Heart ofthe Beholden.

The Parchment Chapter 2

*Before…

I almost get to the door when my heart pulls me back and my whole sense of fair play kicks in. I reach down and I pick up the tube and it’s made up to look like a scroll case and I put it in my shoulder bag and I head out from the Con to my room and get changed into some regular just hanging out lounging clothes and I order some room service.

Then I’m just sitting there in my Hello Kitty sweatpants and my Gungrave tee-shirt with my cards and comics looking at the scroll case.

Should I open it?

*And Now…

I’m interrupted by room service.

I let them in and I sign for the slip and stuff and I settle in and I go at my fish and chips. I saw someone having it earlier downstairs and it looked good. I like real fried fish and these are big chunks of cod with a decent batter and really good fries. I’ve never had duck fat fried fries before and these are really, really good.

But that scroll case is sitting there and I’m such a girl because it’s almost calling to my whole female curiosity.

I know, I know it’s a stereotype but I can’t help it and those two girls were being so mean really.

Not just mean but using and at the same time dismissive.

I finish and wipe my face and I go to the bathroom and I wipe my hands and stuff so they’re really clean and I take a breath and I open it.

Oh…oh my oh dammit.

Just the paper.

No…parchment…like something that this guy made by hand like homemade paper. But it was colored and made to look like it’s been pieced together and pressed pink and white rose petals it even has all the little flower veins and stuff and it’s soft like the feel of a flower under my fingertips.

And the writing is like that calligraphy style stuff and it looks like it was done with a fountain pen.

The work that he did for a crush…on this girl.

On that girl.

Why does things like this happen, these amazing things happen to girls that are like her when there are really nice girls that never see a gesture like this.

And then there’s girls like me that will likely never see something like this ever in our real lives even if we do transition.

I wipe away at tears that are rolling down my cheeks because of how much I like it and how much I’ll never freakin have something like this.

Once some of the tears stop I start to read the parchment.

“Dear Lady, Dear Madonna…”

“I am so gladdened that you have decided to accompany me on this trip. I have felt such strong feelings for you my lady since we had first met. It has taken me long to find the strength and the courage to write this confession to you as is done by those who truly have feeling for another as per the customs of the people of The Land of the Rising Sun.”

“It has indeed felt like forever that I have watched you and kept quiet and tried not to feel too hurt at the behaviors of those who flock around you in your court. I have in fact loved you from afar.”

“The times I see you smile and hear you laugh have brighten my days and lit up my dreams so it is with all of that in mind and in my heart that I wish to ask you to come and meet me tonight for a romantic supper and then for us to perhaps take in the court dancing that is being held her at this gathering of heroes and heroines.”

“Dutifully and with hope.”

“Alexander.”

Alexander…it sounds so much better than a lot of other names and I sit there and I read it over and over again actually trying to picture the guy that would be the kind of guy to write something like this.

Y’know what I can’t really see him yet but it doesn’t matter.

It doesn’t after what Cinderella and Rapunzel were saying in the bathroom….geeky, chubby or whatever you don’t just use people or treat people like that.

So what am I going to do?

I call the front desk. “Uhm…hello? Can you tell me what time that supper is being served in the restaurant?”

“We open the restaurant again for supper service at seven o’clock miss.”

“Thank you!”

It’s a little strange but not at the same time I’ve seen supper time in the cities and stuff on TV be like late things and not strictly a five o’clock thing. I look at the clock in my room.

I have time.

Yes. I’m going.

I don’t know why and it’s scary and kinda weird on a whole other level since I took it out of the trash and stuff but I just.

It was too beautiful to just keep him hanging like that.

And to be stood up.

Especially like this since the way that it sounds he’ll likely be in cosplay.

It’s soooo not going to go down like that.

I head to my bags first and I take out my little black dress and I set it out and I call house-keeping.

“Hello house-keeping.”

“Up hello this is Frankie Thompson in 323 I was wondering if the hotel has an iron and an ironing board the I could use.”

That’s actually a thing. I stayed with my dad one over in Fredericton because he had some business thing he had to go to for like training so we all went up but he got an iron and an ironing board from them.

“Uhm just one minute miss.”

I wait and get out my make-up and things that I need. “Yes we have one that we can lend and send up to your room would you like to have it?”

“Yes please if you could that would be amazing.”

“I’ll bring it right up then.”

Yay, that’s a bonus. I get my stuff ready and that includes a pair of modest heels and dark thigh high stockings and I get my stencil ready too for my face design.

House-keeping shows with the ironing board and I thank the lady who brought it up. It’s just a small one but it’s more than enough. “What do I do with this when I’m done?”

“Just leave it outside the door folded up and one of the other house-keeping staff will be by and pick it up later.”

“Thank you so much you’re really a life saver.”

She smiles. “It’s no problem miss, it’s kind of old school but we still have them in the laundry room for some of our business clients.”

I offer her a tip and she takes it. It’s just five dollars so I hope that she likes it.

Note to self; leave a tip for the house keeping staff.

She leaves and I iron all the wrinkles out of my dress just that it actually looks nice and then I go and I get cleaned up again and start getting ready.

The biggest thing is the stenciling. I’m going as Psylocke again and I’m doing the read design mark on her/my face but I’m really trying to do it so it looks good. And for that I’m using a stencil and make-up pencils and I’m mixing the red color that I have for this with my applying some liquid bandage so it looks like its skin…sort of.

I made the color from a bit of Halloween fake blood gel and a dull red blush and mixed it with the bottle of liquid bandage. I saw it online as a quick setting agent for make-up and stuff for cosplaying.

It’s the longest of everything to get right and them it’s the regular make-up and then getting dressed and there are butterflies forming in my stomach and it takes me a few sessions of breathing to chill out before I get everything on and tucked into place.

Now normally I’d be risking tears at the way that I look. I look good…I do, and with the breast and the bra and the stockings and the LBD I look pretty, actually pretty and it’s an experience that I…

It’s nowhere like the usual version of Frankie, no it’s girl me…it’s Jade.

And even dressed like this she, this real me seems so far way yet.

But I look like the comic character enough to pass and actually like the character if she was actually going out for supper.

Well a teenaged version there-of and a more real life version of her too since I’m a real girl and I don’t have the comic impossible body.

Oh…

Yeah, I think I actually just really said that….even to myself.

I take out my phone and do a few selfies and stuff even if it’ll be just for me and stuff. And then I get my purse hoping that the shiny faux leather clutch doesn’t look too out of place and I go and I get the scroll…and carefully roll the parchment back up and place it into the scroll case and I head down stairs.

I’m actually early…I’m early and I’m waiting outside the restaurant for someone to come up and ask me about the scroll case.

I’m holding it in my hands and I’m trying like crazy not to sweat or fidget or pace while I’m waiting.

It’s not working and oh-boy do I ever feel every not-there bit of what I’m wearing…I feel exposed and while I think I’ve gotten a look or two I’m not sure what they mean and if…

My tummy kind of hurts a little.

I am pacing…just a little and I wasn’t facing the foyer when I hear a guy’s voice.

“Excuse me, my lady? Could I ask where you got the scroll case that you’re now carrying?”

I turn and he’s….

Heart ofthe Beholden.

The Parchment Chapter 3

*Before…

I’m holding it in my hands and I’m trying like crazy not to sweat or fidget or pace while I’m waiting.

It’s not working and oh-boy do I ever feel every not-there bit of what I’m wearing…I feel exposed and while I think I’ve gotten a look or two I’m not sure what they mean and if…

My tummy kind of hurts a little.

I am pacing…just a little and I wasn’t facing the foyer when I hear a guy’s voice.

“Excuse me, my lady? Could I ask where you got the scroll case that you’re now carrying?”

I turn and he’s….

*And Now…

He’s…

Honestly he’s not what I had expected.

He’s cute.

He’s not just cute he’s pretty.

And in that kind of could pass for a girl pretty.

And thin…I can see where he’d be not the athletic jock type for sure.

And Most of all…

He’s in these nice if not fancy dress pants that are a nice soft brown and he’s in what is definitely a fancy dress shirt under an real deal fantasy tunic but the thing that actually just makes him him and not the whole girly sort of thing that people assume.

Pointed ears, real live-looking pointed elven ears and that actually changes everything because I’m standing there face to face sort of with a Tolkien looking young elven man.

Uhm…Gulp-yay?

Okay…so how do I?

“Uhm…sir elf I found the scroll case, it had been discarded by another woman and it was so lovely I had to see it closer. I will admit that it’s crafting called me to be a little more curious than wise?’

He looks at me.

There’s this confused look there but not from what I just said but from what I just said….

I can see the hurt there as the stood up and used hits.

But he looks at me and then he really looks at me and then he realizes that he just really looked at me and the geek boy in him takes over and he blushes.

“I…I’m without words lady…”

I take a breath…a big one and look at him. “Alexander isn’t it?”

He nods, and he’s kind of looking down.

“I know I’m not this Madonna but if you’d still like a person to go with…”

He looks at me like I’m…

“You’re not just returning it?”

“I can if you don’t want to….”

“Uhm…no…I mean are you sure?”

“Yes…?” I say it sort of sheepishly. “I mean, I’m not her…I’m really not her so…”

“Really not her?”

He looks at me.

Then he really looks at me and I see his brain going there and I can see him going to dismiss it too…like what are the odds you’re going to meet a transperson at a Con in cosplay right?

Actually it might be pretty good depending.

“So you’re like…?”

I nod, he doesn’t seem mad. “You’re not mad?”

“I mean you, you don’t look like…” He stops and he actually doesn’t say it out loud. And that was very cool of him but at the same time I can’t help myself.

The way that he looks.

I raise an eyebrow questioningly.

“Sorry.” He hunches a little sheepishly.

I try and look girl cool but I have no idea that I’m doing it or not. “Alexander?”

“Uhm…yes?”

“Maybe we should go inside?”

“………………”

Oh boy he’s still processing it. But on the plus side he doesn’t look like Troy or Johnathan and stuff or like one of the guys at school from the neo-thug squad that want to beat me for just looking and acting in ways that they don’t get.
There’s not too many of those guys really that bother me at school and stuff but there’s always a few. And it’s not as much as just the me being kinda very girly and stuff thing in-so-much-as them being the kind of people that see me and go Chin-chong-ping-pong and crap like that.

I look at Alexander and I don’t push, I just try and be calm and not like whatever’s going on in his head.

He nods suddenly and it actually startles me some and he smiles that I did like that was…good? He’s blushing again a bit too. “Okay…but…”

I look at him…. “We could just LARP it?”

He blinks…. Uhm…Aye…Aye I think would be the thing lady…?”

“Jade…Jade Braddock.” It’s part my girl name and Psylocke’s last name so it kind of works.

He reaches for my hand and I give it to him and he does this bow his head to touch his lips to my fingertips and his forehead to my knuckles and it’s.

Yes we’re cosplaying but it’s.

“I thank you for your kind heart and consideration M’lady Jade and would be honored if you would join me for supper this eve as my intended has become…”

“Indisposed…?” I add trying to be diplomatic.

“Revealed.” He counters with.

Oh…oh that was good, I mean it’s kinda really true but it’s such an elfin way of saying it.

“I am sorry for that Alexander.”

“My good fortune for meeting a lady of integrity.”

Oh…I look at him as he moves up and he goes from holding my fingers to walking and holding my hand but in this kinda fantasy way and he guides us to the hostess.

It feels…

It feels like all that stuff that I was scared and being nervous about from before but just in a whole new way…like the butterflies I had somehow changed colors inside of me or something and I’m feeling all my clothes and the way that I’m dressed and the way that I’m breathing and it’s not bad but it’s just so….

I don’t know but it’s a good thing…he knows and we’re still cosplaying and yet there is part of me, part of Jade that’s being led to our table and she’s…I’m…

I know it’s not like right but I feel like Mulan when people found her out and it didn’t matter.

Oh…and it’s really nice in here.

Heart ofthe Beholden.

The Parchment Chapter 4

*Before…
“My good fortune for meeting a lady of integrity.”

Oh…I look at him as he moves up and he goes from holding my fingers to walking and holding my hand but in this kinda fantasy way and he guides us to the hostess.

It feels…

It feels like all that stuff that I was scared and being nervous about from before but just in a whole new way…like the butterflies I had somehow changed colors inside of me or something and I’m feeling all my clothes and the way that I’m dressed and the way that I’m breathing and it’s not bad but it’s just so….

I don’t know but it’s a good thing…he knows and we’re still cosplaying and yet there is part of me, part of Jade that’s being led to our table and she’s…I’m…

I know it’s not like right but I feel like Mulan when people found her out and it didn’t matter.

Oh…and it’s really nice in here.

*And Now…

I’m not really, really hungry but it’s still nice to be here and it’s kind of amazing with the way that people look here.

It’s been booked I think for the Con because people are still definitely doing Cosplay but they’re also dressed for court or for formal uniform dress or for a fancy night on the town as their costumed identities.

The ones I like is the vigilante woman Ghost all in her white hooded costume and looking like her character but also really elegant.

There’s an X-men table with a whole bunch of people having a dinner party and someone went so far as to do Nightcrawler with the blue and the ears and the tail and in a tux. But Cyclops looks really beau hot…the guy’s is good looking but he has the movie visor on and again he’s in a tux.

I’m sort of on the fence sometimes sexually it’s not like I’m experienced but there are some things that are to me very guy yay and a cleaned up guy in a tux is now apparently one of them.

Oh the girls look great too there’s a Dazzler and an Storm though she’s long haired comic Storm and not the Halle version but she looks amazing and she’s actually dressed not formal like but in this off the shoulders dress with an African print and its sheer and she has like matching jewelry. She looks like the real deal if she was in something that was relaxed but good enough to wear out to dinner with friends.

And there’s a lot more that are great looking in all the different genres.

I love this…here you can Cosplay who you feel like rather than who you’re stuck as in real life. And it works too. Some of the make-up and stuff is top notch but it’s even just stuff like the thin girls can find stuff…and I mean thin like the ones that have problems putting on weight that get overlooked or accused of having an eating disorder.

Like there’s a Char or Charlez the French blonde girl that was posing as a guy from Infinite Stratus. In the academy uniform and she looks great very much him but with her natural build being the hints of the girl under it.

Did I mention I love anime?

And even the bigger girls…like heftier built ones there’s stuff for them too…there’s a sort of stocky girl sitting at a table dressed too in a LBD but she has a glued on sort of neat little black gothy beard and stache and she has tattoos and stuff and what looks to be glued on cyber-ware and pointed ears. I’m guessing she’s a dwarven decker out of Shadowrun. I freaking love her purse. It’s a small folding keyboard built right into her purse and its black and faux leather and still looks good enough for here while still being her cyber deck.

And yeah she’s short and she’s not what a lot of girls like “Cinderella” would call good looking but I think she looks awesome and from some of the looks from the guys and stuff I’m not the only one.

I get my attention back on Alexander and the fact that he’s still doing the hand thing with me and we get to our table and it’s nice and it has all the silverware and stuff for a fancy meal and stuff and he let’s go of my hand and he pulls out my chair for me.

I slip into it remembering to sweep my hand under my dress and he slides me in. Okay…that was…it was nice doing that but while I’m not big by any means I’m not too small either and there was that little zip of a guy doing a guy thing like that.

I like the zip it gave me.

It was just something sort of like this yep-girl moment.

The hostess gives each of us our menus and it’s a lot different that the house menu for room service this is all sort of fancy stuff. I look it over then I look at Alexander. “Uhm…excuse me but what should I order?”

He looks at me. “Anything Jade, I had worked very hard for the funds for this with my previously intended companion. I can afford this; my deeds outside of this realm have paid me quite well?”

“Really? Can I ask how old you are?”

He looks at me. “I’m quite old, or at least by human terms.”

Okay I smile a little but then just do the signal for time-out. “I meant…”

Alexander nods and sighs. “I’m seventeen and I have a part time job fixing computers out of my house home and I really did save up a lot of money for this…I was kinda hoping to sort of show Donna that I’m not the guy she knows.”

“No you’re definitely not, she…maybe I shouldn’t say…”

“She thinks I’m a loser.”

“She thinks you’ll be like some of the people here at the Con, she said with some other girl that she’s here just for the cosplay pictures so she can use them to go and do bigger and better things.”

He looks at me. “And you’re not looking for that guy that’s super successful?”

“I don’t know this is my first time being me. I mean I’m not out to my family or anything.”

“Oh…I…I don’t know anyone else like you Jade honestly so…I mean…”

I nod. “There’s like no out trans-people home either so yeah I can get not knowing.”

He blushes. “Sorry though.”

“No, it’s okay I mean you really could have gone the other way with this and a lot of people wouldn’t blame you.”

“I’d blame me. I might not know a lot about this whole thing but I know that I get treated differently because of the way that I look and stuff and I have some gay and lesbian friends back at school and their lives have been kinda shitty sometimes from the flak that people give them. It’s really not something that can ever be y’know justified.”

“Some people do.”

“Some people are bigots Jade….you are like you said new to doing this and stuff but you actually came here to see that I wasn’t just left standing and stuff and that takes a lot of guts…girl.”

Okay he adds the girl in as a sort of short afterthought but it’s a very yay thing for me to hear especially while we’re being candid.

“Thanks Alexander.”

“While we’re in time out it’s just Alex okay Jade?”

“Definitely okay.”

“So…? What do you want to try?”

“I literally have no idea. “ I look at the menu again and Alex sets his menu down and looks up. It’s like some kind of signal because out waiter shows up.

“Yes sir can I take your order now?”

He gets that elfin look back on his face. “Aye kind sir if we could have a chilled bottle of this sparkling cider I’ve heard of and we would like to try some of this caviar and this oysters on the half shell and the flowers of melon and boar.”

I’m trying to track the things on the menu and it’s really pricey. The waiter looks at us and then at Alex again. “Sir the price on the caviar is quite high.”

Alex looks at me and I was caught looking at the two hundred dollar price tag on it. I think I’m blanching.

“Jade, have you had this before?”

“Uhm no, not this stuff…”

“Then we shall try it then yes?”

I give him this are you crazy look.

He actually gives me this please look!?

Man…boys…okay elves with puppy dog eyes are killer. (Whine.)

“If you’re sure?”

Alex looks at the waiter. “Seeing your concern shall I pay for this upfront?”

The waiter blanches a bit like he’s actually not sure what to do. I can get the concern though it’s seventy five dollars…which is a lot of money. Actually it’s a LOT of money. He does this little bow thingy. “If you’ll excuse me I need to consult with the dining room manager.”

He leaves and I see him go over to this older guy and they both come over to us and the manager actually does the time-out thing.

“I’m sorry but we will need proof that you can pay before we can fill that order for a pair of young adults such as yourselves.”

Alex doesn’t get angry but he just nods and he reaches into his tunic and he pulls out a very elvish looking wallet and passed the manager a traveler’s cheque. “Will this do sir?”

The manager gives it a look and he nods and passes it to the waiter. “It will do fine sir and thank you for your understanding. We’ll comp the cider and the oysters for the difficulty.”

Alex nods. “That would be excellent thanks.”

They both leave and the waiter comes back with the ice bucket thingy and the bottle of cider and then the rest of the stuff.

Okay…the caviar is not what I thought it would be like. I like it but it’s so not worth the cost. I’m from Nova Scotia so I’ve had roe before and a few different kinds of it and while the caviar is awesome tasting it’s not worth two hundred dollars.

It was very delicate and salty but sweeter than I thought it would be I’ve had lumpfish caviar before at a New Year’s thing and it wasn’t as sweet as this. The one thing that I will say is that it came with a lot of fancy things like the service set it was served on and the little pancake things and this sour cream that’s like sour clotted cream but not quite as tart and other things.

Alex is making faces as he eats it though.

“You don’t like it?”

“No…not so much.”

“Then why are we eating it?”

“Because I was going to do this with Donna and I’ve never actually had anything like this before Jade.”

“I’m a pretty simple girl you know. We didn’t have to have this.”

“Yeah but we can actually say that we did. I mean I’m kind of stoked that we’re doing that.”

I look at him. “Do I pass enough for pictures?” I almost bite my lip.

“Definitely, Jade you look amazing honestly if you hadn’t been so honest and forthright about yourself I wouldn’t have known.”

“But you did know.”

“Only because the way that you were acting sort of clued me in. honestly I still don’t see the boy that’s there.”

“Well…” I’m smiling a little but I’m blushing too. “That’s…that’s because she was never meant to be one.”

“Definitely not.” He raises his glass and we chink glasses and I can’t help but to smile and blush some.

I take a breath. “Okay pictures?”

“You don’t mind?’

“Nope, I want to do it too…I want to remember this and remember doing things that I’d never get to do and be with someone that knows and is cool with me being comfortable and myself for a change.”

We take pictures with our phones and with each other and eating and feeding and stuff and it’s cool. I know he might post them but after I see a few of them I…I’m not sure that I pass like he says but I’m looking at me so I’m not all that able to be non-critical and stuff.

I can’t believe I’m taking pictures of food. And the fact I’m having a night like this even.

The oysters are good and they’re big ones too and there’s stuff to have with them but I like mine just as is.

I have Alex’s as he just couldn’t get the first one even down.

He’s looking at me. “How can you do that?”

“I grew up with them; you go to a beach party or a BBQ someone will bring some. I mean you can get them at the fresh fish section at Sobey’s.”

“What’s Sobey’s?”

“Oh it’s like a grocery store chain, kinda like Boston Market.”

“Oh…well I still tried them.”

“You’re lucky you’re not allergic if you’re just trying something out of the blue like this.”

“Oh I can do shellfish, I love clams and crab and lobster and stuff.”

I nod. “I like most seafood; I’m not a big red meat eater.”

“Watching your weight?”

“Why do I look fat?” I raise my eyebrow at him again.

“Nooo…you look amazing.”

I laugh. “Good backpedal there.”

He grins. “Thanks Jade I’m having a great time.”

I smile. “You’re welcome Alex…Alexander.”

We share the roses that are made from Serrano ham and cantaloupe it’s all ribboned but folded into little rosettes. We actually feed each other those and take pictures it was an actually a great start to things.

We just get done all of that and the busboy took things away and were going to pick the menus back up when I see Donna…that’s Cinderella coming over our way and she’s stomping…she looks mad.

“Alex! Where the hell have you been I was looking all over for you so we could have supper together and then I see you in here with…?”

She glares at me. Looks me up and down with this look that goes from pissy to distasteful.

Then she glares back at him. “I thought you wanted to be with me?”

He looks at her and he looks at me and he looks confused and scared of her even maybe. She’s definitely a scary girl when she’s this worked up. A pretty bully that is used to getting what she wants.

He swallows. “I invited you and you stood me up.”

“No you didn’t” She sort of hisses at him.

“Uhm…” I hold up the scroll case.

She actually looks confused for a second or two like she’d already completely put it out of her mind. Then she recognizes it and she snatches it from me hard…in fact I get clawed by her nails when she does it.

“Ow…” That hurt.

She glares at me. “That’s mine, where’d you get it?”

“From where you tossed it in the trash.” I reply sucking to get the poison out.

“She’s lying Alex.” She says at me almost like she was spitting it, kinda shouty too.

Alex still looks scared of her or hurting even and I can almost picture it too just how much he had pinned on this and how hard he must have worked and saved and stuff. I can also see her being one of those popular girls that begs to get what she wants when she’s not doing this and bullying people into agreeing with her or doing what she wants the rest of the time.

I take my hand out of my mouth and I look at Alex and I do the time-in signal.

His eyes widen a second and then it’s like that whole gamer thing…he doesn’t have to feel the way that he is right now because she’s Donna and he’s Alexander…an elf. “No, she’s not Donna. Jade’s been way more honest with me that you have.”

Yep elf-tude trumps preppy-wench-tude for sure!

“She took it from the garbage!” Again all shouty.

“So it was thrown away then?” He asks and now he’s slipping into Alexander mannerisms and stuff.

It sounded cool like would commander Tuvok please examine the witness.

“I…I…It…you only wanted me to go so you could like pay and stuff and pressure me into like having sex with you! You’ll have spread it all over school just so you can act like you‘re actually cool or something!”

Okay…wrong Alexander isn’t like that; her crowd might be given that’s where she went for her excuse and all but nope.

A whole heck of a lot of nope.

“Excuse me, Donna? Alex isn’t that kind of guy and you know it; I heard everything you and the other girl were saying in the bathroom and that you’re not really here for the sake of being here at the Con. You’re here as you said so you can get noticed even if it’s by the people here and stuff and you can use that to get a start in modeling.”

“So what!? So what I mean there’s all sorts of hot looking girls here that are doing that. You honestly think that some of these girls give two freaking shits about you geeks! We don‘t the only girls here that give two craps about this geek shit are all the weirdos and freaks and uggos.” She’s still shouty and looking very pissed that she’s been caught in her lie.

And….Uhm.

“Uhm…Donna, take a real good look around you.”

She looks around and her whole little diatribe about what girls that look like her are really here for and really into has been heard by just about everyone within like four tables of us.

And they’re all glaring including the manager of the dining room.

He comes over. “Miss I’m afraid I’ll have to ask you to leave.”

“What! why?” She points at me. “She should leave she’s the one that caused all of this by stealing the…the…this thingy.”

He looks at her. “She is not causing a scene.”

She looks like she’s ready to say something and two guys in grey uniforms and charcoal jackets and radios have come over.

Donna turns on me and she throws the scroll case at me whacking me in the face with it. “You effing little gold digger!”

She’s actually grabbed at that point and I’m holding my eye because she whacked me there with it and yeah…ow…

They’re pulling her away and she’s looking at Alex and she goes all pleady.

“Alex! Alex please don’t let them do this! We’ve been friends for a long time!”

Alexander looks at her. “We might go to school together but now I’m pretty sure that we’ve never really been friends Donna.”

They leave taking her out and she’s causing s a scene the whole way out and Alexander looks at me and he actually reaches down and takes a drink of his cider and says after it in this very elven mannered way.

“I’d have called her a gold digger but I honestly don’t think I dislike dwarves enough to insult them so.”

Heart ofthe Beholden.

The Parchment Chapter 5

*Before…
Donna turns on me and she throws the scroll case at me whacking me in the face with it. “You effing little gold digger!”
She’s actually grabbed at that point and I’m holding my eye because she whacked me there with it and yeah…ow…
They’re pulling her away and she’s looking at Alex and she goes all pleady.
“Alex! Alex please don’t let them do this! We’ve been friends for a long time!”
Alexander looks at her. “We might go to school together but now I’m pretty sure that we’ve never really been friends Donna.”
They leave taking her out and she’s causing s a scene the whole way out and Alexander looks at me and he actually reaches down and takes a drink of his cider and says after it in this very elven mannered way.
“I’d have called her a gold digger but I honestly don’t think I dislike dwarves enough to insult them so.”

*And Now…

Okay I’m like OMG kinda stunned.

I mean…I timed him in to hopefully like give him an excuse to like be not him but to like stand up for himself more and stuff but…but oh wow.

And I’m not the only one wow’d.

There’s the people around us and they’re smiling and nodding at us and sort of more at Alex or Alexander and he sort of loses his composure with that and he’s blushing now and he waves his hand sort of and sits back down and I do the same.

“Wow, that was intense.”

“Yes…it was.”

He looks upset, or like he’s getting there.

I do the time out hand sign. “Alex?”

He looks at me. “Jade I’m sorry; I didn’t know she’d throw that at you.”

“Yeah me neither or go pyscho and claw me yanking it out of my hand.”

He looks at me and then my hand and he look a little pale.

“Alex? You okay? You don’t look so good.”

“I…I…I think I need some air.”

I get up. “Okay, come on.” I get up and get my purse and take him by the arm. “Let’s go for a walk.”

“But Supper?”

“We can eat something g else later besides the caviar was way too expensive.”

“It wasn’t that bad.”

“No but you didn’t like it and it was expensive.”

He gives me this weak smile but I try and give him a good smile back and I pull him along with me and I take us through the lobby and just outside through the side doors to where they kind of nice rambling patio that leads to their pool area I think. I’m more looking for just a place for us to sit.

I get us over to a bench and I get both of us sat down.

Alex’s eyes look shiny, and he’s hovering right on that edge.

I slip my hand under my dress and sit next to him and rub his back. “It’s okay, it’s okay just breathe.”

“It’s not okay; it’s not Jade I mean she…”

“I know, that was majorly uncools.”

He nods and he kind of tries to gesture with his hands as he’s talking. “I soooo liked her, I mean I’ve lived at the end of her street like all my life and I’ve always done stuff for her. I mean she had to know how I felt right?”

“She likely did but I’ve got those people back home too and they only really notice anyone Alex when they can get something for themselves out of it.”

“I…I know she was one of the popular girls but she wasn’t when we were kids, we used to hand out together and stuff all the time.”

I rub his back some more and I tuck some loose hair behind the points of his ears. “How long ago was that though?”

“Grade school.”

“Alex people change and sometimes pretty fast and not for the better.”

“But….” He’s getting even more worked up and he’s trying to get it out and then it happens. That sound that is that little note that happens when cracks happen in someone’s voice just before they start to cry that’s when cracks happen in someone’s heart too.

I can’t help but to feel for him. I can’t help but to get it really and I can’t help but to actually need, need to be that kinda girl that reaches out to help instead of hurt.

(Sniffle-sob) “I…I…I thought that she actually liked me…that she was trying to be into the stuff that I’m into instead of….instead of all that stuff that… (Sniffle-pained throat sound.)

I pull him into my arms and settle in hugging him. I’d likely freak out and get all too scared and too nervous thinking about doing what I’m doing and stuff but it’s like there’s this switch in my head that I can sort of flip on when others need me that sets all my garbage back out of the way.

“I put all that time… (Sob.)…all that time not doing stuff but… (Sniffle)…working for this…for us I so wanted to so her… (Sob.)…show her that I’m not a loser… (Sob.)

Alex kind of breaks down at that and I’m already holding me tightly and stuff so I sort of keep doing that and I kind of rock us a little too and stroke his hair some with my fingertips and just try to be there.

It’s intense and it’s something I’ve never really done before really but it’s also something that as much as I know who I’m always supposed to have been instead of “Franklin.” That this is me and this is who I am really supposed to be.

Doing this and being here and being this kind if girl is so right now almost as every bit as transformative as the first time I dressed and saw the real me in there. This time it’s inside to out instead of outside to in.

And being here is really awkward too.

I mean as much as I’m a girl I’ve never had the chance to be a girl so I don’t have the experience of doing this kind of stuff with my friends and all that stuff. And most of the time if I had tried it would have been something like “get off creep” with the girls at school and “leggo fag” with the guys.

I mean you kinda notice things like the way that people talk about minorities when there are none there. Canada is nice, Nova Scotia’s nice it really is but there’s a lot of people that aren’t as nice as they let on that they are. I mean when some of my friends made tranny comment’s on the girl that had to fight to get into that pageant of Donald Combover’s…it kind of makes your heart sink and makes you feel unsafe.

No I don’t think that I’d get beaten up. Or at least not by everybody my town’s not like that but teased, bullied and other stuff who knows?

I reach into my purse after a while and take out some tissues and I wipe at his face and lean over to smile at him. “Here, maybe you should blow.”

He takes the tissues and he looks at them and at me and I grin at him. “Hey we just met I don’t give strange elves blow jobs.” I try and make a funny face after that and he smiles and he laughs.

Okay there is something too in that first laugh and a first smile after a painful cry that just transforms someone that you’re with. It’s actually amazing…it’s so naked and rare really.

“You know you’re awesome right Jade?”

I shake my head. “No…actually I don’t Alex; all of the attention in my life’s pretty much been only on Frankie.”

“Frankie?”

“My alter-ego.”

“Oh…” He’s quiet a second thinking stuff over and all that I guess. It feels super awkward and super inside achy that I pretty much just reminded Alex of the whole Jade’s not a natural girl thing.

“Sorry…” Honestly it takes a whole lot more strength that I thought that I had to look him in the eyes.

“For what?” He’s looking at me and there’s some honest confusion there.

“My grim reminder.”

And he starts to laugh….okay I might be Cosplay braining it but he has this really light laugh, like in tone and pitch and it’s sort of guy and not but it’s kind of musical. It’s actually to me kinda nice but very likely one of those “not manly enough get him” things the bullies love.

Actually Alex is laughing until he starts to cough and I’m rubbing his back again. “What the heck is so funny?”

“I’ve never heard to that called grim before!”

“Okay, I’m usually pretty good at this stuff but I’m not getting it.”

“You called your THING…Grim.”

“……………………….” I…and my mental nerd-calc is going through the equations and adding XY to stand for guyese and… “Oh! No! Eeew! Eeew! Gross Alex!”

And I’m slapping his arm and shoulder girl mad and semi-yicked out and stuff.

Which has him being such a guy and laughing more. “It’s clobbering time!”

“Eeeeew! Never!”

I shove myself away and cross my arms under my breasts and sulky-glare at him.

“Never?’

“No…that’s not me…it’ll never really be me Alex it’s part of me I hate…it makes me feel wrong…it makes me feel fake all the time… (Sniffle.)…Dammit…”

I start to dab at my eyes with some tissues but it’s not helping…the dysphonia pixie’s stabbed me in the back again and the hurt is strong right now.

More tears are flowing from both eyes so I dab at one and the other runs and Alex is looking at me and he slides over to me and he dabs and wipes my face gently but not with tissue but with a cloth handkerchief that matches his tunic.

“Hey…look Jade…I think you’re awesome and I was just…it was me kind of being an ass with that…I didn’t mean it in a bad way. I really didn’t mean to trigger you or anything…I mean I think you’re actually really awesome.”

(Sniffle.) “You said awesome twice…what are we on Chuck?”

He chuckles and smiles. “I loved that show.”

“Me too, I so wanted to be Kristin Kreuk…kinda still do.”

“Well I think Jade’s pretty awesome.”

“Well Jade’s…” He puts his finger over my lips.

“Don’t. I like jade and I only know Jade.” Oh my goddess that’s so… I think that I am honestly to god and the goddess having my first real life crush coming to life right here and now. I’ve never…this is something that…wow my heart id beating soooo fast.

“Alex…just…wow…”

And he gives me this really sweet smile, actually the sweetest guy smile that I’ve ever seen and it’s just so amazing.

His pocket hums and he looks at me as he takes out his phone and he looks at it and he puts it away and then he looks at me and he does the time-in signal.

“There is a fete and it has the local dancing M’lady Jade would you see fit to accompany me to this affair?”

“A fete? Oh a dance.” I’ve never danced as me before. I’m trying not to bite at my lip. “Will my attire be alright?”

“Perfectly suitable.”

“I’ll need to touch up my make-up.”

“As you will, I think I could use a few moments to regain myself as well.”

I smile. “You sure that you want me to accompany to this? A handsome elf such as yourself will be not lacking partners.”

“The very same could be said of you Lady Jade.” He says it with this…it’s so calm and warm and elf-like in the best of Legolas-like ways. I know he’s…buy it’s still pretty yay to me.

And just the thought of someone like me attracting attention from other dance partners makes me blush and stuff.

Alex offers his hand again and I take it and he walks me inside and we make our ways to the public bathrooms and part ways there and I go and I look myself in the mirror. Yeah I need some work and there’s a nice red mark on my cheek from the scroll case that Donna threw at me.

I start by washing my face and losing the whole face tattoo mark that Psylocke has and I don’t have the stuff to fix it so I just do my make-up at this point trying to look good…decent…I’m nervous too because there’s other girls around and I’m getting looks and stuff and some were at the dining room.

I look at them and I blush but I get some smiles and I even get a thumbs up and a pat of the shoulder from the dwarven decker girl.

“Good job.”

“Uhm…thanks, great costume.”

“Thanks I love it.”

“Most girls wouldn’t be brave enough to do the beard.”

“Yeah I know but the seriously have like expectation issues with what they think that dwarves are like and stuff.”

“Oh I get it I’m Asian. We’re all expected to know how to do martial arts or be able to like make bento boxes and be like all super cute and have this thing for school uniforms.”

We both laugh and she extends her hand. “Natasha.”

“Jade.”

“Sinclair?”

My eyes go wide. “No way…you read….?”

“Uhm hello dwarven chick with a beard!”

We both end up laughing. I look her over and honestly I’m not sure but at the same time I don’t care. And if she’s like me or the other way around no one in here seems to mind I mean there’s a girl doing some combing and stuff to get her female wookie costume looking right.

It’s kind of nice and a relief too.

I look at her. “So what are you doing next?”

“I’m sitting in on that new Robotech war game and seeing if I want to buy it or not.”

“I haven’t seen that yet.”

“It’s Macross stuff so all Zentradie and stuff.”

“Cool, let me know if it is good. I love Macross and stuff I’m a fan of anime and Mecha stuff.”

“So what are you doing?”

“Alexander’s talking me to the dance tonight?”

“Oh that’s supposed to be fun. I heard it’s like lessons and stuff in the whole old school Ren-fair dances.”

“That, that would be cool. Talk later?”

“Sure let’s trade phone stuff and e-mails.”

We trade off phones and we enter our own stuff in and then we actually hug and head out and she wave bye as she goes off in another direction and Alexander is there and he’s waiting for me.

And he has his tunic off and draped over his arm and the shirt he’s wearing is actually pretty much one of those buccaneer shirts but a soft goldenrod color and it has the laced collar style and there’s stags in bronzen thread and trees on the sleeves which matches the brown in the dress pants that he’s wearing and it’s just baggy enough that he doesn’t look too skinny.

He offers his hand again and I take it and we head off together into the convention room that has been set aside for the dancing and he actually has tickets for this too meaning it’s not just a show up event but something else.

I can’t help but have this big oh…form in my mouth as the place is really nicely decorated in this like period sort of way and even the walls are hidden behind floor to ceiling drapery and there’s a band there and what looks like a set up for a D.J.

I’m not the only person there not in medieval clothing so that helps and we’re waiting patiently while an older guy in like his forties comes out with a woman and some others that just sort of move like dancers and they actually do sort of put on a bit of a show for us.

We all clap because it was cool and then they start with the whole event.

The people are clearly dance instructor types and they start with each dance set with a screen up behind the stage that shows the dance we’re going to learn being done and then they start to play music after that and they start to teach us how to do each one.

It’s so much fun really, the bows and the curtsey’s and the arms and hands up and alighting on the tips of the other and the turns and the spins and stuff that all fits together into the whole thing and some of them have us turning and switching partners and back as we sort of dance in circles and rounds.

I really kind of wish that I had a Ren-fair dress for this but it’s still awesome all the same. And it’s a lot of fun dancing with Alexander who’s still doing his elf LARP and that actually makes it seem like I am dancing with an elf really with the way that he looks and is dressed and how all out he was for her.

I feel bad for him but not for Donna, it’s just…I mean if she can’t get her head around how much he’d done and planned for and thought of by the supper and then the tickets for this then it’s her damned stupid loss isn’t it.

And kind of a serious real princess moment for me.

I didn’t think that it’s get better but it actually does…we go over one last set of dancing stuff and the instructor grins and the band starts to play a familiar tune and I’m dancing and I can’t quite place it until there’s the dance part with the claps…

Oh my freaking gods!!!

I get thrill bumps as the band goes from playing to the D.J. cueing up and sliding us into *Golden Years* By David Bowie…and yeah just like that really cool Ren-Dance scene from the Heath Leger Movie *A Knight’s Tale*

Clap in the air…hold hands…promenade around each other…hold hands and bow/curtsey twice once per hand…arm swish and promenade…turn round each other…dip the knees facing each other…circle again…clap in the air…swish arms and mosey and spin turn…tea pinkie walk and face others in a group and…long promenade while arm swishing to the end of the dance floor…hop and turn…

And then it starts…

“Golden years… gold, whop, whop, whop…”
“Golden years… gold, whop, whop, whop…”
“Golden years… gold, whop, whop, whop…”
“Don’t let me hear that life’s not taking you anywhere…Angel….!”

Heart ofthe Beholden.

The Parchment Chapter 6

*Before…

I get thrill bumps as the band goes from playing to the D.J. cueing up and sliding us into *Golden Years* By David Bowie…and yeah just like that really cool Ren-Dance scene from the Heath Leger Movie *A Knight’s Tale*

Clap in the air…hold hands…promenade around each other…hold hands and bow/curtsey twice once per hand…arm swish and promenade…turn round each other…dip the knees facing each other…circle again…clap in the air…swish arms and mosey and spin turn…tea pinkie walk and face others in a group and…long promenade while arm swishing to the end of the dance floor…hop and turn…

And then it starts…

“Golden years… gold, whop, whop, whop…”
“Golden years… gold, whop, whop, whop…”
“Golden years… gold, whop, whop, whop…”
“Don’t let me hear that life’s not taking you anywhere…Angel….!

*And Now…

It doesn’t stop there either because there’s a lot of music they have cued up for us to have an actual dance with and it’s everything from stuff out of the LOTR sound tracks to Zelda music and even rock songs that just scream like romantic stuff you could dance to at a Ren-fair and not be too far removed for it being pretty cool and funky like…

*Rock and Roll Fantasy*…By Bad Company and it’s got that same kind of good funky rock like Golden Years has and while it’s not that much on the whole Ren-Fair stuff the band actually sort of does this adlib with the song and it’s still just really cool.

*Mysterious Ways* By U2 is another excellent one really and kind of in that fantasy funky fun to dance with and I’m having this really goofy but incredible time. I’m sure that I’m making a fool out of myself because really this is the first time that I’ve ever really girl danced with anyone.

All my other times have been me watching a video and trying to do stuff in front of my closet mirror.

It’s the first time I’ve ever remotely jammed or danced to *Magic Carpet Ride* By Foghat though it’s rather appropriate for like the whole thing really.

The Funky fun stuff comes to an End with then doing *A Kind of Magic* By Queen and they slow the music down and they lower the lights too as they switch to some slower and sweet softer kinds of songs.

Like *Kiss from A Rose* By Seal…They don’t even use the D.J they have the band there singing it…well they’re playing and then they start that intro with acapella and it’s just frigging awesome.

It’s a really great song and it kind of takes us from the Ren-fair courtly stuff at the first of it to most of us slow dancing together and I get thrill bumps as Alexander’s hands slip around me and settle into the small of my back. It takes me a second but I slip my arms around his neck and we just slow dance.

I could so want all of this to be real…to have me really be pressed against him and be the way that I’m feeling…I do want it, I really do but at the same time I’m really, really enjoying myself far too much to be so down about the usual stuff.

*Everything I do, I do it for You.* By Brian Adams is the next one up that I know for sure what it is and all that stuff. It’s another great song too.

*Open Arms* By Journey… Oh my god I love this song to death it’s one of those really sweet fall in love songs. I’ve picture some guy…actually singing this to me before a few times…usually with me being the girl in like some kind of music video….of a music spot thingy in like a movie or a TV show.

Goddess this so sort of feels like I’m in one of those right now.

And this feels so good and so snuggly too…and while I’ve been sort of on and off the fence when it comes to how I feel like I might be sexually. Because I honestly don’t know and I’ve read how going on hormones might actually bring out what you might sexually be like and stuff…I’m pretty sure that I’m kind of into Alex.

He smells good actually, like really nice with hints of nice soap and cologne and stuff but there’s something else there too that I can’t really place my finger on but part of my brain is telling the rest of my brain that it could be the scent of guy.

*Candle in the wind* By Elton John is next and it’s kinda good for this, it’s definitely slow and it’s easy to dance too and sort of romantic and stuff.

I’m amazed at his warmth.

I mean other than affection from my folks which is cool and stuff I’ve had zero person to person contact on this level and I’m amazed at the heat that comes off of Alexander and just hot good it feels to be held and touched by another human being.

The whole me being worthwhile feeling that comes from that is so amazing…I mean I can sort of see why some people get all like Need a relationship, Must be in a relationship clingy and stuff.

I don’t want to be one of those girls either but I can get it. I’m just so sinking into feelings that I couldn’t actually even dream about before now. I mean I could sort of imagine them but imagining and actually feeling them are two hugely different experiences.

*Who wants to Live Forever* By Queen is next and it’s a sort of wistfully sad fave of mine and right up there in my SF/Fantasy faves with Bonny Portmore the other really cool tune from Highlander…okay all of the other songs on the Highlander soundtrack from the first movie actually are really good too…but not the rest of the movies.

I mean really?

Really there had to be that many movies? The only kinda excusable one and I mean kinda should have been the one with Conner and Duncan…though it needed a whole re-write because Conner got the prize and that friggin should’ve been like the end of it.

Hollywood needs a good Chinese girl there like me to have like a really big fan made from like newspaper and I can haul off and whack people that say…. That was good and it made money! Let’s do a sequel!...Whap! Bad producers! Whap! Bad studios!

I make myself snerk.

Alexander looks at me and he gives me this elvish eyebrow in this curious and questioning way.

“Something amuses you?”

“Just me thinking my odd little thoughts.”

“I would care to know.” And oh yoi…he’s looking at me with those eyes and he really is cute and like the rest of it no one’s really ever asked me like personal stuff like what I’m thinking.

(Blush.) “I was thinking that the people that make bad sequels to movies need someone like me to have a really big paper fan like the one’s made out of newspapers and for them to get a great big whack every time they try and make a really bad sequel or pre-quel.”

Alexander smiles. “Indeed a worthy enterprise that would be.”

I blush some because while he’s staying in character right now he’s got this really big smile there on his face and it’s really nice.

Oh gosh I’m so not sure about this, am I starting to crush on this boy?

Can I?

*Wonderful Tonight* By Eric Clapton’s the last song being played and I love this song even though I don’t have long blonde hair like in the song it’s just another song that stirs up that hopeless little romantic girl inside and I actually sigh a little and Alexander moves closer to me and he whispers softly into my ear.

“If it would please you lady, you may do me the honor of resting your head on my shoulder.”

Oh…

Oh uhm…

I exhale and set my head sideways on his shoulder as we’re dancing and it’s just…this is part of the I can’t touch it dreams that I’ve had.

Again with the nice and warm, again with the smell good and I am so definitely crushing on this boy.

I’m so crushing on Alex…Alexander…and I don’t think there’s a damned thing I could do to stop myself.

I…I don’t want to, not even if it might break my heart.

 

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Image Credits: Title Picture purchased and licensed for publishing from

123rf.com. The model in this image in no way supports nor conveys the issues and situations brought up within the story. The models use within this work is solely for the representation of looks of the main character of this particular story. ~Sephrena

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*Before…

“If it would please you lady, you may do me the honor of resting your head on my shoulder.”
Oh…
Oh uhm…
I exhale and set my head sideways on his shoulder as we’re dancing and it’s just…this is part of the I can’t touch it dreams that I’ve had.
Again with the nice and warm, again with the smell good and I am so definitely crushing on this boy.
I’m so crushing on Alex…Alexander…and I don’t think there’s a damned thing I could do to stop myself.

I…I don’t want to, not even if it might break my heart.

*And Now…

Chapter 7
 
The song ends in way too short a time and I really don’t want to move and at the same time given the way that I’m feeling and the way that I am under everything I have on I’m really close to dashing away crying.

Like so close to tears and a tummy-ache kind of thing.

It’s getting over and I don’t want it to be over, I don’t want to go to my room and get un-done and be Franklin again.

Alexander does the time-out hand-sign against my back and I nod. “Are you okay you’re shaking?”

(Sniffle.) “No…I don’t want to take the glass slippers off.”

“Wh…….oh…uhm I’m still new to this and everything so this is way more than a clothes thing isn’t it?”

I smile into his shirt a bit of a sad little smile. “Yeah…it’s way more than a clothes thing…I mean I love clothes…mostly because I don’t really have much and no place to wear them…but they’re still clothes.”

Bless him though for not saying dressed…dressed in that way is way more of an other thing.

“So…you really don’t want to…?”

“I don’t want to go back to my room and get ready for bed and stuff because this will be like over and I’ll have to like face the stuff about me that I don’t like…I mean really don’t like.”

“So…don’t, like not right now.”

(Sniffle.) “Huh?” Oh yeah sometimes I’m not the swiftest girl in the room.

“It’s not that late it’s like ten, there’s still other people around and doing things here and we can go and check some of that stuff out.”

“Really, I thought stuff would be done for the night.”

“Well just the stuff in the booths and some of the main rooms but I know a few places in the hotel that are doing stuff all night.”

“All night?”

“It’s geeks and gamers and role-players there’s people running games and tournaments and all night games in their rooms and other spots here in the hotel. I think there’s even a couple of the meeting rooms for like business meetings doing film and show marathons.”

“You wouldn’t mind?”

“No, not after everything that you’ve done tonight with me Jade. Look I don’t get it…I mean what you have to like go through but I do think that if we go and do stuff until you’re zonked then when you go to crash it’ll be in that whole too sleepy to care about the stuff maybe.”

And right there ladies and gents is a guy that gets it even when he doesn’t get it. I mean I’ve literally lost count of my dysphoric days and especially the nights where I feel wrong enough that sleep is hard to find…and then there’s the once you do you don’t want to get up because of that whole reality thing of not being who you’d just been dreaming of being.

“You don’t mind?”

“Honestly no and I was kind of planning on living with minimal sleep for the duration anyways. I mean there so much to do and to see and it’s so short a time really that I just figure when I’m home I can catch up on all my missed sleep.”

“The I’d really like to if that’s okay?”

“Sure.”

(Sniffle.) “So can I go and get changed?”

“But you said?”

“I need to change I can’t go around doing all that stuff in a little black dress all night.”

“Why not? You’re kind of rocking that dress.”

Oh…oh wow, oh yay…I am?

“I am?”

“Yes actually you look amazing.”

Oh like so…and again he didn’t say or even do the unsaid pause of stuff that might usually come like…for a guy…he just.

I look up at Alex and he’s looking at me. “Wow…” he says.

“What?”

“You’re make-up it’s all like run around your eyes and stuff.”

“Oh…dammit.”

“No…actually Jade it’s cool.”

“Being an anthros-racoon is cool?”

“Hmmm…maybe Avril Chinese…?”

I smack him in the chest lightly. “Hey…!”

“Hey yourself I got you to smile again.”

Oh…

Blush…he did too.

I’ve…I’ve never had anyone thing me smiling again was something that was worthwhile before really. It is very, very beyond nice.

It’s yay my crush did an awesome nice.

He takes my hand and actually holds it not in the LARPing fantasy way but just holding it and he walks me to doors and opens it for me to go through first and then we’re down to the lobby and into the elevators.

I have to press for my floor and stuff and kind of lead the way to my room but he walks me all the way there.

I look at him. “Give me thirty minutes?”

He nods. “How about I meet you here and I go and change too?”

“Uhm…okay.” I lean on the door and fiddle with my purse and get my key card out.

Alex smiles and he walks away….kinda backwards some but away and there’s this second or five where I wanted an outside my door kiss but we’re just really still just have met each other and well I’m.

And that little bit of the creeping bad voice inside falls away as he falls away because he trips bumping into someone’s room service tray and he butt-plants and I can’t help but mouth cover and gasp and giggle as some dish goes flying and he’s trying to catch it before it goes splat.

His hands bump-juggle it three times before he actually catches it and it doesn’t spill.

Okay that was both cool and lucky and I end up clapping. “Smooth, and nice recovery.”

He blushes and grins. “I warn you now, I’m horribly uncoordinated.”

“But lucky?”

He looks at me. “Actually yeah…tonight’s been pretty lucky all things considered.”

Oh…how…?

See right there, right there is another reason why I could never be a guy because my brain can’t actually come up with stuff like that instead I’m just well doing what I’m doing and grinning and blushing at the same time because …Squee coolness and blush he’s still saying it to me.

I mean me and it’s not like given the stuff I admitted to he doesn’t know.

Alex gets up and he goes past the elevators and heads around the corner….

Wait what!?

“Alex!” I kinda yell…I wince realizing the hour.

He pops his head literally around the corner and his hair is doing things with his pointy ears that’s just so….sigh.

“Yes Jade?”

“We’re on the same floor?”

He gives me this impish and so very cute boyish smile. “Looks like.” And he pulls away.

Oh…oh my goddess the butterflies.

It takes me a fumble or two to slide my card through and get inside my room and I’m leaning on the back of my door and breathing…eyes closed and I feel pretty warm in a good way but in a way that I’ve never really gotten outside my own bed and when I’m deep into those really private dreams.

It takes me a groany second to push off the door and to head to the shower and get it going and then to look through my clothes for something suitable to wear for the rest of tonight. Shoes are easy since I’m just going with my sneakers but those I give a really good blasting with my Secret anti-persperant.

Yes I don’t want my feet to stink and for them to sort of smell girly.

I settle on a pair of black yoga pants that are very forgiving and easy to pack away and hide and I’m going to wear my big tee-shirt with “Ed” on it from Cowboy Bebop and I head off to shower.

Yes another shower, there are times when a girl wants to change and part of that sometime is the fact that we might want to smell different than say the way that I did during supper and the dance. Plus I was dancing and I’m kinda sweaty from that and sweaty from the nerves I had in my little freak out after the dance and…

I shower with as much speed as I can and trying to really not deal with “it”.

I just, I would really, really sometimes not bother with that at all and it’s something that I sometimes try and even hide from myself.

So I get that done and I dry that first and slip into another gaff and panties as quick as I can and there’s this frission of relief that goes through me once I don’t have to deal with that. I dry the rest of me off and put some powder on and spray my pits and the get my boobs in order.

Sigh…they’re not real and who knows if they ever will but the me that’s looking at me in the mirror is a lot happier with everything as close as it can be right now.

I’m actually looking forward to being so tired and stuff that I can crash and not have to fixate on the stuff that I usually end up doing.

I half dry my hair and I spray some spritz and hold stuff on my hands and I run my fingers through my hair and then get my combs out and I comb it until it’s dry soooo going for that long Asian dark and straight and glossy look.

It’s a good look and I kinda try and get it all hanging straight even my bangs and stuff so I have this kinda sassy straight gothy-loli hair but I’m doing my eyes to try and get that moe thing too. Yeah I know it’s that whole Asian girl wanting to have the big eyes thing but….I kinda do a little. Not like extreme and stuff but it’s a really great look.

Would I get the surgery for it?

Not before the other surgeries I really want and need.

I just do lip-gloss because I want the shine but I don’t want to really mess with re-applying and watching out for lip-stick stuff and getting it on my teeth and stuff the rest of the night and all that stuff.

I go and get dressed and some cute hello-kitty ankle socks and I’m kinda all set.

Wait…I get my purse and I get my make-up and spare panties and tissues and then I get my Magic deck and my dice bag and my small spiral note book and my pens and my eversharps and gum all out of my backpack and my wallet.

I do a bit of clean-up of my stuff in my room and when that’s done I sit and wait…and wait…would he?

No Alex doesn’t seem like that kind of guy…I go to the door and peek out and he’s out in the hallway waiting for me.

“Hey…you could have knocked.”

“Never rush a woman my dad always says.”

I…he…dammit he’s doing it again.

I look and him and fight the urge to girl out.

He’s all sorts of geek yummy.

He actually still has the same blonde long hair and now he’s wearing glasses with those geeky sexy small gold John Lennon styled frames and he has the ears off but he’s still cute and he’s in what looks like comfy old jeans and a big baggy and splat paint/ink designed shirt with Ichigo on it from Bleach with him with the mask on it and sandals.

No socks, point for that, actually points for all of that and he’s got a shoulder bag like for a computer with him with the Nerd-Herd design on it from the TV show Chuck.

He’s really skinny actually but kind of in a good way and that makes me smile because he’s still really cute.

Okay it could be the crush but it’s…okay it is the crush but this is like sort of our space the Con and stuff so he’s dressed like he might be at home and stuff and not like somewhere else where he’d be a lot more self-conscious.

Speaking of self-conscious Alex is looking me over and smiling.

“What?”

“Cool shirt. I love Ed.”

“Everyone loves Cowboy Bebop.”

He smiles and then looks at his smart-phone. “So where do you want to go first?”

“I dunno what’s going on?”

I walk over to him and we make our way to the elevators and we decide to stop down at where they’re having a D&D game but they’re playing when we get there so we slip in quietly and lean on the wall with a few others and we watch the game play.

It’s really, really cool and it takes me awhile to get the whole setting that they’re playing but I think I’ve heard of it. It’s something in Forgotten Realms and I only know this because I have the boxed set at home that I got for like ten bucks at the used bookstore back home and they mentioned a classic bad-guy called Manshoon.

It’s kinda before my time really…forgotten realms was like way behind on the novel releases since they had all these cool places and characters and bios and it was all like before the novels really came out.

Dragonlance was the killer in that department. Again before my time really but I heard that they released the books and the modules (Adventure booklets) around the same times so you could play along with the storyline.

It’s kind cool to watch play going on but after a while in a heavy fight we slip out as it gets too busy to just sit back and enjoy the role-playing parts.

We go down the hall a ways and check out the Shadowrun game and Natasha’s there and we are the only spectators so we get a seat with some folding camping chairs someone has and we watch them game.

Good stuff they’re really into their game and the characters and they use a lot of the slang from the game and the books and Natasha is playing her decker and as she’s jacked in she’s talking while typing on her bag and stuff before she rolls her dice.

She grins at me a few times between her turns and stuff. I give her a thumbs up and a grin but we don’t interrupt of talk like out of character while they’re in play. That’s just rude and stuff but the guy running the game in keeping a great pace and he’s not bogging it down like some do with that whole roll for everything that you do stuff some GM’s do.

It’s got great flow and great bad guys too. The main baddy is actually a dragon but a feathered serpent and he’s taken over Renraku and he has several minions that are Aztec based shamans for the magic stuff and some street mercs and stuff and the players have broken in and stolen the company heiress from her enforced cage in the company penthouse and then there’s the monolog and stuff with the bad guy dragon and then a desperate chase as they’re getting her out of the building…

Oh there’s this one scene where they’re in the elevator and it’s a toss-up between their groups mage and Natasha’s dwarf to either levitate the elevator car they’re in and Natasha’s decker hotwiring the brake system before the elevator come crashing down killing them.

I was given a can of pop and did a spit take as “Ponty.” The Rigger is screaming in the middle of the chase as they lose a tire from getting it shot out and the enemy shaman uses a spirit to ice the road ahead of them and the mage asks. “Is this going to be a problem?”

And “Ponty.” Replies with. “Well I’m Canadian so I can either drive this thing like a figure skater or it’ll be Oh my gawd we’re all going to die!”

Oh he was so Wash (Firefly, Serenity’s pilot) it was amazing.

And we all burst out laughing.

Wow…and I had this whole thought that you could so do a Serenity show styled theme in the Shadowrun game and world.

They break until tomorrow when they lost their pursuers by crossing over into Tir Tangir.

Natasha comes over and she gives me a hug. “Heya Generator.”

I blush. “Hey…Cool game.”

“Thanks, Scott runs a really good game.” She side-head nods at the GM. He smiles and waves but he’s headed to the bathroom.

“Yeah I wish I could get into a gaming group like this one home.”

“What do they play?”

“War hammer and magic mostly but Star Wars once in a while. I don’t play that much because I’m not really part of the main group.”

“Oh?”

“Yeah…Jade plays no-where actually and they think that home version of me is gay.”

“They on you for that?”

“No, not really but I can tell I make some of them uncomfortable.”

“That sucks.”

“Yeah sometimes but they’re okay to hang with sometimes at lunch for like a quick Magic game. It kind of keeps me clear from the assholes.”

Alex nods. “Yeah we have a gaming room at school and it’s kind of the chess club space but they’re as geeky as us so it’s kind of the non-jock safety zone for all of us losers.”

There’s a lot of nods from the others too. It’s a very familiar condition and story.

I look at Natasha. “So are you..?”

“Oh me naw, I was looking for some good superhero fiction and came across Crystal Hall and those stories and while I was really new to the stuff in them I was so hooked after reading a couple of them.”

“Oh cool, so…?”

“It’s no big thing Jade.” Then she hugs me which is really nice. Alex is looking a bit lost though.

I smile at him. “It’s fiction for people like me but with like an academy and stuff.”

“Oh cool you’ll give me the links and stuff?”

“Sure, you’d be into it?”

“Good stories are good stories plus you like them and I might learn some stuff.” He smiles and blushes a little and sort of shrugs a bit sheepishly.

Wow…he’s willing to…I mean at least look and stuff…open minded is very yay.

I look at him. “So…what’s next?”

He looks at his phone again. “Well we can get a bite to eat or something and still have time for us to go down to conference room C and watch the Full metal Alchemist Movie they’re showing.”

“Which one?”

“The Conqueror of Shamballa.”

“Oh awesome that’s a good one. So how do we get something to eat?”

“Room service?”

“Okay…whose room?”

“Mine?”

“………………Mmm…okay…”

Oh my gawd I’m going to his room, to his hotel room and…I mean…of wow…I mean…nothing’s gonna happen but why and I so squee over it…!?”

And Natasha’s chuckling and she’s staring at me with that oh snap girl look and I can feel all the blood rushing to my face.

Then Alex offers me his hand again. “Coming?”

I nod like a bobble-head and take his hand and shoot Natasha a look because she’s giggling at the easy to find innuendo.

And Alex is red too as we leave.

Oh my god he caught it too.

Shoot me?

---

 
 
To Be Continued...
 

 

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Image Credits: Title Picture purchased and licensed for publishing from

123rf.com. The model in this image in no way supports nor conveys the issues and situations brought up within the story. The models use within this work is solely for the representation of looks of the main character of this particular story. ~Sephrena

---

 
 
*Before…

“Oh awesome that’s a good one. So how do we get something to eat?”
“Room service?”
“Okay…whose room?”
“Mine?”
“………………Mmm…okay…”
Oh my gawd I’m going to his room, to his hotel room and…I mean…of wow…I mean…nothing’s gonna happen but why and I so squee over it…!?”
And Natasha’s chuckling and she’s staring at me with that oh snap girl look and I can feel all the blood rushing to my face.
Then Alex offers me his hand again. “Coming?”
I nod like a bobble-head and take his hand and shoot Natasha a look because she’s giggling at the easy to find innuendo.
And Alex is red too as we leave.
Oh my god he caught it too.
Shoot me?

*And Now…

I sort of stumble over my feet as we leave and Alex stops and he looks at me. “You okay?”

“Yeah, I’m just…really, really embarrassed.”

“Yeah, that was…”

I almost cringe. Bad? Was it bad?

“Bad?”

“Well naughty but it was like really assuming stuff.”

“Assuming…yeah I guess that it was right?”

He nods. “I don’t…I mean I’ve never…Jade...”

“Yes Alex?” Oh God, Oh Goddess…

“You’re my first date.”

Blink, blink…Oh…

“Well you’re mine too…I mean this is a date?”

He gives me this sheepish look. “Kind of sort of?”

I nod. I’m nodding because part of me is so confused. I mean we’re actually kind of sort of on a date. One I kind of sort of invited myself to and yet we’re kind of sort of just hanging out.

And while part of me is all happy-yay-squee that we’re on a date, part of me is very…..oh. and it’s oh because he said kinda sort of.

Why can’t I have a normal functioning brain?

I give him a small smile and he blushes and he gives me one back and we keep going and we head to his room and as messed up as I’m feeling about this boy that’s with me in this whole kind of sort of date we’re still holding hands.

Are all boys confusing?

I really, really like him a lot.

Alex gets to our floor and we stop at his room and we let go of each other’s hand while he uses his key card and he looks at me and smiles.

“Hey, we shouldn’t be that embarrassed right? She’s a dwarf and they say all sorts of off colored stuff all the time.”

I smile at that because it’s kind of true in a trope like kind of way and stuff. And he’s trying to break the ice and stuff from the kind of.

“Yeah, I’m sure she was joking and stuff but I guess like if you believe the rumors people do hook up at these things.”

He opens the door for me. “Well I’d say meet and maybe get together more than actually hooking up. I think that that’s a geek-urban-legend that goes around and stuff so we look cool and stuff.”

I nod and go inside. “Yeah? And If Donna was knocking on your door this hour of the morning?”

“I’d hide.”

“No…I mean not knowing what she is actually like.”

He blushes pretty red. “I’m…I’ve never…so I’d probably still hide.”

“Really!?”

Okay now he’s being sincere and embarrassed and cute as all get out and stuff. I feel better…and maybe something about him never but also that he wouldn’t…not with her and that seems to be making me feel better.

Wow…I’m kind of a bitch.

I never knew I could be like this.

Oddly okay with it too.

Oh I know, I know we’re supposed to be sisters and not be all like that with the cattiness and the ways that we get sometimes but hey she’s the one that’s acting in the worst light when it comes to how some people see women and she scratched me and she whacked me in the eye with the scroll case and the way she just tossed aside Alex’s feelings…grrr.

So…yeah maybe I’m being all stereotypical teen girl about it and everything.

And as bad as it is to think it it’s still this little mental kind of “see” you are a girl.

“Jade?”

Oh Derp I spaced.

“Sorry I was just spaced out there for a second.”

“Okay, cool…can I ask?”

“Just some Donna-Grr’s.” I look at him and he’s looking at me his head all tilted and stuff and he’s got that thank you sort of look in his eyes.

Yay…wow I mean it’s just to have someone look at you…while you’re being you with that look and stuff is just wow.

It feels good.

And y’know there are times when feeling good about yourself, your real self without the accompanying guilt and stuff that goes with it sometimes it’s almost like medicine.

“Shouldn’t I be the one with the Donna-Grr’s?”

I hold up my hand with the scratch. “Plus I don’t like the way that she treats people.”

He nods. “Yeah…I really thought that she was into coming with me.”

“Why? I mean she sounds like she really didn’t give you the time of day usually.”

“Well I’ve been crushing on her for most of my life really, she was the girl next door and we were close right up to middle school and stuff. Then it was like a month or so ago I was getting stuff together for my trip and she comes over and started hanging out at my locker and sometimes in the caf where like people could see us and stuff. I thought that she had maybe got over whatever had gotten into her but that really wasn’t the case….”

I nod but turn around and take him by his hand and pull him into his room now that he’s just hit himself with a bunch of Donna-funk.

“Some people are like that Alex they just do for them and they look around to see who’s going to best give then what they want and then they’ll use someone else. It sucks but I see it all the time home.”

“That’s just so…”

I nod. “I have this theory that the really pretty people, the ones that seem to be born with it all either go a few ways. They either get so exposed to people saying stuff and acting all friendly and maybe even too friendly and they become introverts. Then there’s the girls that get all of that and they take a lot of that getting hit on and sucked up to by fake people and they rebel against it in a counter culture way and act like nice people…and then there’s the one’s that revel in it, they get so much of it and so much attention and stuff that it warps them. They love and need the attention and they need the power and the control and they like to use their looks to use people.”

Alex looks at me. “Wow…that sounds like they’re sociopaths.”

“Dude, they made the movie Heathers for a reason. The whole fact that there are movies like Mean girls and they’re really not far off from reality says a lot too.”

“Well I’m just glad that you’re in group two of that then.”

I…oh wow…oh blush.

“Alex I’m not…I mean…” I’m so flustered and I’m in his room and almost sitting on his bed.

And it’d be like he was really trying to be one of the guys that uses a line on a girl but the fact that he’s blushing pretty hard and stuff has me thinking that it was just something that he had just said because he’s Alex and he’s just that kind of guy.

Which actually just makes it all the more amazing.

We even just sit there a few seconds in awkward blushy silence until I see the model kits.

High end Gundam models.

Macross and Gundam are pretty much the mecha franchises when it comes down to it that are like not silly and stuff. Both pretty much were before my time but still really classic stuff. Well except for Gundam which has gotten a few incarnations of the kiddified version markets…bleech…just garbage.

“Cool you’re into the whole Mecha thing?”

“Some, most of those are actually buys for the guys in my gaming group that couldn’t make it to the Con.”

“Oh well that’s like really cool of you.” It actually is I did a whole lot of everything to save up my cash for this myself.

Alex shrugs and smiles a little easier. “Well they actually gave me cash to pick everything up and stuff.”

“But how are you going to get all of this back?” I’m not just looking at the models but there’s a lot of other stuff there too.

“It should all fit in the van.”

“Wait…you drove here?”

“I…uhm yeah I don’t live too, too far away and it’s a lot easier to get stuff that I wanted to get while I was here and stuff.”

“Did you drive Donna?”

“No, actually she has her own car. I did offer though.”

Yeah, maybe she brought her own wheels so she had a ride in case she was going to trade up and ditch him.

Easy…easy…that’s not the way you should be thinking Jade.

And I’m me and I’m weird so there’s this thought of me, and Whately me and the whole good version and bad version and “Shoulder Angels.”

And I’m snerking and have to hand to mouth myself.

And Alex is looking at me like I’m crazy.

“Sorry I made myself laugh.”

“About?”

“Well….”

He grins. “C’mon tell me.”

“Okay I was having one of those moments where you sort of talk to yourself and one part’s good and the other part’s bad and it like in cartoons and stuff. Well those stories Natasha and I were talking about has this whole thing where the Jade character there comes up with shoulder angels and stuff and it was just pop-culture meets me brain and geek reference and then I’m laughing and snerking.”

“Snerk? What’s a snerk?”

“It’s like a snick instead of a laugh with a short snort.”

“Wow…”

“What…..?” Okay and cue more self-conscious blushing.

“You.”

“Me?...Me what?”

“You’re charming…”

“I’m what?”

“You’re charming…and I mean it. I don’t think that I’ve met a woman before that was like actually charming.”

“I…I am not…I mean I’m not….”

“Not in a bad way…not like prince charming and stuff but way more like….”

“Like?”

“You ever read Tamora Pierce?”

I nod, I love those books and Alanna the others.

“You’re like Alanna mixed with Daine.”

Super blush.

I love Alanna because she was sort of like me in reverse, she dressed as a boy to become the first lady knight in here realm and she’s just awesome on so many levels but Daine, she’s so sweet and she’s so heartful and down to earth…

And Alex is smiling at me with that casual sweet boy smile that he doesn’t seen that he knows he has…

And he thinks that I’m charming.

I can’t help but to kinda hug myself a little and sit on the bed but like all in a good way.

“Alex…”

“Yes Jade?”

“Thanks.”

“What for?”

“All of this. This has probably been the best night that I’ve ever had in my whole life.”

“Me too.”

Okay that makes me smile and I sort of relax and he grabs a seat on the other side of his bed and grabs the remote.

The room service stuff is through the remote and on the hotels TV network thingy.

It’s pay-per-food.

I make myself laugh and snerk again.

I’m such a dork.

“Pizza?” He asks.

“Does a hotel make good pizza?” I look at him kinda dubious. Then again I’m not really sure that I’ve even had good pizza. There’s not a lot of amazing pizza in Greenwood, Nova Scotia.

Actually you don’t period we have a pair of home grown shops with Mimie’s being better than Valley Pizza or to me it is and the rest are like chain places though some aren’t strictly in Greenwood but Kingston and stuff and the rest is just fast food and stuff.

But chain pizza hone is gross…Greco does this soft doughy crust that is a good ninety percent cooked and the sauce is pretty much thinned out tomato soup barely put on. And Pizza Delight I don’t like because they’re really expensive and they are really skinflinty with their toppings. Though I will say I do like the lasagne.

Okay…okay the fact that you can order think or thick crust as an option is pretty awesome and makes me feel okay with what we’ve ordered.

Thin crust twelve inch pizza with double sauce, double pepperoni, sausage and double cheese. It’s sinful and it’s likely going to be greasy and stuff since we really didn’t order stuff like veg on it just thin crust, sauce, cheese and Italian sausage and pepperoni.

Alex is grinning at me again.

“What?”

He shakes his head but not in a bad way but like bemused… “You…you’re so different and stuff from all the girls I know.”

“Like how?”

“I don’t know just all the girls I know aren’t that much into the geeky stuff so much and even the ones that do are like so into like eating healthy.”

“Pfft…sometimes and we do gotta watch what we eat sometimes but trust me a lot of teenage girl eating is done when there’s no one…no guys watching us actually be pigs.”

“Really?”

I give him the eyebrow. “Other that Demon-Donna how many girls do you know?”

“I uhm…a few.”

I laugh a little. “Look I might be the way I was born but I’m still a girl and we stuff our faces and do all sorts of just regular stuff too it’s just there’s this whole social expectation for a lot of us not to be like that.”

“Like what?”

“Y’know be polite, don’t get mad, be pretty and dainty and look this way or that way and stuff like that when really under all the society stuff we’re not that different than guys in a lot of ways it’s just society kind made up a lot of these rules that aren’t rules and we go along with them or at least in public.”

“Sounds messed up.”

I nod. “It is, that’s part of the whole feminist thing y’know. It’s rebelling against the box that we’re put in and trying to be equal and stuff. It’s a lot more complicated and stuff and a lot of it gets all turned around and bent by people and stuff but it’s just that there are these gender roles that guys and girls all sort of have in like a general way that we kind of adhere to unless you takes like steps way away from that.”

“You know a lot about this stuff.”

“I have to, I’m a girl but I’m a transgirl so there’s a whole other bunch of crap that goes with my shoebox and if I didn’t learn it…”

“Bad?”

“Yeah on both sides there’s the guys and bigots that don’t like people like me and then there’s women that don’t like people like me and stuff like that.”

“But you’re just trying to be yourself.”

I sigh and nod. “Yep, and that’s the thing we’re all just trying to be ourselves and we’re all kind of told what to do both guys and girls and stuff. So when we’re alone or home or with like our really close friends the fake stuff we show to the rest of people kinda gets dropped and we act pretty much the same.”

“So the whole girls eating all dainty and stuff stereotype thing is…”

“One that we keep to pretty much unless we don’t have to. You see a girl eating just little bird amounts it’s usually in public, or she’s scared to put on weight…and that’s because we’re told all the time to look a certain way…and sometimes that’s an eating disorder thing, sometimes it’s because she’s dating a jerk and sometimes it’s because she ate before she went out so she could keep up the image.”

“But…it’s just eating, everyone eats.”

I nod grinning. “And everyone farts and grows body hair and all those other things but we all put of our faces and stuff.”

“Okay…you’re complicated and charming.”

I blink…. “Uhm is complicated a good or a bad thing?”

“It’s a good thing I mean you’re so definitely a girl and stuff being into all the feminism stuff and that. It’s like you’re really emotionally invested and stuff.”

I nod. “It’s more than that it’s stuff I need because I’m a transgirl and more than likely when I start to really transition I’ll have to defend myself a lot and the way I act and the choices that I make it all goes under scrutiny unless I pass and can go stealth and have people not know and stuff.”

“Is it really that bad?”

I nod a few times. “Well just too really start treatment I have to talk to a mental health specialist and stuff to actually get permission to transition and stuff not to mention like I said before people.”

“Wow…that…that sucks.”

I was going to nod again but Alex does something that surprises me and he slides over on the bed more and he gives me this really big hug.

“I believe in you Jade, you’re the only version of you that I’ve met and you’re probably the most real girl I’ve ever known.”

I…It…all of it the stuff I was just talking about and trying to explain and the frustration I have from trying to even be me online sometimes and running into or seeing so much hate and the fears I have of all the bullshit that’s going to come at me from the stuff I have to face in the future and this unexpected and unasked for acceptance and sweetness.

It all starts to hit me and I’m starting to sniffle and then I’m starting to cry.

 

---

Image Credits: Title Picture purchased and licensed for publishing from

123rf.com. The model in this image in no way supports nor conveys the issues and situations brought up within the story. The models use within this work is solely for the representation of looks of the main character of this particular story. ~Sephrena

---

 
 
*Before…

I was going to nod again but Alex does something that surprises me and he slides over on the bed more and he gives me this really big hug.

“I believe in you Jade, you’re the only version of you that I’ve met and you’re probably the most real girl I’ve ever known.”

I…It…all of it the stuff I was just talking about and trying to explain and the frustration I have from trying to even be me online sometimes and running into or seeing so much hate and the fears I have of all the bullshit that’s going to come at me from the stuff I have to face in the future and this unexpected and unasked for acceptance and sweetness.

It all starts to hit me and I’m starting to sniffle and then I’m starting to cry.

*And Now…

Being called real is really just…

It’s a very heart in my throat wanting someone to see me since I was like six and it had sunk in that there was something wrong.

And it got more and more wrong the older I got too.

And after so long this…this yeah just really, really sends me over the edge into sniffle town.

“God Alex where have you been all my life.” (Sniffle-sob.)

“Uhm…Portland.”

I Blubble…yep, Blubble…y’know when you’re a complete mess and crying and you’re nose is running and you’re right in the whole ugly gooey wet crying thing and someone makes you laugh?

Burst out laughing in a complete mess and it’s mixed with the crying so it sounds wet.

Blubble…

Because it was so off the top of his head sweet and manner of factly done.

And…to top it all off her hugs me tighter.

Like I needed it.

And I do…it’s just so… (Sniffle-smiley-sob.) “Portland…?” (Sniffle.) “Like in Maine?”

“Uhm yeah.”

“I… (Sniffle.)…just live sort of across the bay.”

“Really?”

(Sniffle.) “Yeah…I just live in Greenwood.”

“……………..Uhm I don’t know where that is.”

(Snuffle.) “I’ll show you.”

“Cool…y’know you sure cry a lot.”

(Snuffle.) “Sorry…it’s bottled up a whole lot…I’m like never me home.”

“Ouch…that has to suck…here blow.” He’s got a box of tissues and he’s holding them in front of me.

“It really, really does suck.” (Snuffle.)

“Well you can be you with me Jade and it’s cool. Heck you can be you with me no matter what?”

Oh…Oh goddess I might just start crying again.

“Really?” (Sniffle.)

“Yes really. Absolutely we’re friends.”

“We are?”

“Definitely!” He says it with this really big smile too and with like enthusiasm. I mean who’s like that? To just be cool with something, to be cool with someone like me?

I hug him pretty hard after that and he hugs me back and we’re like glue right up until there’s knocking at the door and the call of “Room Service!”

“Eeep! ohmygawdIlookawful!” I hop out of Alex’s and high tail it to the bathroom.

“Yeah you kinda do!” Alex calls after me and there’s laughter in his voice.

“You’re not supposed to say that to a girl Alex!” I look in the mirror and I am a mess.

“A guy’s not supposed to lie to a woman either Jade!” he calls into to me.

Okay…okay he has a point there. And y’know I’d rather have a really open and caring and honest guy like Alex than some dingleberry that is going to just tell me stuff that he thinks that I want to hear.

I hear him paying and talking to the room service person and I wash my face and I really debate putting new make-up on. It’s kinda going to be a pain to do it now and it’s pretty late at night and then there’s the thing of it makes me feel pretty. And I like feeling pretty and I…I’m pretty sure that I want to do it not just for me but for Alex too.

I really do want to look good for Alex.

I mean this will likely not…and the thoughts that are going through my head of the things I want to do and the things that I kinda want to do for him are…but then there’s reality and even as awesome as things are like that it’s just…we barely know each other.

But a girl can still sort of be attracted right? Still just like a guy and think that sort of stuff without going through with stuff right?

I look in the mirror…it’s just me, just me with my hair styled different and I honestly don’t look like Psylocke…I mean not even close.

Will he?

Will he like just plain old me?

I come out after the room service person had left and I sort of just lean on the doorway of Alex’s bathroom.

“Do I look okay?”

Alex looks up at me and he smiles. “Yes, absolutely.”

“Good…I mean this is the first time you’ve seen me without my make-up on and I was worried.”

“Worried?”

“Some guys like the pretty package.”

“Well you definitely know your way around make-up and stuff but I kind of just like Jade.”

“…………………”

“In any way she wants to be.”

I shake my finger at him. “You just like to make me all weepy and stuff don’t you?”

“I’ll take happy tears over sad ones if that’s okay with you.”

(Sniffle.) “Dang it Alex…stop it with the lines…all the good stuff it’s making me cry again.”

He looks at me. “One they’re not lines and two I think that you need some happy tears Jade, I mean jeez from the stuff that you told me you don’t get to be you. You have to steal moments of you and then deal with this the rest of the time the hard way.”

(Sniffle.) “Yeah…”

“So if I can let you let off some of that while we’re here together I’ll try my damnedest to do that.”

(Sniffle.) “Okay…Why?”

“Because I like you remember silly…” He gets up and he comes over and takes me by my hand and he leads me over to the bed and sits with me.

(Sniffle.) “I’m sorry…I’m just not used to this at all Alex, it’s really nice but you’re a shock to the system.”

“Yeah well so are you.”

“Me?”

“Yes you, now are you going to eat your pizza or let it get cold?”

I reach for a slice and it smells really good and I give him a shy smile. “Thanks Alex, I really mean it thanks.”

“You’re Welcome.” He’s pretty serious saying it but that changes into a carefree kinda Alex smile as he takes a slice himself and starts eating.

I wipe my eyes and eat some more but smile back…and then I cover my mouth and blush because I smiled at him with a mouthful of pizza.

Which actually just makes him smile all the more.

Wow…I mean…he says all these really awesome things and he does these really awesome things but they’re still kinda things that a nice guy might do just being a nice guy. I really love all of it but I’m really kind of cognizant that I could be so reading things into him that are so feeding my crush.

Which is scary.

Like butterflies scary.

But it’s crushing on someone butterflies so…I mean do I just shove it away and down and all of that or do I do the crazy likely break my heart thing and just actually let myself crush on this boy?

My way too busy and never shuts up girl-brain gets interrupted by him turning on the TV and channel surfing.

I’m sort of watching him do that as we eat. I mean it doesn’t bug me I get the whole channel surfing thing and stuff but watching what he pauses longer on is kind of interesting. It says stuff right?

Or am I just reading into that with girl-crush analysis?

I kinda don’t want to be one of those girls that constantly thinks about everything and overthinks like ninety percent of it.

But I think I actually might be.

And you know what my brain realizes as his phone does an alarm chime and he turns off the TV and grabs the box of pizza? (Yeah they actually brought it in a plain white pizza box.)

I’m attracted to Alex.

I’m attracted to guys.

I mean I’ve thought about it home and stuff and there’s sort of been different people that I’ve found attractive and some were girls…and I’m not sure that it was attraction or something else but at the time it was kinda sort of and the same with the boys I know too it was all kind of there and all kinda sorta in vagueish fantasies and stuff but Alex.

Alex is hitting me right in the I like him part of me…of I would definitely kiss with him parts and I’d really like it and the thing is it’s me wanting to be touched too and touch not like Frankie’d be touched but how someone would touch me if I was Jade…like for reals and stuff.

And realizing that is a very inhale and whoa moment.

Alex looks at me and he does the Alexander elf eyebrow thing. “You okay?”

I nod mouth’s kind of dry right now.

He offers his hand and I wipe my hand off because I think it’s sweating some and I talk his hand and he leads my out of his room and to the elevators so we can go down and catch the movie that they’re playing.

He still holds my hand all the way down and even with me into the conference room where they have the movie all set up for us to watch with like one of those projection screen things and we get some seats.

We get some looks too.

And we both sort of blush.

I’m holding hands with someone in public.

Okay that kinda sorta a very good thing and I look at Alex and it might be the same thing and I think it is because he shifts his grip a little better instead of being embarrassed and letting go.

And there’s something just unbelievably weird that happens with this.

We’re getting sort of jealous looks.

I mean I know a jealous look when I see one and these aren’t the Donna-esque hateful and mean ones but they’re the “Oh…damn…lucky…” ones that we geeks and stuff usually have when we see other people together and we’re hit with those feelings of wow…that’d be nice.

I wish it was me…

And this time it is us.

I’m not gloating or anything because with these people it’d kinda suck but at the same time there’s this thing that is inside of me that is just giddy over being somewhere in public with a guy and he’s holding my hand and I’m the girl that some of these other girls want to be.

I mean me…of all people.

And it does feel good.

And it’s so strange because I sneak a look at Alex and it’s just like one of those moments that you get when you can just read someone like one hundred percent and he just looks like he’s thinking the same stuff as me.

Which is just.

Alex looks at me and he whispers as we take a pair of seats together. “Okay….this, this is pretty cool.”

“I know…I don’t go anywhere usually and all the places I’ve ever gone too even like home.”

“I’ve been alone…” We both say it in stereo…we so just.

And I’m looking at him and he’s looking at me and there’s this…I don’t know what it was but just before it passes as we kind of become aware of it…we actually have a moment or something.

I mean I don’t know what it is or was but it was definitely a moment.

The movie starts up and there’s some fan cheers and applause and stuff and just before the volume goes too high for me to hear him say it I catch.

“Even when I’m with people.”

 

---

Image Credits: Title Picture purchased and licensed for publishing from

123rf.com. The model in this image in no way supports nor conveys the issues and situations brought up within the story. The models use within this work is solely for the representation of looks of the main character of this particular story. ~Sephrena

---

 
 
*Before…

And it’s so strange because I sneak a look at Alex and it’s just like one of those moments that you get when you can just read someone like one hundred percent and he just looks like he’s thinking the same stuff as me.

Which is just.

Alex looks at me and he whispers as we take a pair of seats together. “Okay….this, this is pretty cool.”

“I know…I don’t go anywhere usually and all the places I’ve ever gone too even like home.”

“I’ve been alone…” We both say it in stereo…we so just.

And I’m looking at him and he’s looking at me and there’s this…I don’t know what it was but just before it passes as we kind of become aware of it…we actually have a moment or something.

I mean I don’t know what it is or was but it was definitely a moment.

The movie starts up and there’s some fan cheers and applause and stuff and just before the volume goes too high for me to hear him say it I catch.

“Even when I’m with people.”

*And Now…

Okay that kind of throws me completely off the movie.

I mean it’s like exactly like what I was thinking in my head but before I was like thinking it.

Y’know when someone says something and you weren’t thinking about it but when they say it, it’s your heart that’s going…yeah…yeah exactly that.

I mean with me it’s like I’m invisible. I’m there and I’m real but no one knows it, they can’t see me…the real me and they can’t hear me or tell that the real me is there and all I have to interact with the real world is this Bizzaro D.C. world version of me that’s really nothing like the real me but I can’t get it out that this isn’t me.

I’m not this person.

Banging against the invisible walls until my soul hands bleed.

And that Alex is saying that when that’s like just tattooed on my soul from all the hits that I’ve taken it’s just.

It sucks, it sucks because I can look at him and see so much there that people are missing out on just because they think that he’s a certain kind of person, that he’s this, this and this and not that whatever that seems to be the crap that everyone thinks is good.

You can’t measure people like that.

I’m so sick to death of people measuring me like that.

I wouldn’t wish this on anyone else…ever.

And perversely it’s a good thing that he feels this way too. That he gets it and that there is someone there like me that…

No, honestly it’s not. It’s not and Alex is my friend…and maybe more than that even if it might be like totally one sided and stuff. I don’t want this for him. I don’t…he deserves better.

I adjust my seat a bit more and we get closer still and I let go of his fingers and I slip my arm in through and under his and he looks down at me and he sort of shifts my way with a smile and he’s offering me the shoulder of his arm.

Yes!

I don’t care, this is a yay thing, it’s as yay as him holding me in his room or him giving me his shoulder in that last part of the dance so yeah…whatever this is and whatever is going on I embrace the fantasy of it all and I lean on him and I lean my head against his shoulder.

And there that whole bonus of him being warm and him smelling good and…

And if I only ever get to be me a few times in my damned life at least I can say that I got to do this. I got to have this at least once y’know?

It means so much too.

My heart actually skips a beat a little when he does this contented sigh.

And my geek compulsion kicks in and I want the remote to rewind stuff because now I’m watching the movie and I missed most of the first five minutes of the plot and stuff and that’s like important.

Still, way more than a fair trade.

And dammit of all things with this and the time shift and me being an hour off compared to here….I fall asleep.

………………………..I actually wake up and I’m sort of confused and I look up and…oh…oh yick I drooled.

Oh no’s I drooled on Alex.

I look up at him. And he’s there watching me with the lights off in here and it’s kind of dark and kind of not because there’s light from the projection screen still going and everyone else is gone.

“I…I fell asleep?”

“Yeah you even snored a little.” He offers me some tissues and they’re sort of used and I think I have been drooling on his shoulder for a while. I think, I think I’ve never been more mortified in my life.

I take the tissues and wipe off my face and alternate between doing that and looking at Alex. “Sorry…kinda gross.”

He smiles at me. “Hey that’s something that we’ve all done at least no one noticed it here besides it could be worse.”

“No one saw?”

“I’m pretty sure they didn’t.”

“What could be worse than drooling on your…date?”

“Drooling on your date while you’re wearing make-up and it having a bad chemical reaction to your saliva and it like becoming this gluey goopey mess that went you wake up and pull away you look like tow-face and I have a chemical tattoo for life.”

He’s just so manner of fact I can’t help but to picture it and that starts me on the giggles.

And then I snerk.

Which makes him smile.

And that makes me smile.

“You sat here all this time thinking about that didn’t you?”

“I did not I’ll have you know that I’m double specialized in Smart-Alec with a matching set of non-weapon proficiencies in Smart-Ass, Wisenheimer, and Snarkasm.”

Again sheer joy and I’m giggling right into more snerks.

“It’s really late or early Jade you want to go to bed or do something else?”

“Aren’t you tired?”

“A little truth is I’m up like this like most weekends and stuff half the time anyways so this is actually not pushing my normal too far plus I drank a big can of Rockstar a few hours back and stuff.”

I’m actually not that tired anymore and it’s nothing that coffee and a hot shower won’t fix.

“I could stay up for a while is there anything to do?”

“You ever been to Boston before?”

“A couple of times, Dad has family down here like four or fifth cousins and stuff but I don’t actually like really know the place.”

“Go for a drive?”

“Okay!”

Yeah it’s like really late and stuff but I have never really gone for a drive with friends. I mean the few people that are kind of cool with me well we’re not the have car crowd…have comics and manga and magic cards and gaming computers and stuff sure but a car and going cruising and stuff…kind of rare.

And the guys with cars even the crappy ones even the geekiest of them usually have a girlfriend of some kind…even if it’s like a nerd girl and stuff and we do have enough respect for each other to not third and fourth wheel each other.

Alex laughs. “C’mon we’ll go and get our jackets and stuff and I need to get some doughnuts anyways.”

“Need?”

“I’m in a floor game of AD&D and we’re coming in costume and stuff.”

“Okay…lost me?

“I’m going to go in costume as The Great Skeeve and bring Deevil doughnuts and Pervish Coffee.”

“So….Starbucks then?”

He laughs…oh awesome. I mean not just a light laugh but this is one of those good laughs that just kind of bursts out of you when funny happens out of the blue.

Alex has a nice laugh.

He actually reminds me of the laugh that Ashton Kutcher has actually a lot of just regular guy with just this little touch of Whoa.

Then he leans forwards and he kisses me on the forehead. “That was awesome, you just gave me a great idea.”

Blush…

He takes my hand and we leave the empty conference room and head through the lobby towards the elevator and it’s like five in the morning and he’s pulling me off onto another adventure.

I bite my lip in a happy way and jog-skip into the elevator with him.

We part ways on our floor and I go and get to my room and I use the bathroom and give myself a little spritz of perfume and then get changed. Well not so much changed as I add to what I’m wearing. I slip off the yoga pants and I try my black jeggings for the first time and like any leggings really unless you’re in a dance class please for the love of fashion…pair them with a skirt…I mean really, really they’re just a variation on stockings and stuff. I grab my hoody that I use all the time home and that’s actually a CAF (Canadian Armed Forces.) Zip front light grey hoody with stuff from the base at Greenwood and I switch from my flats to comfy socks and some sneakers.

When that’s all done I touch up my make up and get my purse and head out to meet Alex.

And he’s a guy so he’s ready already.

Okay I know that’s kind of false too, I know a bunch of guys that are very into the look cool way too much grooming thing and they sort of have that whole…way too Jersey Shore look to them…or home it’s the teen hipsters trying for that thing you see all over the place with the college kids or there’s the jocks all trying to sort of look like Taylor what’s his face from The twit-blight movies or they’re trying to look like Peedar from Hunger Games.

Why can’t they just be original?

You know what’s worse than Donna’s it the male equivalent…I get really cheesed off when there’s some meathead wearing stuff because it’s suddenly “cool”

Yes it is and you know what would be even cooler is if you actually cared about it.

Alex is actually looking guy fine.

I mean fine as in he just looks good. I know I’m biased with this but he’s wet his hair and combed it and he’s wearing a black t-shirt with a really nice leather and…

“Oh my goddess is that a BSG jacket?”

“Yeah I got it for a Christmas present last year from my uncle.” He turns and it has all the trimmings and it’s got the Viper pilot patches and Galactica on it too and the call sign of “Wishbone.”

“Wishbone?”

“From gaming, he introduced me to RPG’s and I had a rebel alliance fighter pilot in the old version of Star Wars. It’s been my flyboy call sign in every game since.”

It’s actually pretty cool and I step over and fix his collar. “I think it’s pretty awesome actually.”

Alex smiles and looks sort of that whole guy self-conscious of me doing the collar fix…I like the whole sort of sheepish smile thing.

“You ready?”

I nod. “Definitely.”

“You’re just wearing the hoody?”

“I should wear something more?”

“Boston can be cold and if you get tired it’ll just be colder.”

I nod and I go and I get my jean jacket that I came here with and slip it on over the hoody. I mean I’ve been here before but not as a girl and not in girl’s clothes and as awesome and stuff as they can be a lot of them are really thin like material wise.

And once I lock my door Alex offers me his hand again.

I take it. “You don’t have to keep doing that y’know.”

“I know but I don’t mind it and you get to be you and I get to be with a pretty girl.”

“I can be practice for when you’re with the real thing.”

Alex looks at me while we’re walking. “You are the real thing.”

“Alex…”

“Jade I’ve been doing some reading y’know since we met and while I’m not super up on all the trans stuff it doesn’t take a whole lot to see there’s a lot of people that are asses but there’s a lot of people that agree with you all and I’m pretty sure that I’m in that camp.”

Oh…

“Thanks Alex, that means a whole lot…I mean a whole lot…I’ve got online friends and stuff but no one knows like in real life but you and having someone real that’s good with me being me is pretty huge.”

He smiles and he sort of does this fake puffing his chest up as we’re walking. Well he’s mostly leading the way and stuff but it’s still pretty cool because we don’t stand out here at a Con and at the same time…I’m holding hands with a boy.

Yeah I’ve gone there before and stuff tonight…today…yesterday... but I mean really it’s kinda a big deal.

Alex leads us to his van and it’s a second or third hand Ford Aerostar and the paint is doing that thing where the clear coat is so old on it that it’s doing that white thing…but all in all it looks fine.

Well actually more than fine, it’s wheels. We have wheels and that is a whole new level of awesome for me.

He’s actually kept it clean and being Alex he of course opened my door first and I slip in and it’s worn and he doesn’t like be all car-jock obsessive with it but it’s seen a vacuum a few times and it’s just pretty normal.

He has a coconut air freshener hanging from the mirror which makes me smile since it’s actually my favorite kind and he has some gizmo in the tape deck?

I’m looking at it when he plugs his I-pod into it and starts the van up and music starts to play.

“Wow…That’s like cool I’ve never seen one of these before.”

“I saw one of the guys at school had one so I got one too. It’s really good if you don’t have a new vehicle.”

We pull out from the parking lot and we both seatbelt up and music starts playing and he’s got anime tunes and TV shows and we get out onto one of the main streets and he starts singing along to this song that I don’t know…?

Look at what's happened to me,
I can't believe it myself;
Suddenly I'm up on top of the world,
Should've been somebody else.

Believe it or not,
I'm walkin' on air,
I never thought I could feel so free;
Flyin' away on a wing and a pray'r,
Who could it be?
Believe it or not, it's just me.

Just like the light of new day,
It hit me from out of the blue;
Breakin' me out of the spell I was in,
Makin' all of my wishes come true.

Believe it or not,
I'm walkin' on air,
I never thought I could feel so free;
Flyin' away on a wing and a pray'r,
Who could it be?
Believe it or not, it's just me.

This is too good to be true,
Look at me
Falling for you.

Believe it or not,
Believe it or not,
Believe it or not,
Believe it or not.

Believe it or not,
I'm walkin' on air,
I never thought I could feel so free;
Flyin' away on a wing and a pray'r,
Who could it be?
Believe it or not, it's just me.

Believe it or not,
I'm walkin' on air,
I never thought I could feel so free;
Flyin' away on a wing and a pray'r,
Who could it be?
Believe it or not, it's just me.

And it’s like just after five thirty in the morning and I’m all caught up and singing it with Alex and it’s so good, so like 80’s or something but like so good…I mean it kinda is really feel good kind of music and it…this.

Me being Jade…

Even after it’s done I trail off with me still singing… “Flyin away on a wing and a prayer…”
“Who could it be….Believe it or not it’s just me…”

 

---

Image Credits: Title Picture purchased and licensed for publishing from

123rf.com. The model in this image in no way supports nor conveys the issues and situations brought up within the story. The models use within this work is solely for the representation of looks of the main character of this particular story. ~Sephrena

---

 
 
*Before…

And it’s like just after five thirty in the morning and I’m all caught up with the feelings and singing it with Alex and it’s so good, so like 80’s or something but like so good…I mean it kinda is really feel good kind of music and it…this.

Me being Jade…

Even after it’s done I trail off with me still singing… “Flyin away on a wing and a prayer…”
“Who could it be….Believe it or not it’s just me…”

*And Now…

I’ve been here before but it’s always been one of those parent trips and stuff and I’ve liked Boston though the few times that I’ve been here the traffic set me on edge. I’ve been to Halifax and to be that’s kinda crazy the way they drive there but really it’s never had anything on the traffic here.

But like this hour of the morning it’s not so bad. I mean we’re steering clear of the highways and stuff and the express ways because it’s nearly six so people that have to commute are actually already doing it.

Though it’s still really nice in this very different way. I’ve never really done this before and being out driving around as the sun is coming up is very cool. It’s cool because I’d never…ever get to do this. Well at least until college or something. There’s just something about the morning steam from all the hot water hitting the sewers so you get the plumes from the grates and manhole and then there’s the little fleets of cabs like in groups still just waiting for the calls at the starts of their shifts and in the parking areas of their morning coffee spot of choice. The guys with the stores and newsstands opening up and grabbing the bales of their daily papers and stuff and then there’s the cool buildings.

Boston has a lot of cool older buildings and stuff and they actually have a lot of modern stuff too I don’t know what half of these places are and Alex and I aren’t really touring so much as cruising but before it gets like all crazy and stuff we’re sort of able to slow down and take a lot of it all in.

We even make it down to see some of the bayside as we’re driving and the sun’s up now and I can see stuff like the big tanker and cargo ships out there and a couple of docked cruise ship types. Just some really neat stuff and it’s so making my morning to be one of the best one’s I’ve ever really had.

I’m not hard to please really.

Just stuff like this, a chance to be me.

Alex looks at me. “Breakfast?”

“Oh no, not yet I feel like I’m eating all the time since I got here. But a coffee?”

“What kind I mean I want to go to Starbucks later but I’d rather go someplace else.”

I look at him and he’s skinny but he’s also a guy. He’s a teenaged guy. “You’re hungry again aren’t you?”

He blushes. “A little but I can eat later.”

“Alex if you want to stop and get something we can just because I’m not all that hungry doesn’t mean you can’t eat.”

“But if we go in and I’m eating and you’re not it’ll look weird.”

“Who cares we’re not from here.”

“Okay there is that. You sure?”

“Ohmigawd…yes I’m sure!” I roll my eyes, jeeze are all guys like this?

He looks sheepish but he sort of smiles and he keeps driving and looking around and we pass a few places until we find what he’s looking for.

An IHOP.

I have never been to one in my life.

“Okay, I might be a little bit hungry.”

Alex looks at me.

“What? I’ve never been to one of these places before and they always look so good on TV.”

He grins. “I’ve only been to a couple of them but they are pretty awesome actually.”

I’m smiling and I’m blushing but smiling too as he pulls into the parking lot and he actually holds his finger up. “Just a sec.”

“Uhm okay.”

Then he comes around and he opens my door.

Oh…oh okay that was kind of awesome.

I slip out of the van and smooth out my clothes and grin a little bit at Alex who closes the door for me and we walk together inside and he opens the door for me in there too.

It really is the kind sweet little things really. I’ve never really had this and actually I tried not to dream about it too much because it felt like just such a stretch but wow…seeing the girls that got some of this old school treatment I was so jealous sometimes.

Not that I need it or that women need the special treatment either because while it’s nice and everything it’s not needed all the time and stuff. But I’m a transgirl…

Feminists and the hard critics about us say that we don’t have stuff like they do like the hardships and all the bad stuff that comes with being born a girl that we don’t have a shared girlhood.

But they don’t get that we do, only a transwoman’s a transgirl’s shared childhood is something entirely different and stuff. We have things in our heart that we treasure that they can’t or usually don’t we have the pain of dysphoria that they can’t understand and we see the entire aspect of being female differently than most of them.

It doesn’t mean we’re not women, it’s just different like how ethnic feminism is different than mainstream feminisms because those women face a whole different set of things as opposed to first world generally white girls.

Sorry…I was mentally Tumbrilining.

You get that way when you’re trying to have your voice heard online as a transperson and you keep running into people that just hate you for the thought of your existence.

Point is I really am sooo into getting this kind of sweetness and courtesy. It’s so nice and it’s for me and not a day-dream or an idle fantasy but just real and it’s for me which is really cool.

We get inside and get a nice booth that has a window and sunshine coming in and it smells awesome in here. Its waffle and pancakes and sausage and bacon and all sorts of yayness.

The girl comes with our menus and I’m looking and there’s stuff that I’ve never even heard of like NY cheesecake pancakes and Jelly doughnut pancakes and those are kinda eeew…too sweet I think for me. I'm kinda liking the idea of the strawberry banana ones or the whole wheat and banana ones but I’m actually looking at the plain buttermilk ones.

There is something to be said for a plain really light and fluffy well-made pancake.

Alex looks at me. “So what looks good to you?”

“I’d like to try the buttermilk stack.”

“Really but we’re here and it’s kind of the point to try something different.”

“But I like regular pancakes.”

“C’mon live a little.”

He looks so earnest and it kind of hits that he wants to make this special for me. I do another blush and smile and I look at the menu again and sort of hide my face a bit too. Yeah I’m a blusher but it’s the interest and him just being him plus out in public-public and not the hotel and I’m kinda smiling a bit too and I feel oddly shy about smiling like this because of the way that he’s being with me.

“So you’ll help me eat them if I can’t do the whole thing?”

“Definitely.”

“Then I want the jelly doughnut pancakes then.”

“And I’ll get the NY cheesecake ones.”

The waitress comes over and she takes our orders and Alex orders a breakfast sampler too for us to split and we both get coffee. I usually am a double-double girl and stuff home but this is going to be really sweet so I do what my dad does and get coffee with milk on the side and I put just enough milk in it to make it not eye-blinkingly black and I use it to deal with the sweet.

I smile actually after my first bite of the jelly doughnut pancake.

“Good?” Alex asks.

“Not bad, I actually don’t mind raspberry I was worried that I’d be grape.”

“What’s wrong with grape?”

“Grape jelly’s actually just not a thing up home. We have it but it’s still not a thing with us.”

“But what do you put on a peanut butter and jelly sandwich?”

“We don’t, at least not where I grew up.”

He looks at me. “You guys don’t have PB&J sandwiches.”

“Oh we do only home its peanut butter and jam.”

“What’s the difference?”

“Jelly is fruitless it’s just the essence and stuff like Jell-O, Jam has the fruit.”

“Oh…well that’s just odd.”

I nod while eating and break off some of the hashbrown in the sampler to cut the sweetness of the other stuff. “There’s a lot of differences and we’re not that far away from each other.”

He nods and chews his food and swallows with coffee before talking. “It’s a good thing actually I think. Canada’s kind of neat and stuff.”

I shrug. “Well I live there or rather in like the valley so it’s not all that neat.”

Alex looks at me head tilted. “That’s the Annapolis valley right?”

“Y..Yeah how’d you?”

“I’ve been y’know Portland…I’ve been to Nova Scotia a couple of times.”

“Okay…yeah we just call it the valley.”

“I figured.”

We eat and we talk and I’m explaining the appeal of Tim Horton’s over Starbucks and telling him about home. Okay I know I bag-on home a lot but there’s some cool stuff. Like St-Anne de Beau-Pre it’s a touristy thing and stuff and it’s a monument to the Acadians and the expulsion of them to the United States by the British and no it’s not in Greenwood but it’s really close and it’s actually really, really pretty.

And I tell him about Upper Clements Park which is cool to me again and stuff but it really sort of has nothing on like US amusement parks and stuff. I tell him about going to Antigonish and being in the Air force cadets which makes him raise his eyebrows until I told him that I quit it because it was either be one of the guys and be all macho or watch the other girls and stuff in their stuff and be dying of jealous on the inside.

I think I’m rambling and stuff and it’s likely from the sugar and the caffeine and we leave and Alex pays for everything and I do offer but he shook his head no and smiled that smile and said. “My treat I asked you out.”

“But…but…”

“Jade you have a cute butt.”

“Alex…….” I’m blushing a lot now and my voice went into the whole high girly whine and stuff but at the same time again it’s.

It’s Kawaii…

Yeah I know it’s Japanese and I’m Chinese but I’m an anime geekette and the only time learning Chinese has ever appealed to me is seeing how it got used in Firefly.

But as we’re going back to the van and even driving we’re talking about stuff. Like stuff I’ve never heard of like Coffee-milk and Griddle or Johnny-Cakes that are like a corn-meal pancake that we don’t have home either and stuff like fast food.

Home there’s no Applebee’s or Sonic no Long John Silvers or Popeye’s.

But there’s no Swiss Chalet or St. Hubert’s here and we both have Red Lobster’s in both place and Alex and I both hold them in that kind of contempt that only a Mainer and a Bluenoser might have.

Bluenoser’s are kind of a slang term for people from Nova Scotia. Despite what people west of the Maritime Provinces say we’re not Newfies, Newfies are from Newfoundland.

Which is a whole other thing and Alex is laughing as I’m telling Newfie jokes.

He actually starts getting them but has to stop at a gas station’s parking lot when I start trotting out the “You know you’re a Newfie-Jedi when…” jokes.

… “You’ve ever used your lightsaber to quarter a moose.”

… “You’ve ever eaten bottled Ewok.”

… “The best part of being on Dagobah was the lovely weather.”

… “If you’ve ever used your landspeeder to escape the wildlife officers.”

… “When even C3-PO can’t understand what you’re saying.”

He’s really laughing hard and that’s kind of awesome because I’ve actually never really done this either. I’ve never had the chance to cut loose and be the funny girl.

Or the funny geeky-girl.

I mean I’m or at least in my head I’m into all the girly-girl stuff and I love the make-up I have and my hair even in boy mode is really super important to me and stuff and I sort of swoon over dresses and cute clothes I’m still a geekette in my heart.

And it’s really nice to just be that, to just be myself.

Heck, actually I’m learning to be myself.

Which I never get to be and that’s a big deal for me.

Gods and Goddesses Alex was so unexpected.

I never thought that watch a boy laugh, like really laugh would make me feel this way.

Make my heart go all flippy-floppy and just so full.

Yeah…so crushing.

I want to reach out and do the thumb thing to the tears on his face…I want to reach out and touch his hair and move it out from his eyes.

Be happy with this Jade my head’s telling me, be happy because this might be as close as you might ever get. He’s your friend he’s really sweet and really cool but he’s sooo new to this even newer than you are to this.

Be happy with this and don’t freak him out.

It’s sobering stuff but it still doesn’t wreck the mood or the feelings that I’m having…it’s just part of the kind of butterflies that girls like me have to go through when we like someone.

Alex recovers and we start up again and we head off to “The Container Store.” Now that it’s open. I go in with him and it’s another thing that I don’t think that we have home. We might but not anywhere that I’ve been.

It’s actually exactly what it sounds like containers of all kinds and all the shelving stuff and all the labeling stuff that you could imagine. It’s just fun to go in with him and look at things I’m not really buying though if I was home I would because some of the shelving stuff and click-stack bin that are actually also drawer are kind of awesome and I could use them home.

He buys some white marker? And a stencil in cursive and a green marker and some white circle labels and a large red box. Well not large but it’s one of those boxes that is red and shiny and looks like a box that you’d get at a doughnut place.

It’s actually pretty fun to sit in the parking lot and watch him use the stencil and the white marker to decorate the box to say. Deevil Doughnuts and then he draws in green mark on those little white label this face that when you look at it looks like this reptilian demon man’s face…well like Aahz from the Myth Books.

I have all of them home and Robert Asprin’s like sort of an older writer and stuff but the guy at the used book store recommended the first book to me and I’ve been a fan ever since.

I’m actually grinning all the way back and I’m kinda excited when we go to Starbucks and buy some coffee’s and we get some extra cups and Alex gets one of the barista people to use their pen thing to write Pervish on each lid.

Oh I’m such a geekette it’s almost embarrassing.

Then it’s a stop at Crispy Cream to get the box of doughnuts filled.

It’s amazing what we’ll do for Cosplay and Alex is just doing this as props for his Cosplay look for a D&D game.

I think that’s pretty awesome.

And…and then we’re done.

We’re back to the hotel and all the way back to our floor and I’m looking at him and it’s just…it’s just that I kinda want to not stop.

But I can’t.

I mean I can’t keep clinging to him.

I bite down on myself inside and I give him a hug, a tight one and he hugs me back. “I’m going to crash for a while Alex, I had an awesome time…thank you so much.”

“I had a great time too Jade, I really did.”

“Okay…have a great game.” Bite hard girl…no crying or getting weepy about this.

“Thanks Jade you’re pretty amazing…” And dammit he says that just as I’m fighting with my keycard and he leaned over and he kissed my cheek.

It’s a kiss on the cheek but it’s still a kiss on the cheek with Alex knowing.

I give him a smile that I’m not sure where I found the willpower to get on my face and he slips away and I slip into my room and lean back against the door.

Everything…everything has been just so great and alive and amazing so…so why do I feel like crying so badly.

 

---

Image Credits: Title Picture purchased and licensed for publishing from

123rf.com. The model in this image in no way supports nor conveys the issues and situations brought up within the story. The models use within this work is solely for the representation of looks of the main character of this particular story. ~Sephrena

---

 
 
*Before…

I bite down on myself inside and I give him a hug, a tight one and he hugs me back. “I’m going to crash for a while Alex, I had an awesome time…thank you so much.”

“I had a great time too Jade, I really did.”

“Okay…have a great game.” Bite hard girl…no crying or getting weepy about this.

“Thanks Jade you’re pretty amazing…” And dammit he says that just as I’m fighting with my keycard and he leaned over and he kissed my cheek.

It’s a kiss on the cheek but it’s still a kiss on the cheek with Alex knowing.

I give him a smile that I’m not sure where I found the willpower to get on my face and he slips away and I slip into my room and lean back against the door.

Everything…everything has been just so great and alive and amazing so…so why do I feel like crying so badly.

*And Now…

I turn my head and I press my ear to the door and try to hear all of his footfalls away from me and it hurts. It’s that lump in my throat that I just can’t swallow and I make sure my door’s locked and I go over and I fall down face first into the bed.

I have a few shaky sobs before I get the pillows and some of the sheets yanked over my head and I start crying.

Start crying for the might be’s and never’s and cry really loudly.

I’m not home, I’m someplace where I don’t need to hide when I need to really cry as myself.

It’s torture not to y’know…. To be so fake.

Not having a place or a space in your life to just do this…to be able to cry and let loose.

I don’t take my little portable radio into the bathroom when I shower because I like to sing in the shower.

And this is a full on wreck my make-up sucky cry too one of those ones that makes way too much goo and leaves me with the hiccups.

Between that and not really sleeping and the sugar crash I cry myself to sleep even with the hiccups and all.

I’m not sure if it’s the food but I had vivid dreams.

Me being me but with Alex in them this time.

Alex being my hero.

Then falling in love.

Then him finding out.

Or…

Well the or stuff was nightmare kind of stuff with Donna knowing I’m Trans and pointing it out to everyone in the restaurant and me getting kicked out and all that horrible stuff.

And the last one with Alex leaving me after this fuzzy dream like relationship for a real girl with all the real girl parts and stuff.

I know, I know it’s not like Alex had really been anything more than just a friend to me and really, really cool but when you crush so hard and you get the chance to feel so good and to feel so real it’s just so…

It’s waking up and holding the pillow tight to your tummy because there’s this ache there radiating out from your insides of not having the stuff that you should have and it hurts so badly.

It takes me at least twenty minutes to untangle myself and to shake off the nightmares and cobwebs and get up.

Part of me doesn’t want to and part of me doesn’t want to waste the time that I’ve wasted while sleeping here in one of the only places in my life that I can just be me.

The combination of dry mouth and having to pee gets me moving far more than anything else does honestly. I forgo breakfast by room service and all of that and I get a can of Dr. Pepper from one of my bags and drink it down and then I head to shower and stuff.

I take my I-pod and its stand into the bathroom and plug it in so I can listen to music while I get ready and am listening to my own file mix of songs that I like that actually get me going and that pick me up.

There’s actually a whole lot of Disney songs on there…

A Whole New World… and yeah I’m so singing Jasmine’s part.

Love… From Robin Hood and that’s short but it’s just wonderful and stuff really and a very underrated masterpiece.

Part of Your World…From The Little Mermaid and wow are there ever sappy kinda crushing and in love sort of songs there.

And I will admit that I have the entire score for Pocahontas and Beauty and The Beast on there too and a lot of other stuff too.

So by the time I’m letting Lumierre charm me with “Be Our Guest.” And I’m butt dancing along with Baloo as he sings “Bare Necessities” I’m in a much better mood and enough that I’m pop dancing and rocking out sort of to “Sobakasu” Which is the opening theme to Rurouni Kenshin a really classic anime but I’m listening to the English translation even though the Japanese one’s fine but I’m nowhere near fluent so…and the English one’s a whole lot of fun.

And my costume for today?

Relic Hunter.

I might not be able to pull of Laura Croft but I can do a pretty decent Tia Carrere and I have a unisex leather coat that sort of looks right and the rest is a sort of combination of old grey jeans and the right bra and getting the look down but a lot of it is actually facial expression and the hair.

I’m actually really, really good at this because she’s actually one of my heroines. Okay I know she’s not my specific brand of Asian but she’s still an Asian woman that had a fairly great run with a show in that whole b-level of SF styled shows.

There’s nothing wrong with B-levels, not all shows can be Star Trek or Stargate or Firefly there’s stuff like Sanctuary and Warehouse 13 and Haven that are awesome as they are or where it’s part of their charm.

I pack up some of my things just to sort of get a start on things and I get my bag and stuff and I head down to the convention floor.

I’m kind of glad that I waited and slept because it seems to be the thing that’s been going on with a lot of people and there’s some that I can tell just boycotted sleep altogether.

They have a buffet in one of the offset dining rooms and I go there for coffee first and look around and there’s some themed foods and stuff that are kind of funny and I do get a granola that has fruits and labeled as a “sylvan salad” It’s actually pretty yummy with sesame crisp candy wafers crushed into it and there’s fruit like strawberries and black berries but also some gooseberries the orange things with that funny natural wrapper stuff and kumquats as well as bits of dragon fruit and star fruit too all in all it’s like really pretty and kinda good.

I’m not a fan of star fruit, it’s like eating a really kind of watery flower tasting thing and there wasn’t a lot of taste to the dragon fruit either but it was really pretty though. I do really like the difference the crushed up sesame treat does for the granola though.

Once I’m fed I hit the stands looking at stuff and drooling over some things that I soooo want but can’t really come close to afford.

Oh I know some of it’s so not girlie but I love Macross and some of the veritech large scale toys are amazing. But soooo not cheap and I have nowhere near the room to put any of them at home.

Comics on the other had I am getting, even more of them since there’s a lot of issues of things that I’m missing and some that I just like and want to have just to have them.

My mainstays are Spiderwoman, Arana, Electra but I’m also a fan of the Starwars lines and I’m actually trying to collect most of those and I love TMNT as well as Yojimbo. Please don’t confuse some of these with the kiddified market versions. They’re not it’s like…

It’s like Ultimate Spiderman and comparing it with the latest Spiderman cartoon on Teletoon that is kind of based off the same sort of idea.

But nowhere close…

Gah…it’s good to get this stuff out.

There’s a sign of the real geekette and fan girl…we bitch about stuff.

Like a fan does.

Like how Rogue, beloved freaking Rogue has a dozen different versions and most of them get treated like canon but ignore the Rogue that was in The Brotherhood and was the Dazzler Villainess.

Sad…I liked that Rogue.

Or Psylocke…I love the Character but Betsy Braddock has to be one of the most Americanized British women I have ever seen. I’m sorry but she should still have the language thing and the words going on and the food and stuff.

I want her to call someone a wanker or a prat.

I want to see her in the rain with a decent jacket and wearing wellies.

I’m actually feeling better as I’m telling a bunch of this to a bunch of other girls that are kind of discussing female characters and stuff in comics and animation. And it’s fun and it’s cool to not be alone in some of these things.

Like super heroines and skirts.

Literally the only thing in herodom more useless than capes.

And y’know it’s a lot of fun getting to do this and to actually be myself around other girls and stuff and we actually kind of go from the comic tables with our bags and stuff and head off to the Magic cards tables and get ready for the Queens tournament which is an all-girl gamer table for using Magic Cards.

I’m playing and yeah there’s part of my brain that is always there guarded and hiding all at the same time sort of whispering to me that I shouldn’t be here that I’m not one of them. That I’m taking the place of some real girl.

A side effect of reading stuff online and seeing the opinions of people about transpeople.

Part of me though is so happy that I’m passing and just being included in like the way that I should have been included and stuff.

Things like this honestly might be the only thing that I’ll ever have like this. I’m adopted…so literally my family is the only thing that I really have and losing that over being Trans…

Wow…part of so wishes that I drank.

Well like the gods and goddesses and the muses intended the tournament does its magic and I’m getting distracted from my RL pains and bullshit and we’re all having fun but I’m losing a lot of my games. We’re doing round-robin style of play so I have more chances but it’s not like my skills are really polished I don’t have regular players to do that with where I’m still sort of only on the fringes of the geek crowd back home and stuff.

But some of the girls and women playing have and they’ve been playing these extraordinary games and stuff and I’ve been sitting after most of them and watching with another girl Annie who is actually following some of the stuff with her tablet looking up some of the cards she doesn’t know off by heart and the rest of us are doing golf whisper commentary as to who did what and what the other might counter with…and that’s kind of a game in itself.

Another girl Posy…yes I actually have met someone called Posy she does a running commentary of the action but she does it in this Australian accent and she’s doing this Steve Erwin bit whenever someone uses a creature card.

It’s pretty good when we get these serious girls that are playing hiding grins and trying not to laugh at the commentary.

We actually have a good time and while I don’t place in any of the prizes I get some cool pictures with Annie and Posy before we head off to do different things.

I kind of bite the bullet and give in and go looking for Alex.

And I see him with a group of people with him out of his Skeeve costume and he’s just in jeans and a baggy green lantern t-shirt and they’re all eating together in the general dining room and they’re talking about something and it’s a kind of mixed group of guys and girls and here’s where my regular self comes in.

I don’t know them, so I can’t go over. I sort of freeze up because I don’t want to intrude…no I kind of want to intrude I honestly do want to go over there and say stuff to just talk to him but like always my feet are like lead boots and I just can’t seem to find my voice.

Because he’s smiling and he’s laughing and who the heck am I to get in the way of Alex having fun.

And I soooo have this horrible expectation that if I did go over there I’d be so awkward that it’d be kind of like….y’know that I’d kill the vibe and it’d shut down and there’d just be…crickets.

I slip away before Alex gets to see me and I wander off back into the convention trying to find some solace in the booths and the stuff that they have there.

I’m trying really hard to force the blahs back and to just let me be me but like me before meeting Alex.

At some point y’know you have to let go of things that you were really likely never meant to have.

Not everyone gets to be happy.

I slip out to the main halls; I need a drink I need something cold to press to my forehead so I don’t start crying and stuff. I want to be here, I want to enjoy this because it’s the last night…they’re packing up and stuff tomorrow…I’ll be leaving and it’s already suppertime….this isn’t fair!

 

---

Image Credits: Title Picture purchased and licensed for publishing from

123rf.com. The model in this image in no way supports nor conveys the issues and situations brought up within the story. The models use within this work is solely for the representation of looks of the main character of this particular story. ~Sephrena

---

 
 
*Before…
And I soooo have this horrible expectation that if I did go over there I’d be so awkward that it’d be kind of like….y’know that I’d kill the vibe and it’d shut down and there’d just be…crickets.

I slip away before Alex gets to see me and I wander off back into the convention trying to find some solace in the booths and the stuff that they have there.

I’m trying really hard to force the blahs back and to just let me be me but like me before meeting Alex.

At some point y’know you have to let go of things that you were really likely never meant to have.

Not everyone gets to be happy.

I slip out to the main halls; I need a drink I need something cold to press to my forehead so I don’t start crying and stuff. I want to be here, I want to enjoy this because it’s the last night…they’re packing up and stuff tomorrow…I’ll be leaving and it’s already suppertime….this isn’t fair!

*And Now…

I likely end up doing that unsteady emotional wobble walk but I get to the hall that has the vending machines in it and I get myself a Dr. Pepper. It’s my fave type of pop and I don’t even get the diet stuff either. It doesn’t agree with me sometimes and kinda hurts my stomach.

I go and find myself one of those love seats in the hall to sit at and try to be non-obtrusive and kinda hide like I usually do all of my life while sipping at one can and putting the other one to my face to try and use the cold to keep from crying.

I feel so kind of self-hurt and disappointed with myself.

I do that a lot too, I just try sometimes to let myself go and to just try and live my life and everything but it’s actually one of the hardest things to do.

To stop thinking all the time and to not obsess over wanting and needing to be the real me and everything and then the real kicker is not blaming myself for the stuff in my life.

That’s almost next to impossible really.

If I wasn’t like this my life would be so different.

If I was braver and not so scared my life would be different.

If I was prettier then maybe someone would see the real me and my life would be different.

Yes, yes I’m that vain that I really do what to be pretty. I would like to have something that would just let me be me and maybe just goddamned maybe let me lift my head out of the gutter.

But no…I let it get to me, let my shyness take over and stuff and that whole awkward around people thing and that little voice.

~What would you ever really be to Alex anyway? ~

~He liked girls like Donna, beautiful girls not some lady-boi in a dress. ~

~You’d only get him labeled. ~

I get some tissues and I quickly apply them to my eyes to dab because I’m too much a wimp not to start crying and stuff and I’m really not sure how long I’m doing that for when there’s a weight settling on the extra space of the love seat thingy.

I open my eyes and peek from behind my tissue and see Natasha there looking at me with this worried look on her face and she’s dressed in this other dwarven costume but this time a sort of D&D minstrel thing and she’s got the beard thing going again only it’s like really fine looking and refined like super trimmed but with these little pearls that are dangling from a thing little chin braid and oddly it matches the white faux ivory hoop earrings she’s wearing.

She looks good with the loose artsy blouse and the corset that is doing amazing and makes me jealous things with her boobs.

“Hey Jade, what’s wrong?”

“I’m a coward.” (Sniffle)

“Okay…not from what I’ve seen.”

(Sniffle.) “Huh..?” Yeah my brain’s not really working yet being still in emotional fog and stuff.

“You’re here at the con and you’re out and doing cosplay.”

(Sniffle.) “I’m not really out….”

“Well maybe not but you’re out and in public and you’re dressed and I know and Alex knows.”

(Whine.) “Yeah….”

“Oh honey did you have a fight with Alex?”

(Sniffle.) “No…Alex has been awesome….it’s just.”

“Just…” She’s being really gentle asking me and stuff.

“Just we split up and stuff finally and it’s not like I could’ve like clung to him the whole Con and stuff and it was really awesome and stuff but…”

“But…?”

“But he’s doing other stuff and I wanted to see him and stuff but he’s with other people and stuff and he’s having fun.”

“So…? Go over and talk to him.”

(Sniffle-whine.) “I can’t I like stole so much time from him already and stuff and it’s just be weird going over there and just interjecting myself into their thing and stuff.”

“Jade…who gives a shit? You like him, he probably likes you too and we’re at a Con, you don’t have to follow the bullshit rules here.”

“Alex won’t like me the way that I think that I like him. I mean he knows what I am.”

“Chinese?”

“No…a boy…”

She leans over and she pokes me in my boob. “You are no boy, I am pretty loose with boys and I adore boys and I do NOT get boy from you at all Jade.”

(Sniffle.) “You don’t?”

“Definitely not I have the urge to eat cheese cake with you and dish about guys but that’s about it. Sorry you’re about as convincingly male as Vanellope from “Wreck-it-Ralph” is.”

(Smiley-sniffle.) “Really?”

“Jade if you were any more girly you’d be a pair of lesbians.”

Okay…that has me choking on my Dr. Pepper and Nat’s there rubbing my back.

“Better?”

I cough. “Yeah some…Nat what am I going to do?”

She looks at me. “Okay odds really are that he likes you Jade I mean he knows and he’s known from like that start of things pretty much right?”

“Yeah…”

“Then he likely spent all that time with you because he wanted to.”

“But he’s…and there’s the scroll and Donna.”

“Okay…you better explain that to me.”

I open my second can of pop and we start talking at stuff and go over the way that we met and Donna and how he was into her and stuff but the stuff that we did and the stuff that he did and I kind of just spill my guts and kind of fan-girl out my crush to her.

Real girl talk, real girl talk that I have never had the chance to get and…and…goddesses it feels so good and so right.

When we’re done I look at her and she’s looking at me and Nat has this look on her face and she’s actually doing this thoughtful beard stroke thing.

“What?” I'm kind of on pins and needles.

“Screw it.”

“What?”

“Screw it go big girl. You’re you and he knows that you’re you and if you really want to be happy Jade you kinda have to say screw it and really be yourself, your real self.”

“But…I..I don’t know how?”

“Sure you do, lead with your heart, be the quirky girl, the funny one, that brave girl that too a chance when she found the parchment and took a chance on heart and on fair play.”

“But…” My heart’s hammering, I want this soooo much!

“No buts, they get in the way. Do or do not there is no try.”

Oh so not fair using geek-fu on me.

“No fair.”

“Yes fair, y’know if you want the happy stuff you have to fight for it.”

I nod and wipe my face carefully. “So what do I do?”

“You step up and go big, you Captain my Captain the hell out of it.”

I roll my eyes. “You’re right full of it aren’t you?”

“Totally but I’m also right.”

“Yeah…”

“So what are you going to do?”

I think for a minute and look at the clock and stuff it’s…it’s kinda late now and so much time has gone past so very likely this might be my only chance.

“I…I think that I might have an idea but I might need some help.”

***………… It’s scary what I’m going to do but I’m still going to do it.

Nat got her guitar and some friends together and I’m changed into my Cowboy Bee-bop shirt and sweat pants but I did my hair and my make-up and I’m looking at them and then at Alex’s door to his room. We checked around all the places downstairs and he wasn’t there so he should be here.

Deep Breath….

I knock.

“Hey…Alex…I’m…I…I know it’s late and I’m leaving tomorrow first thing and…I just…”

Oh shit, shit…okay Jade breathe.

I put my hand on his door and I start to sing as Nat starts to play.

“All my bags are packed I'm ready to go.”
“I'm standin' here outside your door…”

“I hate to wake you up to say goodbye.”
“But the dawn is breakin' it's early morn”
“The taxi's waitin' he's blowin' his horn.”
“Already I'm so lonesome I could die…” Okay here my voice cracks a little as the feeling hit me.

“So kiss me and smile for me…”
“Tell me that you'll wait for me…”

“Hold me like you'll never let me go…” More voice cracking.

“Cause I'm leavin' on a jet plane…”
“Don't know when I'll be back again.”
“Oh baby, I hate to go.”

“There's so many times I've let you down”
“So many times I've played around…”
“I tell you now, they don't mean a thing.”

“Every place I go, I'll think of you…”
“Every song I sing, I'll sing for you…”
“When I come back, I'll wear your wedding ring…”

“So kiss me and smile for me…”

And the door swings open and it’s not Alex.

 

---

Image Credits: Title Picture purchased and licensed for publishing from

123rf.com. The model in this image in no way supports nor conveys the issues and situations brought up within the story. The models use within this work is solely for the representation of looks of the main character of this particular story. ~Sephrena

---

 
 
*Before…

“Every place I go, I'll think of you…”
“Every song I sing, I'll sing for you…”
“When I come back, I'll wear your wedding ring…”

“So kiss me and smile for me…”

And the door swings open and it’s not Alex.

*And Now…

My mind goes into a complete blank as it’s not Alex but it’s one of the housekeeping staff.

“Uhm where’s Alex?”

She looks as surprised as I am to see her. “I’m sorry but the young man that was staying in this room has checked out I believe.”

Alex did what?

Why?

“Uhm okay….thank you?” I pull back and she closes the door and I look at Nat who looks at me.

“Check your phone? You did give him your number and stuff right?”

“Uhm yeah?”

I dig it out of my back pocket and there’s a missed call and it’s from Alex.

I press to call him back and it takes a few minutes before he picks up.

“Alex?”

There’s this sound of relief there. “Jade…”

“You left, and you sound…”

“I had to go, dad had a car accident and he was taken to the hospital so I had to go…I’m sorry I really wanted to spend some more time with you.”

He did? …okay yay!

“That’s okay, is your dad alright?”

“They were taking him into surgery that’s all I know.”

“Are you driving?”

“Uhm…yeah….”

“Okay, okay don’t talk to me right now and just get there safe and stuff okay?”

“Okay; I really did have a good time.”

(Sniffle.) “Me…me too the best, the best ever… (Sniffle.)…now drive and be careful!”

“Okay…I promise, I’ll see you later.”

He hangs up and I hang up and I stare at my phone while using my other hand to wipe at my eyes.

Nat comes over and rubs my back and I let out a ragged sigh. “You okay?”

“Nope, nope and a whole lot more nope. But I guess it could be worse right? I mean he might have actually been here and I might have like come off like tranny-stalker girl or something.”

“Hey, stop that. He said that he wanted to spend more time with you, he said that he had a really good time with you, he said that he’d see you later.”

(Sniffle-smile.) “Yeah he did but…what are really the odds and stuff? I mean I’m not out and stuff home and he’s got his life and I’ve got my so called life.”

“Actually pretty good you’re in Nova Scotia and he’s in Maine so who knows?”

“That’s a really huge drive actually.”

“Not really isn’t there a ferry?”

“The new one doesn’t like start until like May sometime.”

“Uhm hello McFly that means it will be going in the summer when you’re off school.”

I sort of hold my sides and stomach. “Oh…god…really…but…I mean what if he doesn’t, what if he just like forgets me.”

“Sinclair you’re not that easy to forget.” She hugs me again. “You have his e-mail and stuff remember screw it…you just got to keep talking to him and stuff.”

“You think?”

“Yeah I think.”

I hug her back and we all leave Alex’s room to hang out at mine for the rest of the night.

I’m a little shy at first with the others there with us but they’re all pretty cool and they know people like me in their own lives too so that’s pretty cool.

It’s kind of why I love this though. I mean there’s me the transgirl and then Nat who’s pretty open about being dwarven almost. Short, stockily built not the pretty slender yet curvy attractive norm.

Then Lynn who’s tall and lanky wit about as much curve as I have and has trouble keeping weight on and she talks about people telling her she’s so lucky while she’s cold all the time and getting crap for being bulimic and stuff when she’s not.

Jill who’s gender queer and she likes guys but she’s just not comfortable in gender roles. Short haired and dressed in what’s kind of guy stuff but pretty neutral stuff really but she admits to looking like a clown in make-up, just not knowing how to act in a dress at all and heels might as well be stilts…so tired of getting labeled as a lesbian and especially as a butch… “I don’t really like or get gender crap…I just don’t I just want to have some one that likes me for me and digs that I’m into video games.”

It really does take all kinds and we’re talking about our homes and stuff and we pack up my stuff and we all are going to the airport in the morning so we take my stuff and we get a porters cart and we head to each of our rooms just hanging out and helping each other pack until morning comes.

I’m almost…no I am crying my eyes out as I get changed and showered and come out as Frankie for the first time since being here.

Have to use Frankie…I just haven’t been able to use Frank or Franklyn for years…just can’t.

The girls console me all they way down to the lobby and we pay our room bills and y’know all that time and work and money to save up for this…it’s been work it.

The girl at the desk looks at me as she’s printing off my receipt. “Frankie Thompson?”

“Uhm yes?”

“There’s been a package left for you.”

“Oh…okay.”

She reaches from under the desk and she passes me another scroll case.

Oh…

Oh…Alex.

 

---

Image Credits: Title Picture purchased and licensed for publishing from

123rf.com. The model in this image in no way supports nor conveys the issues and situations brought up within the story. The models use within this work is solely for the representation of looks of the main character of this particular story. ~Sephrena

---

 
 
*Before…

The girls console me all the way down to the lobby and we pay our room bills and y’know all that time and work and money to save up for this…it’s been work it.

The girl at the desk looks at me as she’s printing off my receipt. “Frankie Thompson?”

“Uhm yes?”

“There’s been a package left for you.”

“Oh…okay.”

She reaches from under the desk and she passes me another scroll case.

Oh…

Oh…Alex.

*And Now…

I’m staring at the scroll case and my hand is shaking a bit and I’m not sure what I should do? Nat and the others and even the girl behind the desk are staring at me all with that look in their eyes as if they’re all dying to know and trying to will me to open it.

Blush…

I take a breath and I open it carefully, it’s the same design as the other one so maybe he had more than one made up. It’s still beautifully made and I want to keep it that way.

There’s actually a whole sheaf of things in there, sheets of paper but with thin white packing paper between them. You know the stuff that you like wrap china or glass in. each one to like protect what’s on each of the sheets.

But there’s a letter on the top in this really nice fantasy stationary that looks like pale almost white swirled with almost green and it looks like white jade.

Oh…

And the writing is in that really amazing calligraphy from before and it’s still one of those beautiful works of art.

I mean just a guy that would even think to go that far it’s just…

Yay….

“My Lady Jade.”

“When I first came here it was to try and win the affection of one that I had only know from afar and from my past and that was as you know a calamity.”

“All my life I’m read tomes with stories and wondertales of the brave warrior that comes to the rescue of a maiden and or great romances from unforeseen events. But alas things like that had never been an event of my life.”

“Until I had the amazing fortune to meet you.”

“Kind, wise, funny and compassionate and brave.”

“All the things that I have always thought of with a woman in my heart really and meeting you had shown me greatly that one cannot truly judge a book by its cover and just because I thought that I knew what something was doesn’t mean that I actually did know…Lady Jade you had opened my eyes to something new.”

“I thank you for that and I thank you for showing me about honor and beauty and how it can be found in the most surprising of places.”

“You are a lady, and you have shown me parts of myself that I hadn’t known that I could have never even have guessed were in me.”

“You are grace…and I shall not forget you.”

“Still amazed, Alexander.”

He…I…I pass the whole thing to Nat and I go for the box of tissues that the girl behind the desk is having and I’m crying.

Nat’s reading it out loud and the others are sniffling too as she’s reading it and I’m shaking actually.

Good-freaked-out-happy-nerves.

I mean no, no he never said something like I love you and that kind of stuff because that’d be like even weirder than a fantasy letter on parchment but…

I’m a girl…and I’m I’d like to think that in some ways I’m average and even stereotypical even.

But I’m also a transgirl and I know and have known and help it up against me inside like a cutter with her blade that stuff like this…having someone say things like this was near and next to impossible!

And he said then to me.

And he took this amazing, level of care and detail to have this here for me.

And in all of my entire life I’ve never actually felt like this…like a girl that everyone knows is a girl and that someone really honestly likes her.

In the way that we all want to be liked.

There’s a lot of sniffling and snuffling and wiping at our eyes and stuff and I’m just kind of getting ahold of myself when I hear Nat.

“Oh…oh Jade.” She said it and he breath caught when she said it.

“W...what?” I’m excited and still nervous and…I mean there’s all of those other papers.

She was looking through them and now she passes them to me.

There’s a Post-it on the top protective sheet.

“I’m sorry, I took a few pictures with my phone when you weren’t looking…but I had the sketch guy do these for me…Jade you deserve to see what I got to see.”

I’m trying to keep my hands from shaking but with each layer there’s a photo that he took of me. Some are me in costume, some are me in the clothes I just wore around, some are these pictures of me watching the Shadowrun game and some of them are me sleeping through the movie.

But each one of them has a sketch, pencils mostly with some colored pencils but me…Jade drawn in that comic sort of beautiful like a Michael Turner (Fathom)…me as Psylocke at the con, in a sunset with a sword, in feudal looking Japan complete with an old castle and sakura blossoms.

Me as Relic Hunter but in some very Tomb-raider like styles, Me in my just hanging out clothes still this sort of comic cuter than me but still looking like it was me thing walking and another playing Magic Cards, Another with me eating pizza…me curled up to him sleeping through the movie, wisps of hair falling over my face, me at I-Hop heading inside and I…I look happy.

I was happy…

But I’ve never felt the way that I looked in some of the photos and I never felt the way that I looked in these pictures that he had done of me.

Me…no trace of Franklyn in any of them.

It’s a lot of money too because the pictures and then getting that guy to do these…I pass them to the girls again because I’m sobbing.

It’s happy sobbing; it’s stunned and shocked sobbing.

I don’t want to get them tear stained.

They’re the most precious thing in my life.

Proof that I’m real.

Proof that I’m taking home dammit.

 

---

Image Credits: Title Picture purchased and licensed for publishing from

123rf.com. The model in this image in no way supports nor conveys the issues and situations brought up within the story. The models use within this work is solely for the representation of looks of the main character of this particular story. ~Sephrena

---

 
 
*Before…

But I’ve never felt the way that I looked in some of the photos and I never felt the way that I looked in these pictures that he had done of me.
Me…no trace of Franklyn in any of them.
It’s a lot of money too because the pictures and then getting that guy to do these…I pass them to the girls again because I’m sobbing.
It’s happy sobbing; it’s stunned and shocked sobbing.
I don’t want to get them tear stained.
They’re the most precious thing in my life.
Proof that I’m real.
Proof that I’m taking home dammit.

*And Now…

I hug the whole bunch carefully to my chest or non-chest since I’m in Frankie mode and we’re all sniffling and I try really, really hard to get ahold of myself and stuff.

I’m going home…I want to go and be with him so bad and I don’t want this to end but I’m broke…I’m too young to rent a car and what would I do when I got there?

Alex…I mean I think this might mean what I think it might mean but Alex is an insanely great guy and he honestly could have done these as something that he’d do just to be an awesome friend to a girl like me.

And then there’s my parents…

And his parents…

There’s this zoom to the bottom of my stomach just getting close to that thought. I mean I know exactly what I am and I know exactly what a whole lot of people might feel about trans people and hell I’m Chinese on top of that and I’m not even sure they’d be cool with that at all.

Yeah Alex is cool but there’s no shortage of cool people here with shitty families.

So I really don’t know how they’d react.

Mine, mine I know how they’d react and they’d freak right out.

I mean my mom would totally have a cow and it was really bad enough that she had a near over-protective-mom meltdown with me coming here all by myself.

If I took off…off after Alex.

Nat nudges me. “Jade, our cab’s here.”

It’s with a sinking feeling that I’m nodding and I take my sheaf of pictures and papers and I very carefully slide them back into the scroll case and I head out following the girls and getting my bags and heading out to the van that’s there to pick us all up.

It sooo feels bad.

I wanted this so much.

I wanted to be me so much.

I didn’t want this, to find this and have all this fun and then have to go home to that life.

Franklyn’s life right now feels like the biggest coffin in the world.

We get in and I know the girls are looking at me and I’m staring at the scroll case turning it over and over in my fingers and just staring at how lovely it really is.

And it’s mine this time it’s really, really mine.

The drive to Logan feels like it took forever and that it also took too little time and it feels like I’m getting astronomically further from Alex by just being here.

My things feel like they weigh a ton right now.

Feels like I’m carrying Jade’s body stuffed in there.

We all walk in and get our bearings and we’re all heading to different places and I get my tickets and we say some teary goodbyes and I’m hugging Nat really, really hard.

“I’m going to so effing miss you!”

“I’m gonna miss you too Sinclair.”

“Really!?” (Sniffle.)

(Snuffle.) “Yep really, you are likeable y’know.”

(Sniffle.) “Nope…I don’t know.”

(Snuffle.) “Well you are and you can’t get rid of me that easy either we’ll have online and stuff and Skype.”

(Sniffle.) “Yeah but it won’t be the same…you won’t be there no one will be there and…and…I’ll be all alone again!!!”

I hug her really, really hard and I’m full on sobbing on her making a scene and a right mess too.

I’m still not ready to let her go but the airport PA announces her flight to New Hampshire and I have to let her go and it sucks…it sucks really hard.

She waves good bye walking backwards until she’s lost in the crowds and I’m…I’m alone again.

I’m moping in the seats that are the closest to my gate and trying to dry my eyes and look less of a mess even if I’m stuck in stupid boy mode and stuff.

I feel like crap because I have that chest achy hurt thing from crying/sobbing and my nose feels like I’ve had a cold and used too many tissues and stuff and they call for my flight and I get up and take my carry on and my smart phone rings and it’s Nat.

(Sniffle.) “Hey…flight delayed?”

“Uhm…no.”

“Uhm?”

“Jade?”

(Sniffle.) “Yeah?”

“You want to do something crazy?”

 

---

Image Credits: Title Picture purchased and licensed for publishing from

123rf.com. The model in this image in no way supports nor conveys the issues and situations brought up within the story. The models use within this work is solely for the representation of looks of the main character of this particular story. ~Sephrena

---

---

 
 
*Before…

I feel like crap because I have that chest achy hurt thing from crying/sobbing and my nose feels like I’ve had a cold and used too many tissues and stuff and they call for my flight and I get up and take my carry on and my smart phone rings and it’s Nat.

(Sniffle.) “Hey…flight delayed?”

“Uhm…no.”

“Uhm?”

“Jade?”

(Sniffle.) “Yeah?”

“You want to do something crazy?”

*And Now…

(Sniffle?)…. “What?”

“Do you want to do something crazy?”

“When?”

“Now, right now…today.”

(Sniffle.) “Nat…”

“Jade…I’m here, right now still by your side and my flight’s already in the air.”

(Sniffle.) “What!” (Cough.)… “Why?”

“Because I’m a sucker for romance, I’m a sucker for the little girl, the odd-balls and us lonely hearts.”

“But…”

“Look, just how many times do you think that someone like us is going to have a chance like this?”

“I dunno…” (Sniffle.)

I can see her now on her phone pulling her bag and she’s looking at me her own eyes red from her own tears and…

You ever have that moment when you look into someone’s eyes and you see your best friend there?

Natasha…is my best friend.

She puts away her phone and she looks at me and reaches into her pocket and she pulls out her credit card.

“Do you love him?”

“I…I…I think I do.”

“You think it’s true love?”

I nod… “Yeah…I think it’s true love.” Oh goddess I really hope that it is.

“Well then come on girl-Westley let’s go and rescue your Boy-Buttercup.”

I’m a sobby mess and she makes me laugh out loud with that and I look at her.

“You damned dwarves leading people into all sorts of adventures.”

I put my phone away and grab my carry on and look at her.

“Road trip?”

She grins and I’m grinning too despite everything and we head off to get our tickets redeemed and both of us have our luggage already off and away from us when we check…it doesn’t matter we head towards the car rental place and I’m all nerves that I’m just…we’re just about there when I think I can see my plane lifting off.

Oh there’s no way now but forward.

Nat gets a car a four door Saturn and we head out.

We have the roughest time getting out of Boston itself since I don’t have a real clue to where we’re going and neither does Nat and by the time we’re sure of anything we get caught up in the commute traffic.

And it’s been…well I wasn’t keeping track of time when my phone starts to ring when we’re just getting onto the I-95.

I look at it and it’s mom’s phone.

I let it ring two more times before answering.

“Hi mom.”

“Hi mom! Hi mom, where are you! You weren’t on the plane when we went to pick you up are you hurt!?”

“No mom I’m not hurt I’m okay…”

“You don’t sound okay, you missed your plane and on top of that they mixed up all of your things with some other person. It must have been some other person that does all that comic and science fiction stuff that you do…did you go in a group?”

“Yes mom we went in a group and…”

“And?”

Well…I’m in a car on the interstate driving after Alex with my best friend and for now…for now I’m kind of out of reach of any massive meltdown of me coming out to my family.

“It’s not someone else’s things they’re mine.”

“Yours…?”

I’m tearing up as it’s all starting to come out.

I hear dad in the background. “His?”

Wince…

(Sniffle.)… “Yeah…mine…”

“Yours…?”

(Irate-whine.) “Yes mine!”

“So you’re….”

“Trans.” (Sniffle.)

“Trans…?”

“Transgender…mom…I’m not really a boy, I never was a boy I’ve never felt like a boy not once not once in my entire life.”

“Oh…well that would explain the girls clothes and everything.”

“You’re taking this better than I thought.” (Sniffle.)

“Oh…oh Frankie we knew something was up it’s just your father and I we thought that you were gay?

(Sniffle.) “Nope…” (Cough-snuffle.)… “I like boys.”

“That’s what I meant.”

“Mom… (Sniffle.)…I’m a girl…so you know that means that I like boys.”

“Oh…”

“Mom…?”

“Yes honey?”

(Sniffle.) “Do you hate me?”

“No honey…shocked definitely…where are you? I can get you another flight we’re still at Stanfield.”

“I’m not at the airport mom.”

“Why not?”

“I have to do something.”

“What? Did you leave something behind, lose something, I’ll get a flight over there.”

“Mom no, it’s about a boy.”

“WHAT!”

“I met a boy, a really amazing and awesome and wonderful guy and I need to see him…I need to see him again and tell him how I feel about him before it all changes.”

“A BOY!” she’s yelling into the phone.

There’s some rattling and swearing and it’s coming from mom and dad and then it stops and I hear.

“Wow…kiddo, you’re definitely a girl.”

Dad…Daddy…and he said…

(Sobby.) “What…?”

“Well the only one that has ever gotten your mother that worked up are you aunts and your grandmother.”

(Sniffle-laugh.) “Dad…”

I wipe at my eyes and Nat’s looking at me and I’m sure that she’s getting most of it and she offers me a smile.

(Sniffle.) “Dad…?”

“Yeah…?”

“You’re not mad?”

“No kiddo we’ve know something was up for a long time.”

“But…but I’m not what you wanted…”

“We have exactly what we want kiddo, we have a child that we love.”

(Sniffle.) “Thanks Daddy.”

“You’re welcome but that still doesn’t really clear the air with what you’re doing though.”

(Snuffle-sigh.) “I know…it’s just it’s all really a long story and I have to tell him before it all get too far away from me.”

“Too far away?”

“I’ll get home and he’ll be there and if I don’t say this now then I might not say it…and he might meet someone or we might just fall into being friends when…when it’s not what I want I want more than that.”

“It’s still be long distance.”

“But we could face that, phone and talk and e-mail and Skype and stuff until we hit times when we could be together like we were here.”

“You two just met.”

“Yeah I know.”

“It’s only been barely any time at all Frankie.”

(Sniffle.) “Dad…?”

“Yeah?”

“What if it was mom?”

“………………………”

“Dad?”

“I’m putting you on speaker.”

(Snuffle.) “Okay…”

“There now ask me that again.”

I…huh…oh..

“Dad, what if it was mom?”

I hear mom. “That’s not fair…you’re too young for this…”

“Mom…?”

“Yes honey?”

“Just listen…okay?”

“To what…?”

“To what happened…”

I hear dad murmuring something to her and I can almost see them because he usually only does that when he’s holding her with his arms around her saying stuff in her hair…ear to either calm her down from being upset or angry or when he’s being romantic…it’s that same sound coming over the speaker phone.

I lean into the seat and I put my phone on speaker and on speaker and I hug myself and have my knees up on the seat with my phone balanced there plugged into the dash and I start from the beginning and start to tell them both everything that happened and yeah I’m crying some more and I’m gushing through some of it all too and there’s a few…”OH MOM!” girl-share moments…when I say some of the things like us dancing and the whole wonderful tonight stuff and the things that he’s said and done and the way that he looked sometimes and the letter…my letter…

By the time I’m done I’m crying yet again and mom’s crying on the other end of the line and sniffling.

(Mom-sniffle-sob.)…. “Go….”

(Sniffle-huh?) “Mom…?”

“Go…dammit go…look I don’t like you being there and I’m scared for you but Jade…Jade I’m old enough that I know if I was you and I didn’t, didn’t try I would be wondering and regretting it the rest of my life.”

(Happy-sobby-whine.) “Mom……….”

Jade, she called me Jade…I mean I had told her and dad that through the story but she’s calling me by my name, my real name and she’s telling me to go…

“Mom…I love you so much!!!”

(Mom-sniffle.) “Good…be careful!”

Dad comes on the line. “You have your bank card?”

(Sniffle.) “Yes daddy…it’s…it’s in my purse.”

“Okay we’re going and we’ll put money into your account, pay your way young lady…gas, hotel, meals…your friend is driving you.”

Nat’s like… “She really doesn’t need to; I kind of talked her into this whole thing.”

“Good, we all need one of those friends and yes she does…”

“Yessir…” Nat’s grinning and her eyes are dancing. “So I’m one of those friends?”

Dad’s chuckling and I hear mom say. “Natasha stop flirting with my husband.”

And I’m like… “Mom!”

And we’re all laughing even if mine’s a wee bit off from all my nerves and stuff.

Then mom’s… “Be careful honey.”

“I will I promise.”

We end the call and I sort of uncoil and slump in my seat with this huge sigh of letting things go and Nat looks over at me. “You okay?”

“No…and yes…I just came out to my parents and stuff…it’s not like I can put any of that back in the box.”

“Nope, but aren’t you tired of living in a box anyways?”

“Good Goddess yes…just way too tired of it.”

She grins… “Well I don’t know about you but all of this excitement has me in need of the bathroom.”

Of course now that she mentions needing to pee I have to. “Yeah, let’s stop besides I want to get changed.”

“You have enough in your case?”

“Yeah most of my really girl stuff’s in here…I didn’t want to try to explain all of it to my folks just in case.”

“So, what’d they find in your bags.”

“I didn’t have room for everything in there so yeah some of my girl clothes were in there and I thought that I had them pretty well hidden.”

“But when you went AWOL your folks went through everything?”

“Probably…one of the joys to being adopted is that it kind of comes with over protective folks.”

She shrugs. “Better than having folks that don’t really care.”

I look over at her and she looks at me. “Oh no not me my folks are pretty cool that way and stuff but one of my friends is a girl in a house of guys and they really didn’t want a daughter that much.”

“Really?” Man that would suck.

“Yeah, I mean her family is nice enough and stuff but her dad’s like one of those guys that’s clueless about girls and stuff and her mom’s one of those women that doesn’t really like other women.”

“Even her own daughter?”

“I guess, she’s never been close to her mom except for like fights and stuff and the rest keep her at arm’s length.”

I just shake my head but honestly I can sort of see that there’s a few kids at school that I’d say had shitty home lives and stuff too.

We pull into one of those gas station rest stop places with like the mini-mart and the whole bunch of things like Cinnabun and Taco bell and I get my bag and I go and hit the mini store and use their bathroom and get changed.

Why don’t we have these things home? I mean we have gas stations with the attached stores and all of that but not the rest stops like they have here in the states. These are actually kind of cool and one of the things I really like about being down here.

I think we’re actually in Vermont now?

Though being in the highway and with everything so close and so together down here I really have no idea where we are.

I get my bra on and my falsies settle in and change into a cute t-shirt top but still go with the hoodie I was wearing and I change my undies for my real ones and go with my capris instead of the boy jeans that I was wearing but stay with my socks and my sneakers.

Jade is very different than Franklyn but at the same time like most tranfolk I’m not all that different than the day to day me only that I’m just actually fully being me.

Well as full as it gets pre-transition and everything.

I do use the bathroom and stuff too while I’m there and I kind of get a few looks that have me a bit nervous and edgy from some of the women that come in and out of there but most of the looks are directed at me and then my carry-on bag with that whole curious as to why I’m changing for the sake of being curious. I don’t think that I got read.

I go through the store part and I get some bottles of water and some junk food and some gum…I need gum the last thing that I need is like having bad breath and stuff and I get some stuff too for Nat and I meet up with her at the car and we get ready and head back out onto the road.

We eat and we talk about home and mostly what I think what might happen when I do get home other than likely or maybe being in like serious grounding troubles but more to the whole transition thing and if they’ll start me on that path or let me finally start on that path and then it’s about school.

Oy…yeah I mentioned some of the stuff before with how school was…the kinda jerky people and the way I’m sort of an outsider even in the geeky and not so popular kids and stuff.

If a gay Chinese guy wasn’t all that welcome before in things then what are they going to be like when they find out that I’m actually not gay but a transgender girl?

Maybe I’ll do home school until university.

It eats up the time and I’m totes using up all the conversation air but I think that’s been Nat’s plan.

My stomach does a flip as suddenly I see this sign saying welcome to Portland.

Really? That fast?

We look at a map app in the car’s dashboard thingy and we head first to Maine Medical and I’m looking for Alex’s Van and stuff and after that we head to Mercy Hospital and I see his van parked in the parking lot and we pull in to and get our stub and stuff and we both get out…

“I’m so…nervous.” I wipe my hands off on the inside of my hoodie’s pockets.

Nat looks at me and nod and she rubs my back.

“It’ll be okay, we’ll just go in and we’ll ask for Alex and we’ll be good.”

We’re walking and I’m looking at her. “We’ll be good huh? Isn’t this just a little bit stalkerish?”

“You’re not stalking him you’re trying to be romantic.”

“How come no one ever says that romantic is scary as heck?”

“Because if it was easy everyone would be in love and it wouldn’t be as special.”

We head in through the doors and I’m looking where to go to ask about finding Alex and head over to the information desk?

“Uhm…hi, I’m looking for a friend of mine his name’s Alex Porter he’s here visiting family…his dad was in a car accident?”

“I’m sorry Miss, we can’t give out information about patients or their family the best you can do is wait over there in the lobby-waiting area.”

“Okay…thank you.”

Dummy I should have known that.

“Uhm…Ma’am? Can we use Cell phones here?”

“Oh yes it’s alright to use them here you’ll see posted signs in the areas where we don’t allow cell-phones.”

“Okay…thank you.”

Nat and I both go and we find some seats and stuff and I’m trying to keep an eye out for Alex in case he comes down to leave or get something and I leave him a couple of e-mails.

[Come to the lobby when you can, Jade.]

It’s awhile…a long nervous while with too much water drank because on me and my stupid dry mouthed nerves and I look at Nat. “I gotta go pee, keep a look out for Alex please.”

“I will hog tie that boy if I have too.”

I do the have to pee run to the washrooms and do my business and I go to wash my hands and I actually get a hard shove from my blindside that send me stumbling.

“I told you that was her, I told you that was the little bitch that made me look bad at the Convention and on Facebook.”

I look and it’s Donna and three friends and they all look mad and bitchy and before I can say anything she slaps me in the mouth really hard and knocks me to the floor!

 

---

Image Credits: Title Picture purchased and licensed for publishing from

123rf.com. The model in this image in no way supports nor conveys the issues and situations brought up within the story. The models use within this work is solely for the representation of looks of the main character of this particular story. ~Sephrena

---

 
 
*Before…

It’s awhile…a long nervous while with too much water drank because on me and my stupid dry mouthed nerves and I look at Nat. “I gotta go pee, keep a look out for Alex please.”

“I will hog tie that boy if I have too.”

I do the have to pee run to the washrooms and do my business and I go to wash my hands and I actually get a hard shove from my blindside that send me stumbling.

“I told you that was her, I told you that was the little bitch that made me look bad at the Convention and on Facebook.”

I look and it’s Donna and three friends and they all look mad and bitchy and before I can say anything she slaps me in the mouth really hard and knocks me to the floor!

*And Now…

I have never been hit in my life.

Not really, I mean there was something back in primary when Paula Carter used to pull my hair because it was long and boys don’t have long hair.

But even with the few assholes home it was always getting a shove or getting fag hit on and stuff. I’ve never been hit before.

It hurts but I get up off the floor. “You did all of that Donna, you were the one using Alex to pay your way through the Con.”

“So what!? I’ve known Alex my whole life and he’s damned lucky that I did. He just wanted to use me to act like a big guy and have a life.”

“That’s no excuse for using someone, it’s just being a selfish bitch.”

Yeah I said it and yep she swings at me and I cover and it still hurts.

“You wrecked everything!” She screams at me and shoves me into the wall. I bounce off and her friends are there and they toss me into the wall again. “People have been calling me a gold digger and shit. And you showed up and you stole that thing he made, stole Alex from me!”

(Cough.) “You threw it away…”

She grabs my shirt fists twisting into the cloth. “It was still mine, Alex was still mine you little…”

She stops and cups me hard in the boob, then moves her hand and laughs as she pulls at my shirt and my bra and the inserts go falling on the floor and she laughs… “Oh just so effing fake too huh!?”

Then she shoves me into her friends and they’re shoving me back and forth between them and I’m crying because I’m getting scared, really scared and then one of them pins me my face to the hot air machine to dry your hands and turns it on.

One of the others gropes me.

There…

She squeezes and no matter the tucking…It hurts and I cry out in pain and she laughs. “Oh my fucking gawd she’s a dood!”

My…my world goes black and white and goes all slow motion and I’m hit a few more times…slaps.

Then Donna’s there in my face squatting because I’m on the floor.

“You’re going to leave.”

(Cough.) “No…Alex knows.”

She laughs this evil kind of chuckle. “He’s a good guy, a loser but I good guy…and you know what fag…tranny I don’t care…but you’re leaving.”

(Cough.) “No…”

“Oh…four against one, you here flashing us we’ll scream to security. Not counting what it’ll do to Alex’s dad when he finds out his son’s a fag.”

“No…no they won’t believe you…”

“I’m pretty, I’m young, I’m fucking real you little tranny slut you don’t thin k they’ll believe me? Believe us? You cause shit like this and Alex’s dad’ll have a relapse.”

(Sniffle-cough-small-voice…) “Relapse…?”

“He had a heart attack…you don’t think you’ll make it worse? I’ll make sure you do.”

It hits me, it hits me a hammer to the stomach that she’s right…that she has all the power. That they can say whatever they want because everyone knows we tranny’s are all perverts trying to sneak in on….

I can’t help the sob that comes out as I look into her eyes.

She is serious, she will do this.

I scramble to my feet and I run out of there and almost bowl Natasha over who I think was coming to look for me and I hear her. “Jade!…wait what?”

I can’t, can’t stop…got to get out of there.

I run outside and I dodge a guard that looked like he was going to try and stop me.

I run and keep running until my ribs hurt and my lungs are on fire and I’m in some downtown Portland parking lot and I’m puking my heart up.

I don’t know why I found the space between two old looking cars to hide and huddle in but It’s where I crawl into and cry…I shove my wrist into my mouth and bite down and cry, and bawl my eyes out.

I’m in that shock thing I think when I hear Nat screaming, yelling for me over and over…

I get up and my feet are screaming…I lost my sneakers at some point and my feet are bloody through my socks and the fact I was running on hard concrete and pavement is starting to hit me.

I stand but weave and keep trying to pull my shirt up from it sliding off my shoulder. I end up leaning on one of the cars and raising my hand until she comes running over.

“Jade! Jade what happened!? I saw Donna and…”

(Sniffle.) “Take me to the airport.”

“Jade…”

“I…I gotta go home.”

“Jade what happened?”

“I shouldn’t have come, I shouldn’t have, not ever…”

Nat takes me by the shoulders and she stares at me. “Jade what happened? C’mon talk to me.”

“Donna was going to out me, she knows…her friends know…they were going to cause trouble, call security and say I was flashing them….”

“That’s bullshit.”

(Sniffle.) “That’s reality….it doesn’t matter if it’s real or not it’s what peoples’ believe.”

“Not everyone’s like that, they assaulted you we can go to the cops.”

“No…Just no Nat, just look at the news, look online, they don’t have to tell the truth they just have to say it. I can’t bring that, bring the way I am down on Alex.”

“Isn’t that for him to decide?”

“No…Nat is dad had a heart attack, and Donna said she’d make sure it got out, tat she’d cause shit…I can’t do that.”

“You…you can’t let her win Jade.”

(Sniffle.) “It’s okay Nat. I’m trans…happy endings are fairy tales for us…”

“It’s not okay! Goddamn it! It’s not okay!”

“Take me to the airport.”

“Jade no…”

“TAKE ME TO THE AIRPORT!!!” I’m screaming, I don’t mean to be screaming but I am until she’s holding me tight.

“Okay, okay…We’ll go.”

I’m still shaking and crying as she leads me to the rental car parked nearby and my things are inside. She gets me inside and carefully closes the door and we start driving away from the hospital, away from Alex and my hopes.

And the radio’s playing…

"Why"

How many times do I have to try to tell you
That I'm sorry for the things I've done
But when I start to try to tell you
That's when you have to tell me
Hey... this kind of trouble's only just begun
I tell myself too many times
Why don't you ever learn to keep your big mouth shut
That's why it hurts so bad to hear the words
That keep on falling from your mouth
Falling from your mouth
Falling from your mouth
Tell me...
Why
Why

I may be mad
I may be blind
I may be viciously unkind
But I can still read what you're thinking
And I've heard is said too many times
That you'd be better off
Besides...
Why can't you see this boat is sinking
(this boat is sinking this boat is sinking)
Let's go down to the water's edge
And we can cast away those doubts
Some things are better left unsaid
But they still turn me inside out
Turning inside out turning inside out
Tell me...
Why
Tell me...
Why

This is the book I never read
These are the words I never said
This is the path I'll never tread
These are the dreams I'll dream instead
This is the joy that's seldom spread
These are the tears...
The tears we shed
This is the fear
This is the dread
These are the contents of my head
And these are the years that we have spent
And this is what they represent
And this is how I feel
Do you know how I feel ?
'cause i don't think you know how I feel
I don't think you know what I feel
I don't think you know what I feel
You don't know what I feel

 

---

Image Credits: Title Picture purchased and licensed for publishing from

123rf.com. The model in this image in no way supports nor conveys the issues and situations brought up within the story. The models use within this work is solely for the representation of looks of the main character of this particular story. ~Sephrena

---

 
 
*Before…

“I’m pretty, I’m young, I’m fucking real you little tranny slut you don’t thin k they’ll believe me? Believe us? You cause shit like this and Alex’s dad’ll have a relapse.”
(Sniffle-cough-small-voice…) “Relapse…?”

“He had a heart attack…you don’t think you’ll make it worse? I’ll make sure you do.”

………………………… “It’s not okay! Goddamn it! It’s not okay!”

“Take me to the airport.”
“Jade no…”
“TAKE ME TO THE AIRPORT!!!” I’m screaming, I don’t mean to be screaming but I am until she’s holding me tight.
“Okay, okay…We’ll go.”
I’m still shaking and crying as she leads me to the rental car parked nearby and my things are inside. She gets me inside and carefully closes the door and we start driving away from the hospital, away from Alex and my hopes.

*And Now….

I’m quiet and she’s quiet as we drive and we leave Portland.

(Sniffle.) “Where are we going?”

“Back to Boston, it’s cheaper to fly out of there…”

“Oh…”

“Yeah…”

It’s really shitty and awkward as we drive in silence until we get to a gas station with one of those mini-mart things and she stops.

“We need to look after stuff Jade.”

(Sniffle…cough…) “Like what.”

“You’re a effing mess.”

(Sniffle…cough…) “Yeah…I lost my shoes.”

“I got em here they were in the bathroom.”

“Oh…” (Cough.)

She takes me inside and gets a few things and we’re getting looks, well I’m getting looks and she then takes me to the bathroom and guides me to sit on the counter and the sink and she starts wiping at my face. I think I flinched a little. I know I flinched….and maybe shook a little too.

Natasha goes really carefully with my hands… they’re a mess too and my feet…Those have scratches right through my socks and some small cuts and I’m doing sobby little intakes of breath through her cleaning me up.

She’s done all of this and tending to my hurts and washing my feet.

(Sniffle.) “Are you like a Christian or something?”

“Yeah…?” She blinks and looks at what she’s doing then laughs. “Okay I get it…”

Nat puts some cream on them some of that first aid stuff and gives me fresh socks, two pair. I put them on and then she gives me my sneakers but the laces undone and helps me off the counter and she helps me out to the rental car.

“I’m going to get some other things…here.” She hands me my phone.

(Snuffle.) “Thanks.”

“Call him.”

“I…you mean call Alex?”

“Yes I mean call Alex.”

“W..why? I told you I gotta leave.”

“Because I’m a Christian.”

“Huh?”

“It sometimes means facing things we would rather run from.”

“Nat…”

She…she actually walks away and back into the store.

Dammit, damned stubborn dwarves! (Sniffle.)

“Who does she think she is Jiminy effing Cricket?”

I sit there and sit there and stare at the phone and my guts hurt with all the nerves and I take a few deep very hard breaths and I start dialing his number.

It rings three times before it picks up.

“Hey Jade!”

Oh shit caller I.D…..and his voice, it’s so good to hear his voice I start sobbing.

“Jade, Jade what’s wrong!?”

“I…I’m sorry about your dad?” (Sobby-whine.)

“Uhm…thanks but he’s fine, minor concussion. Knocked himself silly.”

(Sob-snottle-choke.)…… (Cough, cough.) “What….?”

“He was driving home and he hit a deer, it wrecked the car pretty good but he just got knocked out and had a minor concussion.”

“But…but…Donna said….”

“What? What’d Donna say? Where?”

I hear her in the background…I hear “Is that the little bitch-fag.”

I hear. “What did you call her?”

I hear. “You heard me, you’re a queer, he’s a little chink-lady-boi fag Alex, hang up on him.”

I hear. “What…WHAT DID YOU DO!?”

It makes me squeak and jump in my seat because I’ve never heard that before…Alex mad and not just mad but shouting, voice like thunder mad…

I hear. “It showed up and I protected your ass, you want people to know that you’re gay? You want it all over school? You want your family to know you’re a fag?”

I hear. “I don’t care, I think Jade’s awesome and SHE’s never been anything but HONEST with me, SHE’s always told me who SHE really IS and she’s…she’s better than you are, she came here because she gave a shit and didn’t show up because she was trying to salvage her shitty reputation.”

I hear. “SHE!? SHE? She’s a he! An Imposter and a poser and just what do you think your parents are going to say when they find out about that lovely effing creature!?”

I hear…I hear someone who’s not Alex. It’s a woman’s voice. “Well I’d say my son has developed a good tasted in friends and hopefully he’d get back on the phone and talk to the poor girl since she’s scared to death most likely.”

Oh…oh she’s so Alexander’s mother.

I hear. “Oh…Uhm…Mrs. Porter….I didn’t see you there….” Donna sounding very small.

I hear a cough another older female cough. “I’d never thought I’d see my daughter being such a bigot.”

I hear. “Mm..Mom!?”………………. “What are you doing here?”

I hear. “I came to drive the Porters home since we’re still neighbors, good neighbors and friends or I thought we were.”…………. “I’m sorry Beverly honestly we never raised her like this.”

It’s getting fainter but… “I know Mallory; I’ll let you handle it while I go get Tom ready.”

Then I hear the phone move. “Jade…?”

(Sniffle.) “……….Uh-huh?”

“You came to see me?”

(Sniffle.) “……….Yeah…”

“You still in town?”

“Yeah…”

“You wanna come over…?”

(Squeaky voice.) “Yeah….”

“Where are you?”

(Sniffle.) “The big Exxon out close to the highway to Boston.”

“You were going back?”

(Snuffle.) “Yeah…Nat said it’s cheaper.”

“It is by about four hundred bucks.”

(Snuffle.) “Oh…”

“I looked it up, Bangor’s just as expensive too.”

(Snuffle.) “Oh…okay.”

“I wanted to know so I could start saving to go to Halifax.”

(Snuffle.) “For November?”

“No, it’s like only an hour by car from there to you right?”

(Cough.) “…………..Me?”

“Yes you.”

I…you ever go from hurting and at that rock bottom place to wanting to squeal and happy dance!?

I’m just so…

Oh god the happy butterflies are back…I hug myself trying to hold onto them with one arm as I sink into the front seat.

“I…I thought…you’d be going to the Con…?”

“Oh I will be…It says here it’s until the ninth so maybe I’ll say up to see your Remembrance Day?”

“Isn’t that…Isn’t that in like mid-week?”

“I can take the time off school.”

(Sniffle.) “Really?”

“Yeah, I get really good grades Jade it won’t hurt me too much.”

“But your parents…?”

“Want to meet you, they like what they heard.”

“Eeep!….”…………..Oh goddess I eeeped. “You told them about me! Whatchoosay!?”

“Pretty much everything dad was concussed so we had to keep him awake.”

“Oh…is he okay?”

“He’s fine.”

“Does he know?”

“Yes the whole family knows pretty much.”

Oh shit, oh shit. “Oh shit.”

He laughs out loud.

Oh…I said that last one out loud.

“It’s okay Jade, not everyone’s like Her…”

“Donna…”

“Yea…She who should not be named.”

I giggle. “You make her sound like some kind of creepy demon or something.”

“Chthula-Fhtagn-Donna-Azulos….”

I can’t help it he startles this explosive burst of laughter out of me and I’m crying because he did that.

Everyone should get someone that does that.

Make you laugh out of the blue and cry because he did that.

(Snaughling.) That’s snorting-laughing-coughing. “You’d do that? You would’ve just come all the way just to see me?”

He sends to my phone. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=69AvNm8zubo

*I’m gonna be.* By The Proclaimers.

Oh my gush….

“Yeah, yeah I would Jade, it’s only a dozen or so computer fixes. Less if there’s a seat sale.”

“That’s awesome.”

“What is?”

“That’d you come, the video…Both.”

“Well your video’s kind of awesome too.”

“My what?”

“You’re video…Jet Plane…it’s on YouTube, Nat shared it to my Facebook.”

“What!!!” (Squeakle) That’s a squeak and squeal mixed.

He sends me the link.

It’s me…and me singing…and my little speech.

(Cough…) “Alex…I…”

“Just a sec…”

“No…I gotta tell you now…”

“Just a sec…”

“Dammit Alexander!”

There’s a knock on the car window and I jump! Squeak!

It’s him.

He opens the car door and he actually kneels in front on my on one knee and looks at me. He turns off his phone. “Okay…I’m here now.”

“I…” Oh wow…oh…I feel my face going red, I feel my nerves getting going and I feel just…

He’s there on one knee and…and he came here for me.

After me.

Like in some kind of story.

And that face, those eyes….that sweet boy smile.

“I…I like you.” I blurt out.

“I know.”

“No, I mean I really like you, like…like you like you.”

He moves and gets right close and he takes my cheek in his and…and…stares at me… “Leia…I know.”

“Ohmigawd you’re such a…”

He kisses me.

……….…….….………....................

My brain…my brain is Artoo-D2 and a Jawa just blasted it.

Shakes…trembles…electricity…sparks going off.

I start to sob as soon as he breaks the kiss.

He pulls me out of my seat into his arms and he’s sitting on the pavement holding him as I sob.

Why?

Why Me?

I’m…

This is real life…things like this don’t happen to people like me!

Do they?

Is this real?”

It’s awhile me crying out the hurt, me crying in the safety.

Gawd…safety…I never felt this before in my life.

Scared of myself, scared of transition, scared of coming out…hurting people, being hurt, being beaten up…of always going to be alone.

(Sniffle-sob.) “Alex…wh…why me?”

“I’ve been asking that too Jade, why me of all guys to have a girl like you come along and save me from a broken heart?”

“I…I didn’t.”

He nuzzles my face. There’s another really light kiss. “Yeah, yeah you did.”

I’ve never…never been kisses and it’s dysphoric in a good way.

Yeah…I said it in a good way.

I can literally feel the real me…breasts, post-op, the whole nine yards that only exists in my heart and brain responding to this kiss.

We just kind of are like that for a few minutes looking at each other.

Actually looking, I’ve never done that this close to someone and it’s amazing just how much you start to see that you sort of love about them.

He blinks. “Mom…mom wants you to come over to the house.”

“Shit…really?”

He laughs. “Yes, really she doesn’t bite.”

“Uhm…okay…I’m a mess though.”

“She literally won’t care.”

“Huh? Really?”

“Mom’s a Mainer girl through and through.”

“Oh…I have no idea what that means.”

“She can clean fish with her teeth.”

I burst out laughing again. “Alex! No…that’s your mom!”

He laughs and we start getting up as Natasha is coming over. “Better?”

I hug her hard. “Much better you.”

“Me what?”

“Christian dwarf.”

We both laugh and she hugs me back. “Sometimes people just need the hand up.”

Alex… “And sometimes you just grab a whip and start flipping tables?”

She actually beams at him. “People forget how radical he really was.”

I blush… “I’m such a heathen.”

Alex… “Me too actually.”

Nat just grins. “Well honestly if I’m going by Him, I’m in good company still you guys.”

Alex… “Thank you…and Mom’s inviting you too.”

She nods. “Lead the way.”

We look at each other and she does the semi-shoo hand gesture and I go with Alex who’s laughing because Natasha’s singing *What if God was one of us* and okay…I actually get the humor there.

It’s kinda cool because home you’re either kind of non-committal no matter the denomination or you’re kind of a bible thumping scary person. I’ve never met a person like Nat who’s actually like what I thought being a Christian was supposed to be like and yet into Cosplay and gaming and stuff.

Alex drives and we sort of head out of town and I’m lost but we went north and out into these sort of sub-burbs but not…there’s lots of trees and it’s really a nice area and some nice houses that back to the water.

I mean I can see past the houses to see water and while not the ocean-ocean it’s like an inlet river thing. It’s salt water because I can smell it.

Then we get to his place….

Oh…

Holy shit they have money kind of place.

Okay not like John Bragg or J.D. Irving money but money… The house is big like two and a half stories with that Victorian thing with the lintels on the roof and the window turrets and all of that including the round-about driveway that has a place to park and this other space in front of the garage that attaches to the side of the house with a kind of a car-port thingy…Well it’s a walk way with a peaked roof but I can’t see in that much because it’s latticed off and there’s climbing broad beans? And there’s nasturtium flowers everywhere too. I…my heart does this stop…Flowers…window boxes, birches and maples all around the place and the center thing in the middle of the driveways round about is all stacked stone with a huge blue spruce and those little floppy cedar bushes.

“Wow…Alex it’s beautiful…?”

“Actually it kind of is really nice.” He waits until I get my carry-on bag and stuff and walks me and Nat to the door.

Alex… “We’re home.”

I hear his mother. “Show the girls around but take them to the spare bedrooms first.”

Nat looks at me. “Spare bedrooms?”

Alex grins. “I’m in the basement since last year so now we have two.”

“Oh…”

I’d say the house was amazing but…okay it is but there’s little stuff that makes it less scary… Fish tank with fish, there’s a few cats…I see three and the house looks like and smells like a we’ve got company cleaning jag but it looks lived in. Not messy by any means but not one of those big fancy immaculate houses.

We get too the spare bedrooms and they’re nice and they do have fancy beds and a nice dresser set and best of all a window seat for the turret. I live in a nice house but it’s a pre-fab. Window seats are yay booky-sigh-things.

“Uhm blankets are here, and towels and stuff here and there’s a shared bathroom here.”

Alex says showing us and the bathroom is nice like a big set of converted closets with the claw-foot tub and the brass or copper pipes and the shower curtain and the biggest metal shower head I’ve ever seen.

“Wow…uhm…we’re staying?”

Almost to answer me I hear. “Jade! Natasha! Call home both of you please? Tom and I want to talk to your parents! Alex give them the number for the house phone!”

He does a little blush and semi-face palm. “Sorry, she’s likely got her hands full…and she tends to yell.”

I smile. “My mom does the same thing.”

Nat… “Mine too, in fact she’s louder.”

“It’s those mines.” I quip.

She smacks my shoulder some. I’m grinning and feeling better though a lot better and I hug her and lean on her.

Alex smiles. “I’ll leave you two to it?”

I step over to him from Nat and I kiss him on the cheek. “Thank you, thank you for coming for me.”

“Ditto Jade, that was above and beyond.”

And I’m blushing again.

He leaves and I head over to the bed and Nat heads through the bathroom to her room and I hear her already talking to her mother.

I take a breath and I dial my own folks and it gets picked up on the first ring.

“Fr…Jade?” It’s mom and she corrected herself pretty quick…that was cool.

“Hey Mum.”

“Mum?”

I shrug even if she can’t see me. “You’re more a Mum to me when I’m me? I’m trying it on for size…is that okay?”

(Mom-sniffle.) “Okay…okay that’s kinda cool.”

“Well I’m your daughter I’m kinda bound to be cool.”

She laughs some. “Are you okay? Did you get there?”

“I’m okay now and we’re at Alex’s house.”

“What do you mean okay now?”

“I had a run in with Donna at the hospital.”

“What was she doing there?”

“Mum, she’s his neighbor and stuff so likely that but maybe to try and get back in with Alex and try to stop some of the damage that she had done to her prep-rep at the same time.”

“Oh…are you okay though?”

“Yes…but her and some friends ganged up on me in the washroom and we had a fight.”

“What?”

“Well okay they had a fight and I got my butt kicked.”

“Are you serious, did you call the police, security!?”

“Mum…chill no I didn’t.”

“Why?”

“Because I’m a pre-op transgender girl mum in the girl’s washroom with no carry letter and no I.D. that says that I’m a girl on it and it’d be my word against four of them.”

“Four!?”

“I’m okay…I’m okay now.” I say this as I’m getting the shakes just kind of remembering it all.

“What happened after that…?”

“I ran away, she said she’d call security on me and then she’d use my Trans status to cause trouble with Alex and even with his dad who she said was in bad shape after having a heart attack.”

“Ohmigod is he okay? Are you okay?”

“He’s fine, she lied he pulled a venison special and got a concussion.”

A venison special is local talk from home when you hit or nearly hit a deer and have an accident.

“But are you okay?”

“My feet hurt…I lost my sneakers in the fight and I ran out of there with just my sock feet.”

“Jade…..”

“Four on one mum and to be honest after the mind-fuck she gave me I wasn’t in the right frame of mind for anything.”

“Lang…never mind, what happened after that?”

“Natasha found me and she got me and my head together and fixed me up…then she pretty much got me to call Alex and more stuff sorta happened….”

“What stuff sorta happened?”

“Alex and Donna got into a fight and she heard him talking to me and lost it and during the fight Alex’s mom showed up I think along with Donna’s mom…I think she’s imperially screwed.”

“Royally honey.”

“No…her mother sounded pissed enough to force choke her.”

“I don’t know what a force choke is Jade.”

I can hear dad chuckling in the background.

I mean he’s not a real heavy geek like me but he does know his Star Wars and especially his Star Trek.

I can almost see mum giving him that look.

“Uhm…mum?”

“Yes honey?”

“Alex’s mom wanted me to give you the number for the house here and she’d like to talk with you and stuff.”

“Okay, that’s a really good idea give me the number.”

I give her the number here and thankfully Alex included the area code because I’d no clue to what it’d be.

“Mum?”

“Yes honey?”

“I’m going to get cleaned up okay?”

“That sounds like a good idea; I’ll call you after I talk with Alex’s mother.”

“Okay…Love You.”

“We love you too Jade.”

I hang up and I get up winching and sort of hobble around taking out some of my things and I have clean under wear and bras and Nat had got my inserts back too and I have my Hello-kitty sweats and my Cowboy bebop shirt so that’ll do…it’ll have to do because I don’t really have much else.

I hobble to the door and Nat’s talking still and I make mimey motions that I’m going to get cleaned up and stuff and she nods and I close the door and I lock it…I love Nat but I still don’t want her to see that…I don’t want to see that.

I debate a bath but I have no idea what amount of time I have so I take a shower. Oh…man it’s a really good shower lots of water pressure and hot and so much water from that big shower head or it feels like it.

My feet hurt though and the scrapes and stuff look worse from the hot water and I can tell I bruised them I think. It’s not sharp pain but a dull little throb that becomes a hotish throb when I put weight on them.

I’m on the edge of being okay and crying again.

Like I said I’ve never been beaten up before.

It sooo sucks.

I get changed slowly and I feel better after being all cleaned up and tucked away and looking right at least and smelling right since all my girl toiletries are with me including my hair dryer.

I just lie down for a few minutes to try and catch my breath or well my emotional breath after everything that happened and Zonk…out like a light.

It’s my phone that wakes me up almost lifting me up and out of the bed and for a second I’m freaked because I can’t remember where I am and I fumble to grab it and then answer.

“Uhm…hello?”

“Jade?”

“Hi mum.”

“You sound out of breath what were you doing?”

“Prep training for the Boston marathon.”

“Funny…har, har…is Alex there?”

“No…you woke me up.”

“Oh…well I’ve done that too.”

“Uhm okay…so what’s going on?”

“I talked to Mrs. Porter and I’m okay with you being there and she said that she’ll make sure you get on your flight tomorrow afternoon.”

“Really!?”

“Yes really they seem like very nice people. When Alex comes over for the thingy at Halifax they might come over too and we might make a week end of it.”

“Muuuum.”

“Don’t Mum me you lady if you two are this close and stuff already I think that we should be friends with his family. Then maybe we all can long weekend back and forth and stuff…we’ll have to see.”

“Okay…just…isn’t it weird?”

“Me calling you young lady?”

“No…no that’s awesome, I mean isn’t it weird you guys getting close to my…to Alex’s parents?”

“Hmmm…”

“Mum?”

“You might want to clear that up Jade.”

“What up?”

“If you’re boyfriend and girlfriend.”

“Mum…”

Though she’s right but still it didn’t help my mouth from suddenly going dry.

“Good night honey I’ll call you in the morning.”

“Uhm…okay goodnight mum.”

She hangs up and I look at my phone to get the time and it’s like twenty past five.

It seems so much longer really…it’s still light out.

I go and knock on Nat’s door and it swings open and I see her sleeping and I tip toe in and look at her. She’s cleaned up too and she cracks and eye and she looks at me and she shimmies over and she lifts the comforter she had over her.

I climb in. “Sorry…”

“Shssh…nap.”

“Okay…”

I climb into bed and we’re both dressed and stuff but this is the first and closest thing to a slumber party as I might ever get. It’s that really cool and amazing snuggle with your best friend thing.

We both flake out until we hear knocking.

“Uhm hello?”

Alex asks. “Are you ladies decent?”

Ladies…us…me…yay.

“Not remotely!” Nat says.

“Are you hungry?”

“Definitely!”

My stomach wakes up with a crampy feeling…I’m starved with nothing since the junk food we ate on the way up.

“Mom’s made some supper.”

We climb out of bed and do a once over and straighten things out and stuff and open the door and Alex looks cleaned up too. Jeans and bare feet and an Alan Parsons t-shirt? His hair’s damp and he just looks.

Yay…and yes I’m biased.

Two of the cats zip passed us to check out the smells and to claim our warm bed we’re leaving and another one comes down with us as Alex leads us toward the back of the house and the kitchen.

The smells are as amazing as the kitchen.

It’s the kitchen and the dining room all in one and the wall facing the inlet is all glassed in like a sunroom with all these really big windows and it’s all click-floors and what looks like white pine for all the cabinetry…all the kitchen stuff is on the wall facing the interior of the house and there’s French doors that lead from the kitchen-dining room to the other parts of the house and outside I think…one for the yard and another maybe for the way-way that goes to the garage.

It’s still really lovely and pretty awesome but still lived in. People actually eat and make meals here, it’s not a fancy show kitchen but gosh that view.

I see his mom for the first time and I had no idea what to expect and she looks…she looks kinda like my mom only blonde instead of brunette and she’s actually taller but skinnier but still that mom thing going on….actually kind of a Joni Mitchel looking kind of woman.

“Mrs. Porter you have a lovely home.” I manage to get out.

Nat nods. “This is really nice, I love the view.”

She smiles at both of us. “Thank you girls I hope you’re feeling better.”

I blush. “Yes ma’am just a little sore is all.”

“Well that’s not all but Donna’s folks are having a lot to say about that tonight.”

“………………I don’t know what to say Ma’am.”

She looks at me and she looks at Alex. “She is honest isn’t she?”

He blushes and grins nodding.

I go a deep red like I just chewed a chili pepper or something. I glance to Alex who’s still blushing.

“Pretty too…”

“I….ma’am…it’s just packaging…”

She looks at me and she comes over and she gives me a hug!? “Kiddo, you can’t package what’s on the inside like what you’ve got.”

ZOMG! (Sniffle!)

“Ma’am……..”

“Beverly.”

“I…I...couldn’t…”

She pushes me away just enough to look me in the face and she has a lot in common with Alex. “Bev…ver…lee.” She says it like I’m a little slow and Nat does this evil cackle and snerk as Alex chuckles and is setting the table.

“Uhm…Beverly…” I say it very self-consciously…where I come from we don’t call adults by their first names.

“Better…Alex where’s your father?”

“I think he was down on the beach making a bonfire.”

She lets me go and she’s headed to the door that I think leads to the outside backyard and she asks as she’s going. “Pizza okay girls?”

“Yes ma…yes Beverly.”

Nat echoes it taking her cue from me. And Beverly heads out nodding and then we hear her shouting to Tom…that supper is ready.

Though she stays outside until he comes up from the bank and they hold hands coming inside.

He…he looks like a forty something Alex with black hair and in jeans and a plaid work shirt.

“Evening sir.”

“Evening…but please call me Tom.”

I slowly nod and speed it up when Beverly is nodding too at me then she’s grinning. I blush but smile at him some….for some reason he’s not as scary as Beverly is to me.

We end up talking…just talking as they get ready and make pizza with this big block sheet of marble that Tom puts in the propane oven and gets screaming hot and then we’re helping Beverly as we make the pizzas and Tom and Alex make floats for all of us.

One is lots of ground cooked Italian sausage with this really thick sauce and cooked down peppers with the skins off and roasted garlic and lots of cheese. It’s like this sausage and peppers pizza and it smells sooo good when it’s going because they put it in without the cheese and then when the sausage is sizzling again they put the cheese on only enough to melt it.

The second one is white? I mean it’s alfredo sauce and some cooked ground beef and more sausage and a little bit of bacon but it has sautéed spinach and broccoli rabe? That was cooked with like garlic butter. I’ve never had one of these before and instead of the mozzarella they grate like a small mountain of real parmesan from this wedge.

I have a slice of each and I’m more a tomato sauce girl and stuff the white pizza was good too.

There’s nothing like a fresh pizza with thin crust and just enough sauce to almost be drippy and just enough topping to almost…almost make the slice fold down from it…almost is the key.

There is nothing like the taste of a root beer float either right after you have that perfect bite of pizza.

I really like the fact that we’re using paper plates so no one had dishes to do really and while I and Nat call Alex’s dad Tom his mom calls him Tommy.

I love that name on a guy and with the accent it’s so cool.

We eat and talk and a lot of it’s about Nova Scotia which they’ve been to on vacation but not really enough to see all the things that are popping up in my head that would be cool to show them.

Heck some of them I haven’t been to either but it’d be cool to go see them all together.

And Natasha talks about New Hampshire where she’s from and I’ve never been, I don’t know anything really about it…beside one of the coolest license plate logos that I’ve ever seen really.

We talk and we clean what little there is to clean up and then Alex and his dad get a whole bunch of stuff and Beverly leads us down over the back lawn and though a rose bus hedge and down some steps to this thin little stretch od beach.

It reminds me of home actually with the Bay of Fundy for the most part what’s not muddy sinking sand and clay is rocky. This is a rock bit of shore with a bit of sand in between the stones. There might be like twenty feet of beach before we get to water but it’s still really nice and Tom has a fire already built and stacked and he lights it up and the guys have blankets and folding camp chairs and Tom brings out marshmallows and stuff and Beverly makes hot chocolate with the packets bottled water and an old kettle the boy’s brought.

I snuggle into my blanket and I’m just in this perfect zone or was until Alex actually makes it like even better taking off my sneakers and setting my feet on his lap and gently rubbing them.

I smile and blush and then we’re talking again…and blushing because we’re talking about Alex and me and the stuff at the Con… I…Alex says thinks about me…describes me in a way that…that well before that second scroll case I would never…ever in a million years thought about myself and happy…?

Even with this all being so new, even with me being embarrassed they know…everyone here knows and they’re okay with it and I’m in a safe place.

I’ve really never had a safe place really…not before Alex.

So there’s some happy tears that leak out from time to time as we talk and stuff and I get Alex back for embarrassing me by telling his folks the stuff that he did…even what things, what some of the things he did meant to me and why they meant so much to me.

And of course Natasha is chiming in with the parts that she was there for with both Alex and me embarrassing both of us.

Then Tom makes the end of the night pretty much kinda perfect by digging out a few fireworks and we shoot off some roman candles and cherry blossoms over the water and walk back from the fire with a few sparklers going.

It’s so that end of summer break calm but good scene from so many animes.

I wouldn’t have thought that it was nearly midnight before we’re getting ready for bed and Alex walks me to the spare room that’s mine.

There’s this sort of quiet in the house and this long pause and I can feel my heart beating really fast before he leans in and he gives me this sweet soft kiss on my lips.

“Goodnight Jade.”

“Goodnight Alexander.”

He walks backwards down his hallway and I slip inside and put my hand to my lips and hug myself all the way to the bathroom and get ready for bed still leaking out happy tears from the corners of my eyes.

I’m just about ready to go to sleep when Natasha comes in and she walks over in just her bra and panties and I schooch over and she slips into bed with me and I snuggle up with my best friend…because who knows when we’ll do this again.

…………………………………………There’s a knock on the door that wakes me and Nat up and sunlight’s coming in through the windows and I work my jaw and try to lick the dryness out of my mouth.

“Mmm…hello?”

“Morning girls it’s nine.” It’s Beverly.

“Uhm…thank you…we’ll be right down.”

We get moving and Nat’s sluggish and occasionally moans. “Coffee…” which makes me smile and we get our things packed and dressed and made to look presentable as best we can and we head downstairs after we make the beds and make sure the rooms are as neat as we found them.

I can smell fresh cut grass from someone having mowed the lawn which I never heard and then there’s the smell of the salt water and coffee.

Nat actually beelines it for the perk and she looks for mugs and she helps herself.

I’m shyer but thankfully she gets me one too.

Breakfast is pretty quiet with most of getting coffee into us and Beverly feeding us wood cured bacon and homemade toast with strawberry and plum jam. I’ve had Strawberry and rhubarb which I like but not with plums and this is really good.

There’s a lot of smiles and shy smiles between Alex and me at the table and then it’s just kind of killing time until it’s time for us to go…part of me doesn’t want to return to my life home.

But I’m out…so part of me is kind of excited.

Then the doorbell rings and Alex goes to get it and he comes back looking…kind of stormy.

I know who it is…

“Mom…Mrs. Carter’s here with Donna.” He says.

She nods. “Alright, I was expecting this…Jade, Alex come with me.”

I kill the last bit of my coffee and I kinda not want to go out there but Beverly’s not a woman I don’t think that takes no for an answer.

Alex takes my hand and Nat trails behind us.

We got to the foyer and Donna’s there alright red eyed from crying and she looks between being upset and being angry.

He mother looks like an older version of her but in a ponytail and nice glasses. Kind nice looking really but I think it’s more that she’s not a pyscho.

Yeah…I went there.

Beverly looks at them. “Mallory, Donna.”

Mallory shakes hands with her and Donna nods saying. “Alex, Beverly…Jade….”

Beverly looks at her and says rather clippedly. “That’s Mrs. Porter from now on young lady.”

Oh…ow…

She winces and that looks like it hurt…but there’s still this look at me…sort of…her mother literally pushes her forward with a hand to her back. “Donna…”

Oh she looks like this is something she doesn’t want to do.

(Donna-cough.)…. “Jade…Alex…I…I’m sorry…I’m sorry that I did the things that I did…”

Her mother coughs. “Start over.” Oh…she’s right pissed off.

You know that mother tone of voice when you’ve gone waaaay past the line ant you get that I brought you into this world I’ll take you out of it tone…Donna just got that tone.

Donna takes a deep breath. “I’m sorry I lied…I’m sorry Alex that I had no intention of ever going out with you and tried to use you to pay my way through a photo op….I’m sorry that I threw your feelings away and I’m sorry that I’ve been a shitty friend.”

Her mother… “And…?”

She turns to me. “I’m sorry that I misgendered you, I’m sorry that I called you bad things and that I attacked you…I’m sorry that I threatened to out you and that I lied to you about Alex and about Mr. Porter…”……………… “Here…”

She extends her hand and there’s an envelope in it.

I take it.

It’s thick, kinda heavy.

He mother looks at me. “Look I know she did really horrible damned things and I’m still pissed and I’m quite frankly ashamed that she acted like this. She WASN’T raised like that. I know that you could press charges but I’m hoping that this will make up for things instead…”

I look inside and it’s full of money.

Donna’s mother. “It’s the money she had left over from her summer jobs, it’s money she should have used to pay for her trip and it’s to replace your stuff she wrecked and for damages…”

I…oh holy crapola there’s got to be over a thousand dollars there.

I’m looking at her and I can see that she’s just barely holding back the blush from being embarrassed at what Donna did.

And this is a whole lot of money.

I go from biting my bottom lip to a smile and I take a cleansing breath.

And I pass the envelope to her mother.

“Ma’am…the apology’s good enough…I can’t take this.”

“You deserve this.”

“Ma’am…take it please…even if you don’t give it back to her put it in a college fund for her or something.”

“Jade…” She seems at a loss.

I offer her my hand. “It’s too much ma’am and these days it’s just too short for all of us these days. I’d honestly feel better if it went to good use.”

Her mother looks at her and she looks at me and she takes my hand and she shakes it.

“Your parents raised a hell of a young lady…they must be proud.”

I blush but shrug. “I have awesome parents they adopted me…but when I get home it’ll be the first time they’ve actually met their daughter.”

She nods. “They’ll love you; you’re a very lovable young lady.”

I really blush and Donna…Donna looks like she ate something that’s…well she looks like she had pervish cooking for breakfast right about now. I know she’s not really sorry…we all do including her mother and she still had to apologize…and stand here through this.

She looks at her daughter. “C’mon Donna we still have a lot of talking to do.”

They both leave and Donna is hunched and she doesn’t give me or anyone else a second glance.

There’s this lull of quiet after that and I take a breath.

“That’s the best thousand dollars I’ve ever spent.”

Alex slips his arms around me. “That’s awesome…the most expensive slice of humble pie I’ve ever seen served.”

His mom smiles at me and she gives me this sort of deeper look and…and…holy shit…she gives me the nod.

I got the mom nod.

I’m still kind of struck by that as we load up the rental car and Alex takes his van with his mom and dad and we drive back to Boston.

Okay…we’re ending my adventure here and it sucks but still at the same time it’s so exciting with everything that happened with Alex’s family and especially his mom and the shit with Donna we’re doing the super-fast, super excited girl talk all the way there until Mum calls and I put her on speaker and we include her in all the way to Logan…

We part back at the Rental place. “Mum…I’ll talk to you soon we’re at the airport.”

“Okay honey…We’ll see you soon!”

Alex and Beverly and Tom are with me and we get the tickets and do the stuff to get through customs and I get a sort of look and then my I.D. and I shrug… “I’m transgender.” And actually it feels sort of good to say it and stuff and they look at me again and they seem to think better of giving me crap over it and then we’re all done.

Then once again I’m standing there with tears running down my face and messing with my make-up as I’m looking at Natasha.

“I’m so going to friggin miss you!!!” I’m sobbing it as I fall on her and hugging her tight.

“God I’m going to miss you so much too Sinclair!”

(Sniffle-laugh.) “Never stop calling me that okay?”

“You got it sis.”

“I……………..sis?”

“Yeah…hello…we’ve so gone past the whole thing for friends…even best friends Jade you’re awesome…you’re the sister of my heart.”

I hug her harder and we stay like that sniffling and crying and leaning on each other with Alex passing us both some of his handkerchiefs and we do offer him messy and sobby smiles.

Then they call her flight and she’s off headed home…

And Alex is holding me and far too soon they call my flight too.

We’re holding hands and I’m pulling my carry on all the way to the boarding thingy.

Alex stops…I look at him… “I’m going to miss you so much Alex.”

“I’m going to miss you too Jade…this…this was not enough…not enough time.”

(Sniffle…) “Nope…”

“Jade…?”

(Sniffle...) “Yes Alex?”

“Sing to me?”

“No…I don’t have time…”

“Please…?”

The flight attendant comes over. “Miss we have to start boarding now.”

I look at Alex and he looks at me… he leans over and kisses me again.

This time I actually kiss him back.

Then it’s just time and I head down the thingy and onto the plane…I have some time before we’re full…time before they tell us to turn off our phones.

I dial Alex.

“Hello?”

I take a deep breath and start just for him…

“Every place I go, I'll think of you…”
“Every song I sing, I'll sing for you…”
“When I come back, I'll wear your wedding ring…”

“So kiss me and smile for me…”
“Tell me that you’ll wait for me…”
“Hold me close and never let me go…..”

Chapter 20

It’s soo cold…and I hate the cold and I hate being here at this day of all the days to be alone here without my boyfriend Alex.

(Grins.) Yeah my boyfriend Alex.

It sucks because it’s Valentine’s Day.

And I am sitting here waiting for my ride because I’m a town student and that means I don’t take the bus and I sort of live “Close enough” to walk.

Never mind it’s February in the Annapolis Valley.

I’m watching other guys and girls go by with their S.O.’s doing the lovey-dovey stuff and sort of kind of catching the ire of some of the “No PDA” teachers and I heave a heavy sigh….

But yeah…

Boyfriend…

Big change…with a lot of big changes.

………………………………………… I guess it all really started with the changes as soon as I got home and my parents were there waiting for me and I was kind of really happy to get home.

It with all of the good things and the bad things had been a really long trip.

My Mum was waiting for me with her arms clasped together anxiously and my dad god love him had this huge poster board sigh with “Welcome Home Jade!” in huge green letters done in magic marker and the stains were all over his fingertips.

I was in tears because I was not actually expecting it.

I mean this was all new to them as it was new to me being out and I was sooo expecting apprehension.

I was sooo wrong actually.

No even a lick of it.

My folks just loved me; they love me no matter what.

Beyond cool.

The rest of the month was a huge blur…Alex actually helped keep me sane and stable.

I love my folks but Mum and Dad had this whole thing about making up for lost time…I mean in that first month.

Alex was online every day and we chatted in PM’s and in Facebook and we even kinda sorta went on dates in World of Warcraft and IMVU which is another sim kinda game…we quit that because it was actually kinda eeew with way too many people that we didn’t know just hitting on us both.

And Nat…Natasha was so another presence in my life and we talked all the time and it was so…I mean…even if it was for the start of things just those two…and some of the girls from that last night at the Con…I had a life…Me…A real darned life.

Okay…once home though it was like I said that first month a whirlwind with my room getting redone… and then there were appointments with my therapist.

Those…those helped me a lot…

I’ve never told mum or dad or even Alex but the Donna thing, the attack in the bathroom…it left stuff…not scars and my feet were okay. But I was still hurt by it…in a kinda scared to do the public bathroom thing alone…and yeah…nightmares.

Dr. Singer was really cool and he helped me…is helping me with that and getting Mum to chill out with the lost time thing.

She’s better now but I’m still adopted and she’s still hovery.

It didn’t take long to get me on a blocker…wow did that ever feel good…it took a while to get the majority of the guy stuff out of my system and my own body slowly started to adapt.

Nope…not what some people might think, I’m not intersexed. Just always just kind of light on the T naturally so it never had a huge effect on me and when the tap was turned off the natural shift kicked in just kinda nicely.

Then about the end of October I started a really light dose of my hormones.

And I went back to school as Jade…for real Jade with my name legally changed and the whole thing. Well apparently not on my Chinese papers which are going to be a nightmare I guess if I ever want to do that with like the red tape and stuff but I’m not really looking to do that any time soon.

And school?

Well apparently I’m not the only transgirl in the valley there’s one somewhere up by New Minas I guess and then there’s the whole thing I got from people like Ooooh…well we knew that all the time cause you looked like a girl.

And there’s also the whole fact that somehow some of the stuff that happened to me in Portland and Boston had gotten out.

I think Mum talked to people telling them what happened and suddenly I stopped being Jade the transgirl to being their transgirl who got hate-mobbed by a bunch of American mean-girls.

And some of the girls at school were a little leery with me at first and I was with them but with it getting to the whole thing of I wasn’t taking Gym and I wasn’t doing anything off-putting in the bathrooms or any worse than some of the other girls it pretty quickly became a non-issue.

And while they were kind of sort of friendly and stuff I think that I’m still kind of too far on the whole geekette thing for them…or most of them.

Karly Johansson is kind of okay…a grade below me and we sort of hang out some, she’s into anime and stuff but she never really was into like main stream North American comics and all the role-playing stuff.

I will say this when I’m at my laptop at lunch and I’m talking to Alex we get attention.

And yes…I told the romantic parts of me and Alexander a few times.

And I might have shown off the scroll cases a few times.

It was all pretty cool and all very yay that I got to show him off but also talk about that stuff with some of them.

It’s still loose and kinda sorta friends but better than before.

……………………………Then there was November…and Halcon…and Alex coming over to here.

He flew in and we picked him up and he stayed on the fold out couch in dad’s den but he was here.

And yeah we did go to the Con and it was cool and stuff for like stuff here in Halifax but we actually spent most of our time that weekend just…just going out…going on actual dates right here in town…

Yay…I mean it was serious yayness.

We’d get ready and we’d go in the morning and drive to Halifax really early and we’d Cosplay and spend the day geeking out and doing our thing at the con but after it got like close to supper and stuff we’d leave and drive home not really into the gaming and stuff that was going on really late in the rooms and we’d just.

Come home and we’d get changed and we’d go back out and get some supper someplace…and then we’d got see a movie…well we saw one we saw The Hobbit and the other one…well was us going to the video-store and buying a bunch of junk food and renting all of the Lord of the Rings DVD’s and geeking out snuggled up on the pull out in dad’s den.

Sigh…

I really, really miss him so much.

………………………………….Then there was Christmas.

Alex never made it here for Christmas and I never made it there either because him and his family were heading out to do this whole pilgrimage all over New England and stuff to see family. I guess it’s like tradition but it was still a really cool X-mas.

My first as a girl.

My first time Christmas shopping and getting stuff as a girl.

I got gift cards from some of the girls that I was getting closer to at school. Hey ten dollars towards make-up or clothes is still cool by me. Luckily I got to do the same before the twenty-fifth actually came so I wasn’t just getting and not giving.

Natasha…well she…she completely blew me away…She got me two Cosplay costumes from the lady that does hers…. Toph…the earthbender girl from Avatar and one of my favorite characters and this extremely elegant green faux-satin dress with black lace and a fan and all the trimmings for me to Cosplay Tyger-Tyger the villainess from Marvel that you see in the Wolverine books.

And Alex…?

I was sort of expecting the girly gift thing.

No…he got me something for my other heart.

Right in my tried and true geekette zone.

He got me seasons one through ten of Stargate on DVD the entire boxed set.

I have the most awesome BF on the planet right?

Sigh…

But New Year’s was on the computer and while it was awesome because it’s still more than I ever had it was…it wasn’t him here or me there.

Then he got the flu in like the second week of January and I have never wanted so much to go someplace and make like chicken soup and tea and just…take care of him.

He was so miserable-cute.

Sigh…

I see Karly coming over and she’s smiling and she’s looking at me and I grin and wave her over and she comes over and there’s this huge smile on her face.

“Hey… what’s up?”

She grins and passes me her tablet. “Your boyfriend apparently.”

“Alex?”

I hear. “Hey Jade.” From her tablet.

I look at it and he’s on video message. “What are you doing?”

“I’m enlisting your friend.”

“Huh?”

“You know what I said when I went to the Exxon station?”

“Uhm…yeah but you kinda…”

Then he’s gone and the same Proclaimer’s video starts to play and I’m smiling and I hear it coming from another tablet in the cafeteria and that girl holds hers up and another and another and a phone and a laptop…

And oh my goddess it’s just so…he’s…he’s giving me my own flash mob for Valentine’s Day!

I’m tearing up and I’m looking around watching them all as they sort of make me this wall of video…of the video that he sent to me when I just soooo I mean he made me laugh…he’s making me laugh so much and happy cry now…

I mean who…? Who does this kind of thing!?

Alex…

The video gets done and some of the girls are wiping their eyes and I say into the screens.

“You’re crazy Alex Porter! And I love you!”

I did it…I actually finally said the Love word.

The girls are really crying now too and they move and they part and…

Alex is there…and he’s in this dark handsome suit and he has a bouquet of roses there in his arms and he looks at me and he smiles at me.

“I love you too Jade.”

~The End? ~

I hope you all enjoyed this and had a good time despite the bumps along the way and the lateness of finishing.

Comments would be awesome.
*Great Big Hugs*