Can Dreams Come True?…Part 8

*Before…

Ryan…

He still feels like a guy, he still act’s and sort of just moves….carries himself like that and holds me like one.

If my heart wasn’t feeling so messed up than I might just be aroused…more than I am…which yeah that means I am a little.

We just lie there together and he turns on one of those fireplace log burning DVD’s.
Being held and no judging and someone that gets it and is still talking to me….

It feels like.

It feels like I’ve been tossed off my boat that was my life and that finally someone has their hand out and holding onto mine and keeping the waves from swamping me and keeping the undertow from dragging me down.

And I can breathe.

*And Now…

I fell asleep and I think that something uncoiled inside me with Ryan; it’s like knowing she’s?

He’s kind of Trans is like just something else that I don’t have that’ll hurt me. I don’t really get what he said or even sure he gets it but a non-surgery Trans guy’s the closest thing I can come too.

But being held and cared for even this much is.

It’s more than I’ve expected out of my life.

He’s really asleep and I slip off the couch really careful and quietly. I sit there on the floor on my knees and just watch him a few minutes. I know you present the gender you’re trying to be but even in the sports bra I’m reading guy.

Genetic sex aside Ryan is actually kind of handsome.

I stared and got really, really close to kissing him.

You know when someone finally is good to you and you just get kind of caught up in that swell of feelings.

I sit really close to his face and I so want to…but I can’t.

I’m so screwed up and even my good days seem like they ride on a tippy edge.

We still don’t really know each other.

I wouldn’t want to saddle anyone with someone as screwed up and off as me.

There’s nothing like chickening out to start up your day.

I slip out and go home, heading to the bathroom for a long bath after doing my other stuff and I head into my bedroom.

I get myself some paper and start writing…

“Ryan…My main flaw is I focus on everything and nothing at the same time. Sometimes I seem like a bad friend or like I don't care because I'm constantly being swept by the tides of my mind and rarely making it to shore. I try to be more extroverted but it is always shortly lived and I am then consumed by introversion. If we are friends, I'm sure you've taken notice to how withdrawn I am. I think I'm trying to work on it but I'm not sure... Either way it's a quality I hate most about myself and I just wanted to share my awareness of it and ask as a friend of mine to bear with me as I try find my strengths again.

Just be patient with me.”

Sigh…shit just sigh.

But I need to do this, I do because I need room and if I start to trust or lean on Ryan who knows what will happen the next time I fall apart.

I look around until I find an envelope and I have to recycle one from a card I had before.

Why don’t I ever have these things in the house?

And of course the way that my brain works I had to look to see if I had any stamps even though I’m not mailing anything. I had two and I have no idea if they’d make proper postage.

They’re for the regular mail and not work we do things differently there.

I get the letter or note or whatever in the envelope and I just can’t bring myself to take it to his door while he’s awake.

I know, I’m a chicken.

Okay now what I don’t work today and it’s a long way until tomorrow with my brain.

I could clean.

I should clean.

I just…no dammit, dammit, dammit.

Okay getting mad for me sometimes works to get me passed the what’s the points and I get my things from the kitchen closet and I use boiling hot water and a lot of Mr. Clean and I scrub the floors in my house. I use the hot water because it steams off and dries faster but It’s likely not that good for my floors not that I have anything fancy in here just a lot of oilcloth flooring that looks like tiles.

The bathroom is next and that I really give a good scrubbing and cleaning. Especially my tub. I take baths now and I really don’t want to be the meat in a slow cooker of various molds and mildews…yuck.

I know I’m paranoid about it but it’s just.

There’s laundry too.

And…and Ryan has a washer and a dryer and he’s offered but do I really want to do this? But he’ll be hurt and pissed off that I didn’t take him up on his offer and went to a laundromat instead.

Dammit…so much for my mood being where I can get stuff done.

I don’t know what to do and my stomach hurts from that and…

If I just didn’t know him and was just left alone then I wouldn’t be feeling like this. I hate feeling like this but I feel like this all the time.

Just. “Aaargh fuck!”

I stomp around my place and I get my laundry and I bag it up and I’m just about to take it all to the car when I realize.

I’m poor.

Like barely have money for enough gas to get me where I’m going on payday when it rolls around. I’m using my bus pass the rest of the week to go to work.

And I’m standing on the porch staring at my poor shitbox of a car and I’m mad at it for no good reason but mostly because it doesn’t take magic gas that will let me drive around as needed and I drop my bags of clothes and hug myself because I’m poor.

And it sucks.

And it hurts.

“Hey.”

I jump even though I know it’s Ryan.

“Easy Josie it’s just me.”

I turn and I look at him and he’s in another baggy shirt but it’s a real shirt and the cuffs are sort of rolled up and he’s wearing guy jeans and stuff and he still just looks like a guy except I know so I can tell by looking at how smooth his face is and stuff and his bare feet well he has girl feet even if they’re not like prettified and stuff.

Actually he has a whopping big scar on his right foot.

“What happened to your foot?”

“Axe.”

“What!”

“I was splitting wood when I was younger and I didn’t listen to my grandfather when he told me how to use the axe right and I thought I knew better and of course I wasn’t wearing work boots but sneakers and it glanced off the wood and into my foot.”

“Ow….”

“Yeah but only when I woke up in the hospital.”

I look at him and I have no idea what to say.

“You want to come in and do your wash up?”

“No…”

“No?”

“I will because I’m like broke and my car’s well it’s…”

“Too much too soon?”

“How are you in my head!?” I snap at him and as soon as I do I feel like Ick for doing it and at the same time there’s this perverse effing part of my head that loves it.

~Go Josie; go let them have it, show them just what kind of a freak that you are! ~

“Sorry it’s just I can read it all over you…”

“Well don’t! Just stop it Ryan stop reading me! Stop being nice to me!”

He looks at me and I just get madder and it’s just one of those things about me sometimes that gets through my meds. I mean it’s so damned infuriating that he’s looking at me and he has this perfectly goddamned reasonable expression on his face.

How!?

How can he be like that when he’s every bit as a fucked up mess as I am!?

“Josie…”

“No! Just fucking no Ryan or whatever you’re real name is just stop it!”

There’s this look there that he knows exactly where I went with that and I know it hurt and the evil part of my brain wants to sneer and feel all victorious and regular me wants to through up because.

I know what that hurts like. I know and I should never stoop that effing low to attack someone.

And he takes it like a guy.

I can see him and that look where I hurt him and I watch him swallow that pain and he puts on this odd little kind of smile. “Ryan is my legal name but you want to know what I used to be called?”

I…I…

Oh god, oh god what did I do!?

He looks at me and that odd little smile is there and he says. “Robyn, with a y in it and everything.”

I bolt running for my place.

Ryan catches me.

He catches me and he’s a lot stronger than my brain was thinking and he pulls me into a bear hug from behind.

“Let me go! let me go! Fucking let me go!”

“No, not the way that you get when you’re like this!”

I struggle and I kick and I spit in his face and I go to scream and he covers my mouth with his hand.

I bite.

Hard and he doesn’t scream.

I fight some more and he pulls me into his place and he drags me into the…the…the…the bathroom he has downstairs that I didn’t know was there.

All the way into the shower and he turns on the cold water and pulls me under the spray and I’m freaking out until I just snap and I think the icy cold water had a lot to do with me breaking and stuff.

I cry.

No I don’t cry I bawl, I have a full on tear filled nightmare of a breakdown.

I think during part of it I was blubbering out an apology.

It’s I have no idea how long before I can actually think.

Shivering, we’re both shivering.

Ryan might be a guy but he doesn’t have the body mass of one and we’ve been in the cold water shower for long enough I’m cold. Like cold enough for my teeth to chatter some.

“R..Ryan…why?”

“Why what?”

“Why me? Why even bother with someone like me?”

“Just because.”

(Sniffle sob!) “That’s not a reason!” (Sniffle.) “Dammit.”

“I don’t have a reason Josie. I moved in I’m here, you’re here. You’re hurting and I don’t like seeing that.”

“That’s a girl thing nurturing and stuff y’know.”

“Stop it, that’s a human thing it’s called giving a shit.”

“I’m not worth it.”

“You woman don’t have the right to say who or what I value.” He’s smiling, he’s frakking smiling and I can hear it in his voice.

“I’m more trouble than I’m worth.”

“You’re in trouble you aren’t trouble there’s a difference.”

“I’ve never been good at this…”

“What friendships?”

“Yeah and life.”

“Well then you need practice at both instead of just taking your ball and going home.”

“Balls…I have two of the little fuckers.”

“Me too.”

“What!? I thought you were a girl!”

“No…I’m a guy just a female guy. Besides ovaries are balls.”

(Sniffle laugh.) “Fuck you’re a jackass…”

“Guilty as charged. Told you I’m a guy.”

(Sniffle.) “Yeah…uhm Ryan?”

“Yes?”

“Can we get out of this shower…I’m freezing.”

“Me too, are you calmed down enough?”

“I don’t know…”

“Are you going to do something stupid like hurt yourself?”

I turn to look at him and he lets me and I look in his eyes and he’s looking in mine ant there’s this whole thing of he knows, he knows that I was in that place where there was a chance that I just might. I mean I’m a real coward when it comes to that stuff but still…it was there and he knew it and he stopped it.

He stopped me.

I nod and put my head on his chest right there on his solar plexus.

“Okay…let’s get out of here and warmed up.”

“Okay….and Ryan…”

“Yeah Josie?”

“I’m sorry.”

“I knew you were even as you were saying it…we’re good.”

He gets us out of the shower and I look at him and he’s looking at me and he’s shivering and he looks as close to being like seriously chilled as I’ve seen someone that wasn’t hypothermic.

I…I want…oh gods my want’s started this whole stupid thing!

And that’s when he tucks my soaked hair out of my face with his hands and cups my cheeks and he kisses me!