Lego sets.

And I think I might have understood what my mother felt like when she’d pick up the phone and call in the things that I would pick out.

I’m getting the same reaction with Brandy as I book our hotel for two weeks in a nice suite at The Rosewood Hotels really downtown and very fancy. I can handle the downtown aspect hopefully. I look at her. “I’ll need your help. This is very outside my comfort zone.”

Brandy kisses me and we nuzzle for a bit and I use my credit card and pay them up front and even talk to the concierge on Skype to make sure that they’ll know us by sight when we get there but to arrange things like a car to get us at the airport.

After that I book us a first class flight.

“Maddy! That’s first class, that’s really expensive can…can…we afford that, I mean can you afford that…?”

She looks shy about the We part.

I nuzzle into her. “Yes, I’ve never spent a lot of the money working for the university and the other side contracts that I’ve done. I had full scholarships so I’ve never had the student loan issues like others so I have the money…WE have the money.”

“We…?”

“I Love You Brandy, I want Us. I want US forever. It is Our Money.”

“Oh……”

I don’t understand the look there happy but with side emotions? Perhaps she thinks that I think that she is with me solely for my money.

“Besides, this will be my very first time in an airplane. I think that’s reason enough to go this way.”

She looks at me and cups my face again. I love that, it’s such this amazing contact between us. She kisses me ever so slowly and ever so sweetly.

“Good?”

“You really don’t know how amazing you are do you?”

“Only in school, you’re the only one that’s ever said that about me.”

“You are.”

“It’s hard to think that about yourself. I was never given that whatever that the really self confident people get when growing up.”

“Well I’m lucky to have you as is. You didn’t need to be raised in a land of bullshit and being better than others to become a great person.”

I blush and she smiles more and kisses me softly again her hands still on my face. I fall into the way that she kisses me. I love the way that she kisses me because when she does all those times that I had noticed my loneliness are getting fixed.

I will still say that people heal us and change us all in the say time as they fill our empty spots with that which they are freely giving to us in love.

We even stay like that for a bit forehead to forehead. Just looking deeply into each other, smiling just because of that and breathing.

I adjust myself a bit and kiss her before guiding her hand to the mouse. “How about you book our flight?”

“Okay…are you sure?”

“Yes, I am sure. It’s when I am unsure that I do nothing this is doing something.”

Brandy rolls her eyes and smiles. “That sounds like a quote from The Never-ending Story.”

“The what?” I’m looking at her. She smiles and nuzzles her nose on mine. “I have it on DVD we can watch it.”

“I’d…I’d like that but there’s some things that I don’t related to in movies like others do so I might need a translator?”

She huggles into me. That’s where a hug turns into a cuddle. “Deal.”

We get the tickets for our flight tomorrow. She calls the club and I e-mail into work telling them I’m going early and staying late for the meeting and would like to draw this off of my vacation time. I do a little online banking moving some of my money around.

I wasn’t wrong in saying that we could afford it I have made the most of my money in saving it up but also investing it and some in stocks and some in bonds and such nothing that makes me rich not by any means but I have great credit and I have gold cards and enough in the bank to pay off the cards and the money that we’ll be spending there.

Brandy’s looking through her closets. “What should I take to wear Madison?”

“Just what will be comfortable to fly and to sleep in for a night.”

“Huh? I need more than that?”

“I was thinking we could take more things back with us if we buy everything there.”

“Maddy that’s too much!”

“No, I’m looking at my accounts right now and I’m sure that I have enough.”

She stops and looks at me and at the computer. Crosses her arms in that self conscious way. “I mean it’s still too much and you don’t have to pay for me like this or buy me things like that. I’m not like that.”

“I know but I want to shop and buy myself nice things and I want to learn and see you buy nice things and we can use this like we’re celebrating the next step in our lives.”

“What next step?”

“Us…there was how we were pre-Us and then there’s Us now. We can treat in like a barmitzva.”

“Bodmitzva.”

“Really?”

“Yes we’re girls.”

“Oh…but the analogy holds we’re stepping into a new life together.”

“But you’re on the paying end.”

“I’m on the money end, there are far more ways of paying for something that money, money Brandy is just a trade value, an arbitrary one at that. It doesn’t even come close to the value I feel from your smiles, your laughter, your love.”

She looks at me and she has that look on her face that yes…leads to happy tears. I really am not trying to make her cry. I’m not…but seeing I know what I dreamloaded from her. Maybe just these happy tears are her flushing those times out of her system?”

She comes over to me and she sits back on my lap and she hugs me tightly and she hangs onto me and she cries on my shoulder.

“Happy tears?”

(Sob-laugh.) “Yes…”

“Good.”

(Sob-laugh) I hug her a bit tighter and while I’m not the strongest person I do pick her up and carry her from the chair to where I can hold her more on our bed.

Her voice is muffled by my shoulder but still easy enough to make out. “I’ve waited for so long Maddy, so damned long for someone to really tell me that I’m worth something.”

“You are Brandy, You’re priceless to me.”

She hangs on even tighter in that it hurts kind of way but I don’t mind that because she’s crying like something really bad was happening or had happened and now she’s having some kind of emotional PTSD breakdown? I think that can be true, people can only deal with things as much as they can deal with something and the rest will either get shunted away or it breaks us. Hmm, PTSD is like file condensing bad things I think and the file gets opened every once in awhile by accident or comes up in a related search?

I have never been the strong one. I certainly was never fit for the role as a man but as a woman? It fits me, fits the nurture and protect part of me. I hold her knowing how good it can feel to be held and rocked and she cries really hard for the first time since I’ve known her.

I hold her and rock her until my arms are cramping and my legs have started to fall asleep. She’s dozing lightly in that way that the emotionally exhausted do and I slip out of our bed. Pen a quick note.

“No, you’re not dreaming.”

I head to the bathroom and get things ready there and then I find her DVD’s and get some of the quilts she has and put them in the dryer with some dryer sheets and I order out. I have lived very well off take out and I have a few places and I order from the pizza place I like.

They sort of know it’s me by my order. Whole wheat crust with extra sauce and onions and green peppers and red peppers with bacon and hamburger and mushrooms on one. The next one is extra sauce, extra sausage, and onions and anchovies. Both in a nine inch size and the main pizza their pepperoni pizza….extra sauce and extra cheese but the thing is here they don’t slice the pepperoni they grind it like hamburger and they generously coat the top of the pizza with it.

You can only get it from Duso’s and it’s really good. I like the smaller ones for variety. And I actually like anchovies but only with extra Italian sausage to me it’s the only way that they go together and the salt and the smoke go well together.

I don’t order dessert since we’ll be full and then some but this is comfort food to me I hope to her as well. I don’t know since I’ve never seen brandy eat pizza.

I go back to our room and wake her up with little kisses. She opens here eyes and smiles at me and shyly blushes at the same time. “Sorry…I kind of lost it there.”

“It’s okay considering the number of times that you’ve held me while I’ve been shaking apart of in the middle of stress reactions. I ran you a bath and I found the movies and I ordered us some pizzas.”

“You eat pizza?”

“Yes, but really just from one place.”

“Okay, is it good?”

“Best anchovies in Toronto.”

She blinks at me then makes a face crinkling her nose up cutely. She had these little fine freckles that you can see more when she does that. “Eww, fish on pizza is wrong.”

“As opposed to pig butt and intestines?”

“Huh?”

“Bacon and sausage.”

“First bacon is awesome and everyone likes a nice butt.”

“Anchovies are tiny little smoked and salted fillets of fish have you ever had them?”

“No….”

“Then you can at least try them, they are an acquired taste though and I only like them with Italian sausage.”

“Wrecking good sausage.”

“Its Italian sausage and the Italians put them on pizzas.”

“Okay…” she get’s up and hugs me. “Maddy…”

“Yes?”

“Thank you.”

“You’re welcome.”

She kisses me again softly and over and over tasting me for a good minute before she sighs contentedly and heads off to her bath.

I strip and remake the bed. Yes I have to.

I just get done when the pizza arrives and I pay by card but give the kid doing it a twenty dollar tip from my purse. I know where Duso’s is and it’s a bit out of the way to get here and there’s a lot of traffic. Plus this is the only pizza I like in town and I want him to remember me and here. And it’s always nice to get taken for the woman I am even without make up on and just dressed in the casual things I’ve been wearing around the house.

It made me smile when her said thank you ma’am and smiled at me. Miss wouldn’t work, I’m not likely to pass at being a Miss, I’m almost thirty and while I do pass okay mostly because I was never that masculine to begin with I still look like my age.

And I’m alright with that. I get the things set out for the movies and to eat. One of the things I like about them is they provide paper plates and napkins with their delivery. I get two glasses and our two litre of milk out of the fridge. It’s just me…I like to drink milk with my pizza, skim though it’s just better and less thick and colder.

Brandy comes out in her pyjama’s and I set up the DVD of The Never-Ending Story in her DVD player and we snuggle and we eat pizza under the quilts as we’re just doing nothing at all for the rest of the day.

………………………………… (Sniffle-sob!) “No…not Artax!” I’m bawling because…just because No it’s wrong!