December 11, 2023: 

 

Ooh boy, this was going to be a hell of a day.

Growing up, I had had only fleeting glimpses into the teacher’s lounge at my high school. At the time, I had zero idea that I would actually one day become some facsimile of an adult, let alone also become a teacher and actually be able to use the teacher’s lounge for solitude from students.

And I had certainly had no idea that I would someday be doing so as the woman of my dreams!

The room looked conspicuously smaller than what the imagination of my child self had cooked up over all those years in school, although the lounge could still house several people. A sink and counter with several cupboards covered the wall directly ahead of the entrance, while to the right were several rickety-looking folding tables and chairs, only some of which were shabbily covered with unimpressive—and clearly years old—tablecloth. 

“How glam,” I deadpanned with little fanfare. 

Stepping in just behind me, Michael gave me a facial expression that wrote more about the lack of prestige of the experience than any written description of the room. With a tone to his voice that sounded a bit more like a haggard used car salesman having given up trying to sell the worst piece of shit on his lot, Michael boomed, “Welcome to paradise, Candi!”

Was being an adult the small, sweet pleasure of a grimey, poorly kept and terribly claustrophobic room where students could—technically—not bother you? I could only imagine that I would soon be learning whether that was true or not. 

“Are you sure you still want to do this?” Michael’s voice was a cautious whisper as he wrapped around in front of me and leaned back against the counter, ahead of a Keurig that surely once was a skosh bit more bright in its red. 

“I gotta do this, Michael,” I smiled, although judging by the way that I felt my facial muscles contort into place, the smile was a faint one. Stepping forward with cautious grace, I was reminded of the clicking of my heels on the concrete floor at the office supply store that Michael and I had visited over the weekend. It illuminated the stark surrealness of just how graceful my steps had become, and even in a set of tennis shoes like those that I wore today, I could still feel that graceful gait that I had developed over the years. Not one week ago, I was a nineteen year old straight boy, and now? I didn’t just look like a woman, I moved like a woman. My chest jiggled like a woman’s chest when I propped myself up on top the counter to sit next to Michael, who merely leaned back against it. By the time my palms had registered the stickiness it was too late, and I was already atop the counter. All I could do was sigh and grimace.

“Yeah, I should have mentioned that, dear.”

“You’re such a gentleman, Coach Summers.”

“I aim to please, Miss Queen.”

It had not been lost on me—even on that first day after waking up—that there was between Michael and I this ebb and flow that I had never felt before. My girlfriends in high school had been lovely women, but I had never felt like we were all that close. Dating them, kissing them—hell, trying to have sex with them—had been like a laborious process of me trying to perform a role—of trying to be the masculine man that was expected of me.

But where-oh-where had the romance of it all been? Like in all those shows and films where the leads had this electrifying chemistry that made you want to kiss them so? Or in all those R-rated comics I had jerked off to? 

The relationships with my former girlfriends had been so easy when all I had to do was take an interest in what they had to say and try to support them. It had always gone wrong when I tried to take any sort of lead—when I tried to do all those things men were supposed to do.

But that was different with Michael. That smile that spread across Michael’s inviting, well-kept lips was like the warmth of the sun when the clouds parted after a short drizzle. Michael wasn’t just a great friend, he was someone that I could let my guard down with—someone I could even take the lead with. No matter who I remembered being, playing our little game with Michael was like experiencing a feeling of correctness for the first time in my life. Was I gay? Or, well, straight? Was that the issue? Had I been trying for so long to try to be a woman’s lover when all I had ever desired…was being their female friend?

If that was the truth—and if that was the reason why I had done nothing but date men for the past ten years—it stood completely in the face of everything I had known about myself.

But really, what exactly had I known about myself? Whatever facsimile of a boy I had tried to live as my entire life had only been because…

…because it was what had been expected of me. Had I ever truly meant it when I referred to myself as a ‘boy’? As a ‘man’? What defined me as a ‘man’, if I had clearly already managed to divest myself of my testicles?

And why did I feel so comfortable with that? After the initial shock, I had hardly even thought about it. Not having testicles anymore felt as natural as anything about my body had ever felt. To not feel them hanging between my thickened thighs felt more like a blessing than a curse—more like something given to me, than something suddenly taken from me.

The more I lived in this daily life—as this ‘Candace Queen’ woman—the more I felt as if this was not some shocking thing done to me. What was so scandalous about being this gorgeous long-lost sister I now saw in my reflection, whether in my bathroom mirror or a department store’s display window? The woman in the mirror was not distressed for being a woman—

—the woman in the mirror couldn’t help but smile as she rediscovered each new curve and each new pose her muscles so passionately remembered without complaint.

The truth of the matter was…I was happier as Candace Queen than I had ever been as—

—even the mere thought of that name was too much, too vile to stomach. Turning to Michael, I looked him in the eyes and smiled, not so much soft like before, but with a firm step over the line in the sand: “I’m lucky to look like this, y’know?”

Michael’s eyes were like they always were, eyes that I had never known any other man to have: a softness and a warmth and a kindness that redefined to me what it meant to be a man and to think of a man. I had never before been able to truly perceive myself as a man—and even understanding what I did of the man before me—I still couldn’t. Men had forever been this cruel, awful thing both separate from me and yet tied to me as some sort of hellish legacy. Michael—however—was wholly separate from that.

Michael was not someone that I could be, but he was most certainly someone I could see being in my life, now and forever. Whether it was residual memories of the ten years I had seemingly lost or just the ease of interacting with this man these past five days, I knew that the life I had lost was not the life of the Candace Queen of the past ten years, but rather that of the boy she—I—had once been.

It was ultimately why I had made the decision to return to work today, after all. Even if the image wasn’t clear, the outline was there—the memories of the song and dance imbued into my very limbs. 

“Michael,” I finally whispered, “I think the woman you knew really did love you.”

Michael’s smile wore itself with abandon as he hunched over in a little giggle, “As tough as it could be, Candi, I like to think I always knew that—even if there were things she kept from me.”

Leaning my head on his right shoulder, I sigh, patted his right arm, and admitted, “God, I hope my pants aren’t ruined.”

After a beat, “Maybe wait a while before sitting down at your desk?”  

 

***  

 

December 11, 2023: 

 

Michael led me down the hall of the English department to a worn down door where even the artificial laminate to the wood was finally beginning to lose its shine. It should have hardly been a surprise, then, that the little metal framing on the vertical rectangle window was beginning to show rust and a little looseness, too. Whatever materials had been used in the reforging of this school fourteen years earlier, they were apparently not good enough to survive even half of a second decade. 

It was kind of charming, in a capitalist dystopian kind of way.

Opening the door, I stepped into what was my classroom. The look of the small room was a nostalgic one. Taking in the scene before me, it began to occur to me that the classroom in which I taught was the same class that I had been in for my senior year English in 2012-2013. In a way, I almost expected to look at the whiteboard and see Mrs. Honeycutt scribbling away at the board, writing what the class would be covering for the day.

And now, it was I who would be scribbling away and hoping my students would be following along.

Colorful posters and little signs made of construction paper desperately tried to cover up the browning classroom’s ill kept walls. The floor itself was crowded with at least fifteen more desks than was advisable for a classroom led by one teacher, but I imagined that if the old Candace Queen could pull off teaching over thirty students, then surely it was not impossible for me—assuming the crash course Michael had given me over the weekend and my own muscle memory kicked in.

Checking beneath the center column desk in the front row with my left middle finger, I found the grove that I had made with my nervous rubbing over. In a way, it still felt like I had only just been sitting at that desk six months ago, running off my anxious energy. Now, I was somehow ten years older and that grove was somehow ten years more worn in. The world for students had not changed, and yet it had become somehow worse at the same time.  

The teacher’s desk—oh so stacked with towering piles of papers and folders hastily constructed around a computer monitor—sat at the left of the classroom’s front—right next to the window. Even as an adult I would be at one end of a classroom, sitting at a desk, and staring out a window, occasionally both wistful and listless. 

“Home sweet home,” Michael boasted, “It’s a lot less smelly than my office.”

“Your office is in a boy’s locker room, Michael,” I countered, turning about just enough to poke the giant man on the nose with a cheeky grin and a bite of my lower lip. Unpleasant memories of staring at the tile floor of the locker room as I got changed for phys ed returned to me. To think that all this time my behavior was probably because of my attraction to men that I had been repressing.

Actually, was I even attracted to men other than Michael?

Scratching his nose, Michael bashfully agreed, “True, true. Still, remember—I’ll keep my phone on vibrate today, so if you need to text me, just do it.”

Cocking my head to the right, “I’ll be fine, Michael. We went over this stuff a lot the last four days.”

“I know, Candi, you can’t begrudge a guy being worried about his partner, can you?”

“Oh, so now you want to claim the role of the boyfriend?” I teased, letting my body close the distance between our chests just a few more inches. Such a sheepish grin on such a square jaw was honestly kind of unfair, but I decided to toss caution to the wind, “‘Girlfriend’.”

“What?”

“I’m your girlfriend, Michael,” I repeated, bracing for regret to strike.

It sure was taking its sweet time.

“Candace…you don’t have to—”

“—Michael?”

“Yes?”

“I’m a woman.”

Michael’s silence accompanied a confused look on his face that spoke of whatever processes his brain was trying to make. Well, I suppose he did love math, so it made sense that he was a calculating type. 

“You can just say what you want to say, Michael,” I sing-songed, not quite sure how I could remember to sing as a woman, but it was a hell of a good feeling, so I didn’t let it stop my good mood.

“Are you…sure? Like, do you remember anything?”

“Not really, but—” I traced my finger down Michael’s tight purple polo, the feeling of his pec none too hidden behind the shiny material, “—I do know that I’m not going to try to be a man with this body. I’d be insane to give up a body like this!”

“I’m sure that there are plenty of people out there who would very much like to not have bodies like yours, Candace,” the humor in Michael’s voice tipped me off immediately to what I was saying, and it served only as food for thought.

Shit, maybe I really was transgender? If being trans meant that I could put in the effort to make my body look like this and then actually succeeding in doing so…was it really that big of an issue if I was?

A crash course on transgender and general queer topics over the weekend had made it quite clear that a trans person could very much be more than just a hyper feminine trans woman, like I had apparently wanted to be. The accompanying pictures of beautiful women were breath-taking and reminded me of those many shameful times as a teenager that I would lock myself in my bedroom, look up pictures and videos of Goth girls on the internet and do something despicable.  

Still, that little bit of paranoia and shame ate away at the back of my mind. Jesus, how was I supposed to be a role model to students looking the way I did? Even when I curtailed my look for a professional look or tossed on a baggy hoody, I couldn’t help but think that I was an insult to—

—wait, was that internalized misogyny? I had read about that, right? I think?

If I was a trans woman and I felt like a fraud, was I just holding myself to standards that I didn’t hold other women to? I liked to think that—even as a nineteen year old—I wouldn’t have taken a woman any less seriously just because she was beautiful. I’d certainly never wanted any of my ex-girlfriends to feel like I held their overt femininity against them, after all. They had all been lovely and understanding, even when I was failing to perform. Just talking to them about school and life and the future had been the highlight of my drudging high school career. 

Jesus, why the hell did I even date them if all I was going to do was act like their gay best friend? Did I date those girls because I wanted to be them?

“Candace, you in there?” Michael’s voice brought me back to the scene of the grime, and much to my embarrassment, I found myself with a full flat palm pressed against Michael’s abs.

“Oh, shoot! I’m sorry, Mikey,” I withdrew my hand with blinding speed, then turned to approach my desk. “Good grief, how does anyone grade this stuff?”

“I don’t exactly do it much, since I’m a full-time phys ed teacher here, but any time I fill in for a math teacher, I look through their stuff and ask myself the same thing!” Michael repositioned himself in front of my desk, lightly sitting himself down on the desk most directly in front of it, “Hopefully the school will finally switch over to using a system to just do and submit homework digitally. This shit is ridiculous.”

“Ugh,” my hands sifted through the papers like they knew what they were doing, “You got that right, Michael.” Sitting my purse down on my office chair, I let my right hand sift through it for my phone and checked the time on the lock screen. 

I still had about a half-hour until students would begin to start filing into the classroom.

“If you’re curious,” Michael hummed, “Rach and Jae used the two desks in the back corner.” Pointing over and behind his shoulders with his thumbs, Michael indicated the back row desk closest to the window, and the desk to its right. “You’re probably gonna hear a lot of students still whispering about them, considering how weird things got back in September.”

“Jesus Christ, I still can’t believe everything you said that happened. Rachel was—is—well, being my cousin’s trans daughter is kind of insane. I remember playing video games with that kid growing up. What the heck was he—she—doing in my class, anyway? Isn’t that unethical?”

“You and I were the only people who knew she was related to ya,” Michael shrugged, “She never recognized you, and you did kind of change your family name, too.” Michael looked like he was bracing himself for something as he was speaking.

“You’re fine, Michael. I’m done crying about it.”

Michael’s soft smile didn’t read any less sad for me, though.

“Wherever she is, I hope she’s doing okay. The whole country must be on the lookout for her.”

“The military interviewing nearly everyone in the school about her and her boyfriend—err, husband—sure as shit didn’t help the creep factor, either.”

“They what?”

“Yeah, it took a few weeks, but I guess being thorough is what happens when two high school seniors are accused of murdering the daughter of the top United States general and their own parents.”

“Christ, I know that I read the news articles, but it still doesn’t seem real! Rachel had been such a sweet—if kinda weird—girl, it just doesn’t make sense that she would do all that!” 

Michael did not disagree. 

Sitting down in my chair, I immediately remembered the situation with the sticky counters, but thankfully my jeans had been spared much in the way of stickiness and I felt no discomfort in the micromovements one normally did sitting in one’s chair. 

Pouring over my desk, I tried to take it all in, hoping against hope that some sort of clear memory would return to me. As useful as whatever weird subconscious muscle memory thing I had going on was, I would still be more than happy to feel like I was consciously able to do my job like a proper goddamned adult.

“Anything?”

“Naw.”

“Rats.”

“I don’t think I need my memory back to know this dump has rats,” I cracked, winning that desired chuckle from my easily giggly boyfriend. “I don’t know if I’ll ever reconnect with the life that the old Candace had here, but I’ll be sure to make a new life that lives up to her memory.”

“A memory you don’t recall…”

“But a memory that seems worth remembering, if hanging around you for the last five days has taught me anything.”

I couldn’t help but giggle at the way Michael’s olive cheeks took on a rosy red as he bashfully hunched forward and scratched the back of his neck.

“You don’t remember these kids, but they remember you.”

“I’ll just have to wing it until I learn all about them!”

“God, you sound just like you.”

There was a bit of surrealness to having Michael see me as the same person that he had known and fallen in love with, but I suppose he had started dating me that same night that he tossed that football at my head. What a hell of a way to get my first boyfriend! In a lot of ways, the past five days had to have been equivalent to that night of our first date, right? Or at least, from what Michael had told me over the weekend, we basically had a weird, night-long date that night. God, it sounded like something out of a romance novel.

Well, putting aside that Michael was still holding back with me. I very much doubted he had held back on our first go around. It was annoying, having a boyfriend treat you like a fragile piece of glass. However I felt about him on the inside, this body of mine was clearly hypersexual and needed its boyfriend to do unspeakable things to it.

Christ, I sounded gay—

—fuck it, I’m gay. What am I doing walking around on pin needles about all of this shit? I don’t give a fuck if people think I’m a faggot or a tranny, I’m hot as fuck and love this insane life I’ve fallen backwards into!

Staring at my work computer as it booted up, I saw the reflection in the screen as the monitor turned black for a few seconds, immediately snapping me back to the task at hand. Part of me still saw the woman in the reflection as a stranger—somebody separate from me and all the misery I had broiled in just a week ago—but that same part was perhaps also the part of me most excited to get to be her, too. As the monitor finally displayed my desktop I turned back to Michael as he scrolled through his phone and asked, “Hey, wanna come over here and help a gal figure out how to use this thing?”

When Michael looked up from his scrolling, he had the cheekiest puppy dog grin. 

Swerving on the tile floor as if he were some kind of suave dancer, the big lunk hunched over my shoulder and pointed at the monitor, rambling off the relevant details of how to use the grade record software.

It was pretty comfy having a boyfriend.

 

***

 

December 11, 2023: 

 

Michael eventually took his leave, off to prepare for his first class of the day. The steps and the voices of students in the hallways outside my door grew louder as more students began filing into the building. Taking deep breaths, I awaited the moment that I would have to spring into action and act like an actual adult for the first time in my life…for the second time in my life. 

Finally, the first student of the day entered, “Oh! You’re back, Ms. Queen!” It was the girl who had hit me in the head during volleyball practice, Zoey. In a way, it was as if Zoey had been like one of those teen girls in horror movies where they summoned a demon to her realm by reading from a book about the occult. From the demon’s perspective, I definitely felt like I had been spirited away from a hellish realm.  

“Hello, dear,” I chose to prescribe a little calmness to the situation, trying hard to appear as if nothing had changed about me.

You know, like the whole ‘not remembering the last ten years of my life’ thing. 

“Are you okay?” Sweet kid. I couldn’t be sure if I had ever asked after the health of one of my teachers in high school. Then again, she had sent me smacking head first into the gym floor.

“Oh, just fine, dear. The doctor just recommended I take a few days off, just to make sure that everything was hunky-dory!"

“I don’t think I’ve ever seen you do Casual Friday on a Monday before, ma’am,” Zoey remarked, slowly approaching her desk while her eyes remained locked on me.

Looking down at my choice of school pull-over hoodie over one of Michael’s white tee shirts, jeans and rarely-used sneakers for the day, I recalled Michael making a similar remark when he had seen my outfit for the day, “Aaah, well, you know: Mondays.”

Hell, at least I had done my hair and makeup today, to off-set that gnawing feeling at the back of my mind that I wasn’t putting enough effort in. Pony-tails were a hell of a lot harder to figure out with hair as thick and plentiful as mine, though. 

Zoey took her seat and smiled with a red glow bridging across her nose, her eyes opened wide in that way one might do if they were trying to appear harmless and innocent—not that it ever worked, of course. I couldn’t help but wonder if my own perception of her wasn’t influenced by my own immaturity, though. Interacting with someone who perceived me not just as someone older than her by more than a decade, but as a sort of authority figure presented a disconnect that I had expected, but was still odd to experience first hand: part of me viewed Zoe as a peer. After all, from my memory alone, I still felt like I was nineteen!

And yet…even just the time I had spent with Michael and the time I had spent trying to navigate getting seen by a doctor—and saying hello to the little girl in the cute dress in the clinic waiting area—and interacting with that mother in the restroom at the zoo—had changed something in me. It was the oddest feeling, taking my occasional glances at the classroom slowly filling before me, just how much these eighteen and seventeen year olds began to look more and more like children to me—a type of human separate and distinct from me by life experiences and mature feelings that they could not understand until the day that they inevitably went through them, too. In a way, it was isolating. It was like seeing the world of your childhood fade away, just as it had for any other person who had at some point crossed into their adulthood. 

I had suspected it—but now I could confirm it—as so many pairs of eyes locked onto me: being an adult was kind of really, really scary.

As the bell rung, I stood from my desk, took a deep breath, and hoped to all hell that I wasn’t about to fuck all these lives up: “Good morning class, I hope everyone had a nice weekend!”

 

***

 

December 11, 2023:

 

I could feel the color flushing from my face after three consecutive classes of teaching. The muscle memory had been there, but stumbling over my words and dealing with nearly three dozen teenagers staring at me for four and a half hours—with barely any time between classes to catch my breath—had left me wanting to jump out a window and hope the five foot drop would be enough to smash my skull in.

Ugh, it would’ve been a waste to damage such a beautiful face, though.

Luckily, it was my prep period, so I finally had a moment to myself to just breathe. 

The knock at the door that interrupted me mid-breath was most unwelcomed. 

“Knock, knock! A little birdie—okay, a really big birdie—told me that we have a patient returning to work a little sooner than expected?” The woman entering my room was the same woman from when I had woken up in this surrealist dream: the school nurse, May August. Just as I had remembered from last week, the coyly approaching nurse was dressed in a cute Goth outfit with a white lab coat worn over it, unbuttoned. The mint green and black checkered skirt popped off of her green and black striped thigh-high socks really well, and I couldn’t help but catch myself admiring how casually cool she stood and dressed. The green lip stain matched her black hair’s green highlights well, reminding me of all the Goth and punk girls I had had crushes on growing up. 

If things didn’t work out with Michael, I suspected that I would definitely be the type to try to date a second co-worker.  

“Oh, hi there. You’re…May, right?”

“Nurse May August, the cutest woman on campus, at your service,” May said casually, “Your worried little—err, big—beefcake boyfriend filled me in on your little predicament. Don’t worry, your secret’s safe with me, Candi!”

Just to be sure, “He told you that I have amnesia, right?”

“Yup!” The pop on that ‘p’ was powerful, and from it I got the sense that this May character was definitely the type to try to push buttons. “Ten years, though? That’s weird.”

“Tell me about it,” I sighed, nearly rubbing my eyes before remembering all the time I had spent on my eyeshadow that morning. Leaning back, I groaned up to the ceiling, “Ugh, this sucks—can’t even touch my face without ruining my makeup!”

“Tell me about it,” the pale woman said with a sarcastic edge, bulging her eyes out a little to emphasize the thick dark circles around her eyes “So, I imagine you don’t remember me, then?”

“‘Fraid not,” I shrugged, hoping that if I acted unperturbed it would not be terrifyingly true that I was a fish out of water, “Although you probably already suspected that considering how I was freaking out last week.”

“Well, that’s definitely true,” the Goth hummed as she flirted with hopping on the very same desk Michael had sat on earlier, “Do tell me, though…why not just enjoy the time off? You’ve literally got amnesia!”

“I mean, putting aside the fact that I don’t want to lose my job?”

“Yeah?”

“I just…felt like I should be there for them? The kids, I mean.” 

“That’s rich coming from the woman who thinks she’s just a year older than these ‘kids’,” the sassy nurse lifted herself up and sat on the desk at last, “Still, I gotta say, it feels like something the illustrious Ms. Queen would do, anyway.” The little shift to an impression of a high-class woman left me wondering if that was how I actually sounded, or if the nurse was simply egging me on for some reason.

“I’ve been hearing that a lot lately,” my sigh was more from exhaustion than anything else, but it gave my reply a veneer of pained annoyance that it would not have had otherwise. “It’s surreal as hell having so many people treating you like you’re this, I don’t know, lovable person?”

“I mean, you’re quite lovable, Princess,” May giggled, “A bit stubborn when it comes to putting others before yourself, though. We gotta work on that!”

I rolled my eyes hard enough that I was pretty sure that I could hear them like marbles rolling on the inside of my inside like it was a ceramic bowl, “A week ago, I was a college kid under pressure to major in business, now I’m a beloved fuckin’ English teacher in high school, it’s kind of a lot to take in. Cute nickname, by the way.”

“Jeez, your folks wanted you to do business? That wouldn’t have fit you at all! But yeah, it fits, right?”

Michael had said that May and I were close, but I hadn’t really understood how that could be. As much as I had enjoyed being friendly with girls in high school, they had absolutely terrified me. Hell, if I had been around a woman like May, I would have shit myself…well, before asking her out, I guess. The way that her legs—wrapped in green and black striped thigh-high socks—dangled as she sat on the desk told me everything I needed to know about how she was a playful character just looking to get into trouble.

Mother would have called her a whore, though.

It then occurred to me that I was staring at how the rim of her socks were digging into the flesh of her thighs, so I quickly averted my eyes.

“I never told you? Yeah, my dad’s pretty rich and was high up in a company. Well, before I got disowned, I guess.”

“For being bisexual?”

Wait, May knew that I was some flavor of queer? Did I tell her that I was bisexual? “Remind me again of when I told you I was bisexual?”

“Oh my dear, dear amnesiac little princess, I’m not sure how to even begin to explain how that happened,” the woman’s flirting was cheeky, but the best part was how I didn’t absolutely hate myself for being into it for once. Mayhaps it was vain of me to think such of myself, May would be crazy not to be into a woman as hot as me!

If she knew that I was bisexual—hell, if I was indeed bisexual—could I trust her with—“Hey, I can trust you, right?”

In the two brief interactions that I’ve had with May since the saga of my amnesia had begun serialization, I’d taken her to be a laidback troublemaker of sorts, finding whatever way she could to poke the hornet's nest for shits and giggles, but the portrait of seriousness painted on her face in response to my question seemed wholly divorced from what I would have pinned her as, “You can trust me, Candace.” 

I wasn’t sure why I hadn’t told anyone else that I had not always been known as ‘Candace Queen’, but if I was going to survive this new life of mine, I was going to need more than just one confidante—a confidante that I wasn’t sleeping with would be nice, too.

“Okay. So. You know, ten years ago, right?”

“Yeah?”

“The person I remember being back then was a straight guy.”

“What?” May’s eyes bulged out of her sockets and she hopped off of her perch to slam her hands on my desk, rattling the endless stacks of paperwork, “WHAT?!”

“I’m, like, trans, I guess?” Simple and to the point, “In December 2013, I was at a frat party and got hit in the head by a football. I then woke up after taking that volleyball to the head and instantly skipped all the shit where I realized I was the two best letters of the rainbow, apparently.”

“What in the fuck?!”

“You’re not mad, are you?”

“What?! No! I’m just—holy fucking shit, this explains so much!”

“Does it?”

“Yes! Candace, holy shit! We’ve known each other for, what, four years and you always seemed so closed off about your past! But this? This explains so fucking much! I just—well, I wish you had trusted me sooner. We’ve been friends for all these years and it's just—I was scared that maybe you were just entertaining me because you have nothing better to do while at work.”

“I’m sorry, I don’t know—well, don’t remember why I didn’t tell you,” I sighed theatrically and loudly as the tension steamed off of my shoulders, “Honestly, I wish I had now. I need someone to talk to about all this craziness who isn't also the guy I'm dating,” I gestured haphazardly, “All this! Like, holy shit, I would have died to have looked like this growing up!” I could feel a forest fire immediately spread across my cheeks at the accidental admission. I had never told that to someone before—at least not that I could remember. Ever since I was in middle school and high school, I’d been scared to death of someone finding out that I sometimes read gender transformation and crossdressing erotica. How would I explain all that to anyone when I knew that all the real trans people I had read about didn’t like girls or had always been super feminine as a young child?

And yet, I had apparently told Michael all that embarrassing shit about wanting to be a girl growing up or masturbating to gender transformation stories.

“Christ, I bet. It’s okay, I just—yeah, listen, I’m here for you, trust me—even if that means I’m not getting to sleep with you any time soon—much to my chagrin, of course!” That cheeky smile May liked to brandish around was never gone for too long from those lovely, thick and richly green lips that she loved to make silly little expressions with. The lab coat-sporting theater kid dropout taunted me with reckless abandon, but I kind of loved that about her. Christ, she was beautiful. The little games she seemed to like to play each time she spoke only made me a little more infatuated with her. I could see why I had made friends with her—not to mention made out with her a few years back. 

Wait, May did not tell me that. How did I know that I had made out with her before? Did I actually know that? But…I know how her lips feel.

Christ, this swirl of emotions was worth it, though.

“So, like, uh…how are you adjusting? To, like, your body?”

“Not all that bad, actually,” I mused, half to myself. “It was a bit freaky for the first couple of days, but now? I mean, how do you feel when you wake up in the morning and see how, uh, no homo, gorgeous you look in the mirror?”

“I cake a shit ton of makeup on so I don’t hate myself, actually.”

“Baloney, you’re gorgeous, May-May!” A surreal feeling held onto the coattails of the way that my right wrist limply motioned toward May as it accompanied my nervous, girlish giggle.

No matter what I did, I just felt like the biggest faggot in the world, but I couldn’t deny how refreshing that felt.

“Dyke,” May turned to the side as she broke out into a poorly hidden grin. It was cute seeing her being off her footing.

“Well, either way, I—question mark—guess—end question mark—the way I’m feeling now is probably just one more piece of proof that I’m trans?”

“I mean, I’m just a school nurse—” somehow, the tone of her voice led me to believe she was holding something back, “—so, like, search me, but it’s not like you’re the only trans girl here.”

“Isaac, right?”

“Well, Zoey, too.”

“Wait, what?! Zoey’s trans?!”

“Oh, right, amnesiac—wait, didn’t Michael tell you?”

“It must have slipped his mind, I guess? But…holy shit, no wonder that poor girl is such a nervous wreck!”

“Yeah, you’d be a nervous wreck, too, if you were stealth and on the volleyball team.”

“Shit, she’s stealth?”

“That’s what she calls it? Me, you and her other teachers are the only one’s outside of the administration team that knows about her.”

“Goddamn, this school is so weird.”

“Honestly, I don’t think anything can out-weird what happened with that Penn kid and that Jeong kid back in September.”

“Would you be surprised if I told you that Rachel is my older cousin’s kid?”

“Yeah, no, that’s nuts?!”

Curious choice of words.

“Holy fuck, Candace, you’re living the weirdest life I think I have ever seen someone live up close!”

“Should I be flattered?”

“Okay, poor choice of words on my part, sorry. But seriously, your life’s fuckin’ weird! Like, goddamn?!”

“Tell me about it. I’m just glad that I’m not constantly having panic attacks anymore.”

“So like, you were just teaching one of your relatives?”

“Mikey says it’s ‘cause I was the only one who knew that I was related to her.”

“Aah, name change, I imagine?”

“Disowned, yeah,” my eyes went big at how casually I was able to even just say it now, “Not that I remember much of that fiasco.”

“Yeah, I can imagine that even without the whole ‘I got hit in the head and now I have amnesia!’ thing you got going on whatever family drama you got goin’ on would still be a hard memory to remember.”

I drew my lips in and rolled my eyes at the flippant nurse’s remark, “Tell me about it.”

A brief silence fell while May shook her head as a gesture of recentering herself, “I guess that beckons the question—what if your memories don't return?”

I hadn’t given it much thought, in large part because I wasn't sure if I even felt like I had memories that were missing. “Honestly, in a lot of ways…it kind of feels like I don't really have amnesia.”

“How so?” It was so cute how May's ‘serious face’ almost felt like a caricature of a serious face.

“I mean…well, Riddle Me This, Batwoman—”

“—I identify more as a succubus—”

“—If you were a trans woman and you suddenly woke up with a body like this, would you really care if you couldn't remember how you got it?”

“I dunno, I just gotta lose twenty pounds before I feel happy with my body.”

“You’re hot as hell the way you are, May.”

Weird, weird, weird, how I can just say that.

“Thanks, but I still wanna lose it.”

“Touché.”

“What about the rest of it?”

“It’s overwhelming as hell, but I'm honestly dealing with it a lot better than I thought I was going to.”

“I imagine the hunky boyfriend helps?”

“Oh my god, May-May, you don’t even get it—I thought that I was straight for nineteen years! And now I can't go a full conversation with the man without wanting him to fill my—”

“Pussy?”

“Uh…ass. For now.”

“Aaah, yes—I see.”

“God, it was the weirdest thing waking up with no balls, thou—oh, gawd!” Terror struck me as the words left my mouth with little forethought. “May, I did not mean to—”

“Candace, please—it makes me happy to have you finally opening up to me about all this,” I hadn’t expected to draw forth tears with just a comment about my long-gone balls, but the young woman before me was showing vulnerability that almost felt out of character from what little I had learned of her, “Candace—growing up wasn't easy for me, either.”

My heartbeat slowed to a near stop as May's voice began to crack, “I didn't know how to talk to other queer people. I barely had any friends growing up, and even then, I was such a weird loner that I probably scared off more people than I meant to. I was the girl that prettier and more popular girls kept around to feel good about themselves!”

May quickly looked around the room until she spotted a box of tissue and sped walked over to them to blow her brains out, “I always—” blow “—felt like you were the closest thing I had to a best friend, you know?”

I barely remembered anything about her, and yet here she was—bearing her heart and soul to me. Why couldn't I remember?

“I'm weird and disgusting and I hide it all behind this act—sorry, fuck, why the fuck am I weeping like this?”

Finally, I stood from my desk and wrapped my arms around the poor girl and pulled her in to rest her head against my chest, “It’s okay, dear. I get it.”

The poor woman wrapped her arms around my back, squeezing hard, but I withstood the pressure and held her still. 

In a lot of ways, May reminded me of who I might have been if I had been a cis woman. I had spent so much of high school paranoid that the people around me would see me for the abject failure of a man that I was, that I had wrapped myself in sarcasm and anger any time I had to leave my bedroom and my precious computer.

Looking down at the woman in my embrace, I wondered how much of my attraction to her was what I had seen of my ideal self, and how much of it was seeing the good nurse for who she was?

God, I did feel awkward holding her now, though. When did I become so…touchy feely? “Hey, May?” I whispered, “Remind me of how we met?”

“Our first days were the same day,” May's muffled voice reverberated against my chest, “I saw you fiddling with the coffee maker in the faculty break room and came over to help…and flirt.”

“I must have been insane to have turned you down,” I whispered, petting her hair cautiously. 

“You thought you were straight.”

Now that felt like a foreign idea.

Something unexpected sat on the tip of my tongue, though, “I hated the idea of a woman seeing me with a penis.”

Oh.

Oh, gawd.

I remembered. 

That was what it was! That was why I could never keep a girlfriend! The putrid pit of tar that burned like a nasty pile of coal, clogging my lungs and choking me to death anytime I had to perform as a man in front of a woman. That disgusting feeling of a foreign tumor weighing my body down, branding me as an abnormality among women, but the tepid acceptance of me as a man among men, only feeling more and more wrong the older I became.

That is why I had transitioned: to get away from the reality I had been told was my destiny. 

I poured my face into the top of May’s head.

“Candi, are you okay? Candi, why is my head getting wet?”

 

***

 

December 11, 2023: 

 

Baby steps were important, I figured. With baby steps, it is far less likely to get dinged in the head by a volleyball being slapped with the force of a bunch of highly-trained teenage girls at a bajillion miles per hour. 

Slipping into the gym, purse and tote bag over my shoulders, I made myself small as a gaggle of girls remained steadfast in their practice drills. Their coach remained on the sideline, whistle in hand, intently checking his comically tiny clipboard for whatever coaches used comically tiny clipboards for. 

His ass looked blessed by the gods, and in a moment of weakness, I adjusted my neck just enough to see if I could appraise his bulge. 

Hefty.

With the careful steps of a gay little mouse trying not to draw attention to herself, I slipped over to the long aged stands—partially pulled out for the team or anyone else to sit on—and sat down to watch the girls—and my herculean boyfriend—work their magic. 

The surface of the bleachers were as unpleasant as I had remembered them from over ten years ago—which felt more like, like, six months ago or whatevs. When one sat on them—just as I was doing so—they made a little creaking and shuddering noise, like an old triathlon runner going for one last competition. My ass immediately regretted the whole ordeal. 

Despite slinging sweat like it was on a fire sale, the girls’ motions and forms all looked tight and strong, any signs of exhaustion having not yet marred the grace and force with which they made their mock battlefield their own. I had never been the kind of boy—girl?—to care for sports growing up, but neither had I been the type to stuff a closet full of pink tops, dresses and clothes that one definitely couldn’t wear to their job at a high school.

Michael took a quick look back at me sitting behind him, smiled, and then turned back to his kids. It was one of those warm smiles that made even a dreary day in Seattle a little less windy and cold. 

After a few seconds, Michael stepped back, turned, and joined me on the gym bleachers, “Well, isn’t this nostalgic.”

“I do this a lot?”

“Oh, for sure.”

“Pfft! Stop looking so smug, Mikey!” This girl’s voice with which I spoke sounded so confident. Happy. Picture-esque! 

“What? I’m just looking at you, Candi!”

“Ugh, jerk,” I sighed, leaned forward, stationed my elbows on my knees and then perched my chin on the insides of my palms for a theatrical pout. It felt right—somehow—to be so theatrically girlish. Feminine. A spoiled rich girl, so caked in makeup and expensive pink clothes and surgeries that she looked like a model, more than a mere public school teacher. 

I’d have to do more than just wear jeans and a hoodie tomorrow, for sure.

The sway and hang of my chest as I leaned forward made me rethink my form of choice very quickly, however.  

“I guess you’re finished for the day?”

“Yeah, I, like, did everything you said that I normally do after my classes were finished for the day. Grading papers was weird, but not too hard, I guess? And, like, school’s been out for, what, an hour and a half now? I figured I could sneak over and see the scene of the crime, y’know?”

Michael rolled his eyes, “Just don’t say that to Zo, yeah?”

“You mean the girl who you neglected to tell me was a lot like me?”

Michael looked like he had just gotten to the hottest wing on Hot Ones, “Oh, shit! Did I forget to tell you—?”

I was really flexing my ‘face of disapproval’ game this week.

“Oh my god, Candace, I am so sorry, it must have slipped my mind!”

“You’re fine, Mikey. May-May told me.”

“You talked?”

“She visited me during my planning period. God, does she always look so…?”

“Put together?”

“I was gonna say ‘hot Goth girl next door’, but yeah!!”

“Pretty much.”

“Goddamn, Mikey, she’s so hot!”

“Yeah, we established that, like, two years ago,” Michael’s chuckle was like the refreshingly cool breeze that kissed your skin on a day when the sun might have been sizzling it just a hair too much.

“Gawd, Mikey, you don’t get it—I used to—I still remember how much I hated myself for liking women in high school—even though I was supposed to like women!” 

“When I was in high school, I felt like a freak for being into both men and women, even though I was supposed to like women, too. The B stands for ‘bad’, I guess.”

“Right, right, I—yeah, right, you’re bi, you’d get it, I guess,” I shook my head as I let the little gal who ran my brain’s internal processing department catch up with the conversation. “Is this a bisexual thing, then?”

“So I’ve been led to believe, yeah. You being trans too, like, must make it even more confusing, I’d imagine.” It was cute how he scratched his thin layer of beard. It sounded like the soft whisper of the breeze passing through a forest of douglas fir trees. 

The loud stomping and streaking of sneakers on the gym floor made our conversation hard enough to hear for us, let alone any of the students, so I didn’t mind Michael saying ‘the T word’ like he did.

It wasn’t long before my arrival and my audience captured the attention of some students, of course. Zoey and Izzy jogged over to us while the others continued their drills.

“I’m glad to see that you’re doing okay, Miss Queen. I’ve had Zoey practicing her aim ever since she clocked you,” the team captain bumped her left shoulder against Zoey’s right shoulder as she poked fun at the girl. She had a ‘team captain voice’—it would’ve killed on the stage.

I hoped that she knew when to turn it off, though. It wouldn’t be easy going through life talking like you were planning a date like it was scrimmages.

Zoey, for her part, still looked like she was suffering from recurring effects of her prior petrification, “Sorry, sorry, sorry, sorry, sorry, sorry, sorry, Miss Queen!!”

“Honey, you’re fine,” I laughed, trying not to embarrass the young woman with her set of sorries. The poor thing had enough to summon Shen Long and ask for her wish to be granted, “You girls are looking good out there, by the way. Well, I guess I don’t know the rules of volleyball all that well, but you’re at least, uh, looking good!”

Izzy—blessedly for her—proved herself the charismatic one in the relationship and chuckled lightly as she adjusted a lock of her dark, wavy hair that had escaped its ponytail vice grip, “Thanks, Miss Queen—we’re gonna win nationals next month, so we’ve been working extra hard to not be all talk!”

I turned to Michael and gave my lunk of a boyfriend The Look, “You didn’t tell me the girls were going to nationals next month!”

Michael blanched, “I had some more pressing matters on mind, honey, did I not?”

“You were going to let these girls do without you so you could take care of me, weren’t you?”

“I mean, I probably could have still made it, I just would have brought you along with me to watch.”

“Assuming I didn’t give her volleyball PTSD!”

“Girl, I swear to all that is good and gay in this world, I will have you run laps again if you don’t stop with the negative self-talk!”

“Sorry, sorry!!”

“I see even the team captain gets to enjoy a little power tripping?”

“I am the most responsible driver, ma’am,” the cheeky brat had a wide smile that showed off teeth that were comfortably perfect. It contrasted well with Zoey’s braces-lined teeth, now that I thought about it.

Braces to help keep the whole girl together, I’m sure.

“Izzy, you’re going to make me look lame in front of Miss Queen!”

“My middle name is actually ‘The-Lamest’, so you’re fine, dear.”

“Hyphen?”

“Hyphen!”

“I’ve seen her ID card, I can vouch,” Michael’s interjection as he bumped into my left shoulder was smooth like butter gliding across a hot cast iron skillet.

“He’s seen my ID!” Technically true, I’m sure. Probably. Likely!

“Gawd, you two are such c-couples goals,” Zoey ventured, “I-if you don’t mind me saying?”

“Oh jeez, dear,” as half-laugh burst out of me at the compliment, “You should always strive to be a better girlfriend than me, Zoey.”

“Don’t let her cast herself the modest one in the relationship,” Michael interjected, wrapping his thick tree root of a right arm around me, “Candiiiiiiiiiiiii—aah, Miss Queen here is a lovely partner—”

“—girlfriend, specifically—”

“—girlfriend, specifically! And I wouldn’t trade her for anything!” The mix of cornball and sincerity was almost too touchy-feely for me, “Now! That’s enough unprofessional behavior from me for the day! Izzy, tell the girls to clean up shop, I don’t want you ladies overdoing it so close to nationals, yeah?”

“Yessir, Coach!” The army office tone of voice and little salute had to have been a running joke. Turning around, Izzy began jogging back to the nets, yelling, “Wrap it up, girls!” while her model-A—for ‘anxiety’—girlfriend stuck around to leave whatever else she had to say on the proverbial table.

“Again, I really do hope you’re doing okay, Miss Queen,” her voice even tapered off a little as she spoke.

“Honestly, I’m better than ever,” my laugh was borne of the simplicity of my claim: it was true! Who knew that getting hit in the head would have given me both a wonderful boyfriend and a life that was actually fulfilling and fun?

Zoey’s weak smile faded as she turned her attention back to one Coach Summers: “Coach, are you, uh, sure that I’m good to go for nationals?”

“Your form’s perfectly fine, Zoey, the thing with Miss Queen was just a fluke, so I see no reason why you can’t play.”

“No, no, I—uh, I mean, like, with me being—”

“—trans?” I had no idea what I was doing.

“Oh! Umm…yeah. That.”

“Even if you were public about it, you’d still be fine. I’d fight like Hell to protect you, too.”

An itsy-bitsy fondness crept up my belly at the determination in Michael’s voice, which led to a blush canvassing over my cheeks and nose like it was an election year, “Me, too!” Pitiable back up, Candace—especially given how this poor girl didn’t even know that you understood her better than she could ever know. How the hell was I supposed to be a good role model—the very reason I became a teacher—if I couldn’t even tell one girl that I was just like her?

Cradling her arms such that an elbow was in each palm, Zoey granted me the weakest of smiles—the barest minimum of attempts to appear strong—and nodded her thanks. She looked like she was on the verge of tears.

The poor girl was going to have to enter the locker room again, now, to change—only unlike me, she’d be doing it in the right locker room. And yet, the chills of how uncomfortable that still had to be for her pressed its clammy, cool naked chest against my back to whisper all the nasty little lies I told myself in my ear.

I stood up and took Zoey by the left wrist, “Zoey?”

“Candi?”

“Miss Queen?”

“Zoey, I want you to know that—just, fuck. Fuck, fuck, fuck, I’m sorry, Zoey. I just want you to know that I get it.”

“Candi, are you sure—?”

I held back my left hand, preventing Michael’s forward advance, “Zoey, I do, you know?”

She was like a lost little puppy, this Zoey girl—her little eyes taken to confusion and desperate searching for a lifeline, “I-I’m glad to have allies like you, Miss Queen.”

She’s graduating in six months, what does it matter?!

I gripped the poor girl’s wrist tighter and brought her in closer, her teammates finishing up with dismantling the nets for the day and putting them away.

Plenty of noise—nobody was watching.

So, I leaned forward and whispered into the bewildered girl’s ear, softly, “We’re the same,” a labored breath, “I’m trans, too.”

As I pulled back, it was like watching the girl before me morph from 4:3 to 16:9 to 2.39:1. The world of digital became the world of an inherently nostalgic 16mm, rich grain and colors graded in the tradition of old washed over my eyes as the girl before me brightened, stood a little taller, and breathed a little deeper.

“Omigawd?”

My right index finger made a graceful rise up to my lips and before I even knew it I was accessorizing my silent shush with a cutesy wink.

The stunned girl before me broke out into an almost silent giggle to match her stretching lips.

“Now go get changed, girlypop!”

The gangly thing ran back into the lady’s locker room with a new pep in her step, which left me with a satisfaction foreign to me—brewing in the pit of my stomach with unabashed vigor. My taste buds exploded with sensation as they learned a new spice of life.

Wrapping his arm around me, Michael joined me by my side and asked, “Are you sure that was a good idea?”

The warmth in his voice betrayed his question, however.

“It was the best idea,” my head settled all on its own to rest against my boyfriend as we took stock of the now empty, musty gym: I decided to remember it not how it was when I was a student here, but how it was now that I was a teacher.

It looked more like home, that way.

 

***

 

December 11, 2023: 

 

Somewhere in the less than a week since I woke up unable to remember a good ten years of my life, I managed to find the time to ponder whether or not moving out of one’s childhood house could ever feel ‘normal’. I had been in my college apartment for only four months before waking up in 2023 as a walking blow-up doll and now I had apparently been missing out on about five years of memories living in my present apartment. 

I had spent the first nine years of my life in an almost-modest lake house built with brick and settled on Gravelly Lake itself. It had been a small yard for playing, but as my first home, I often still felt nostalgic for it. The expansive Gravelly Lake had been something I could never swim in, given my age and my mother’s own paranoia, but I still remembered the beautiful shimmering of the lake’s surface and how I loved watching it, morning, day or night.

When Arthur Woods—the eldest son of his fossilizing father—had assumed the role of the patriarch of the family, Mother, Beth and I had moved with him into the Woods family estate, a multi-acre plot of land with an almost-castle-esque mansion situated on it. The estate boasted a thick forest that myself, my cousins and my elder sister had grown up playing in, but the cold, drafty old place had never quite felt like home.

Perhaps because it is where Father's abuse, Mother’s neglect and emotional manipulation, and my descent into being a shut-in had become so much more pronounced? 

I still remembered the sensation of the hot cigar ash hitting my face when Arthur Woods slapped his ashtray in my face out of anger with my sobbing. I couldn’t remember what I had been sobbing about. The exact age I was had become lost on me over the years, I simply knew that I was not even a pre-teen, and that it was my first real taste of powerlessness.

The apartment that I shared with Michael had a mold problem that the landlord serially neglected to get treated. The stove top worked only on a good day and if you wanted to boldly go where no one had gone before—using two burners at once—you were a damned fool. The provided refrigerator might have known the 1990s like an old friend. I didn’t even want to wager a guess if the apartment walls had originally been so cream-colored or not, either.

It was a terrible apartment, but it was my home with Michael. My home…with my boyfriend. 

After entering the apartment, Michael dropped his bag on the armchair closest to the door, then crashed on the couch. Joining Michael on the couch, I kicked off my tennis shoes and laid my head on his chest, to hear its beating and feel its fire. Michael was like a furnace, purifying the apartment of its unfortunate draft. 

“How do teachers do this five days a week?”

“I’ll get back to you when I figure it out.”

I bit my lip and felt my eyeballs become like freshly installed light bulbs, radiating brightly at the man’s simple joke. My left palm might have gotten adventurous and begun to grasp his pecs beneath his shirt.

“Are you…doing okay?”

“Huh? Yeah, why?”

“You’re getting very…touchy-feely, you know?”

“I mean, we’re dating, right?”

“Yeah, but you’re also missing those ten years where you knew me as your boyfriend and ex-boyfriend, Candace.”

“Whatever, I’m bisexual.”

“What?”

“I’m bisexual, I don’t care if I’m Doing A Gay. It’s fine. I like you—I mean, I think I definitely understand why we dated for, like, seven of the past ten years, Michael.”

Even Michael’s deep breaths felt like a grizzly bear inhalving. The dark hair on his forearms were prickly and rough, but I loved the feeling of them as I leaned further into his embrace, wrapped his arms around me, and held them there.

He was a man. I was a woman. He was my man and I could just fucking call him that. I’m gay! Or whatever! I was free from having to be some heterosexual loser who hated having to do everything the way his parents told him to. It was like a weight lifted from my chest that I had never known was there before.

And replaced by two other heavy weights, of which I actually wanted to be there.

Michael remained silent, letting me hold his warm arms around me as I pleased. I could have fallen asleep in his embrace, but I could still feel the signs of wars clinging to my skin: my clothes were damp with sweat from a day of nervously shuffling around a classroom, trying to be a professional woman in a professional world.

A devious, erotic idea bloomed in my queer little mind, like a field of flowers taking to wash over the toxic waste, “Hey Mikey?”

Soft, but heavy. Firm, “Yeah?”

Fag, fag, fag, fag, fag, fag, fag, fag, fag, fag, “Take a shower with me—” slut, slut, slut, slut, slut, slut, slut, slut, slut, slut “—baby?”

“Oh, good grief, you horny little slut!”

 

***

 

December 11, 2023: 

 

A nice, steamy shower was just what the doctor ordered. I had seen “the girl takes a shower with her boyfriend” plenty of times before in porn or television and films, but indulging in it myself seemed almost childish. The deep lines made of the muscles of the male adult performers were always shot so prominently, I could remember just jacking away anytime they were the focus of the screen. 

Clearly, I had been missing some things about my sexual orientation when I was a teenager.

Stepping into the shower to join me, Michael was no different—no, perhaps he was different. Different in that Michael’s size and the curvature of his muscles were all so much more defined, so much less ‘for show’. I could remember what it was like for Michael to carry me around, to pin me down in bed and ravage me. Michael’s strength was real. When Michael lifted and hoisted and moved, his entire body frame worked together to move.

Perhaps I was just overthinking things too much. It was hard not to see Michael and feel like he was so foreign and different to me. The boy I remembered being was little more than an impressive 6’3’’, but never strong, never a figure to write home about.

I could feel my penis twitch down below, but I ignored it—not because I was ashamed of liking men—of liking my boyfriend—but because all it did was remind me of what I lacked.

That was it, that was it, that was it, that was it, THAT was it!

Feeling his abs—skin-to-skin—I couldn’t help but bite my lip. The stereotypical girlishness with which I took in and absorbed the man before me rang in a small part of my mind as shameful, but rang throughout the rest of it as right. 

I was just a woman, wanting to be fucked by her man.

It was liberation. 

Revolution.

I shoved Michael against the wall of the tiny shower and immediately went to work on sucking his goofy fuckin’ grin off. Little bits of the shitty lukewarm apartment water got into my mouth, but I didn’t care. Like a knight of old knowing precisely how to cleanly slice one into two, my body knew exactly how to press and rub itself against the giant mountain of muscles. The strength of Michael’s hands on my ass—lifting me up to better make contact with my face—electrified me as much as the feel of his bulging veins and bold, thick body hair on my hands. 

Our bodies were complete opposites, which did no less than confirm that this was what I wanted.

Reaching down with my right hand, I took grasp of the pulsating, red rod—the first time I could ever remember doing so—and began to stroke. Hard. Fast. The old me whispered into my ear from behind, “You’re just a gay faggot,” but who fucking cared? Okay, I was gay. I was a faggot! It was better to be a hot bitch with a hot boyfriend who wasn’t some fucking annoying misogynistic, homophobic dunderhead asshole who beat me up and called me a faggot like all those boys did growing up. I was dating a real man! One who knew how to make a girl feel like a queen.

Why had I chosen the name ‘Queen’, anyway? Because Michael made me feel like one all those years we were together? Pfft, what a faggot’s way of thinking.

Mine was a grip that was unfamiliar with forgiveness, each little thrust like sending a message via Morse code: His cock belonged to me, so why not let the bastard feel a little reminder of that?

“F-fuck, Candi!”

“You like that, you little f-faggot?” The aggressiveness felt right. The control felt right!

“God, you’re such a l-little—” another squeeze, “—b-bitch!”

Why was it so hot when he called me that?

It wasn’t long before Michael was spinning me around, pushing me up against the other wall of the shower, and making it very clear what he was going to do next with that which belonged to me.

When he finally entered my asshole, I was pleasantly surprised by how painless the entire affair was.

No stained glass windows were broken.

I felt no sudden panic for taking it in the ass like the faggot my father always told me I was.

All I felt was the truth: fulfillment. 

The rhythm of each thrust was like a familiar song—our song—as if we were a couple now in our golden years, still dancing to that first song that played when we met on the dance floor all those decades ago.

It was a warm blanket to wrap myself in—I remembered the blaring speakers that night, ten years ago, blasting Barbie Girl, just as I broke free of that dorm, turned, and was blasted in the head by Michael’s winning toss.

His toss that bonded us together, forever.

But no, no, no, no! It was his guttural grunting that did the most terrible of things to me:

“Stupid! Fucking! Horny! Bimbo!”

My teeth threatened to draw blood from my bottom lip, which somehow only made the entire affair hotter. 

“Fuck you, meathead,” it wasn’t a convincing retort. There was no way I could sound convincingly upset when the earnest man was pistoning away inside of me, teaching my mind sensations that I didn't even know were possible for the body to feel.

Michael’s carefully lotioned hands took leave of my widened hips and took hold of my breasts, scissoring each nipple between the index and middle fingers, while the thumbs gently caressed what they could of my areola. The pressure of the pinching and the gentleness of the caressing tore my mind between two conflicting realities. 

I screamed my throat raw when Coach whispered in my ear, “Keep being a good girl and I’ll give you that passing grade you want so badly.”

The lukewarm shower water washed the much hotter cum right off my back.

 

***

 

December 11, 2023: 

 

“We should splurge on more comfortable sheets, baby,” it was surreal hearing my voice actually ‘coo’, but whatever my voice and body did on their own were quickly becoming things I had zero complaints about. 

It was three after eight on a Monday and I was already exhausted. The joys of approaching thirty, I guess.

Readjusting himself to prop up his head with his arm, Michael pulled the covers up a little to prevent the worse-for-wear comforter from slipping and exposing my nipples to the chilly draft in this godforsaken apartment.

His smile made me want to dive below the covers and suck him dry.

“Are you sure that was okay?”

“Come on, Mikey! Be a feminist!”

“Girl, you have amnesia, I shouldn’t be fucking you!”

I always loved it when his fagcent showed.

“Eh, it was good for me.”

“You’re being nonchalant about this, but it’s still not—”

“Shut it, or else I’m sucking your cock.”

Gawd, I loved making men groan in frustration.

“Baby, you’re fine. You wanna know what the last time I had sex was like?”

“I’m pretty sure I was there, ma’am.”

I tried—and failed—to push Michael over onto his back, but the big bastard wouldn’t budge and my right wrist was far too limp, “You ass!”

“With how big yours is, I’m pretty sure you’re the a—ow, ow, ow!”

Girls could dig their nails into their boyfriend’s shoulders a little, as a treat!

“When I was with my last girlfriend, you Neanderthal!”

“Okay, okay!!”

“She wanted me to stick it into her after she gave me a lousy blowjob and I could barely keep it up the whole time. I told her it was the stress from my AP English assignment.”

“This would explain the career path!”

“Hush, faggot! Like, listen, all I’m saying is, sex with you is the closest I’ve ever come to actually enjoying sex! Do you know what that’s like for a nineteen—or wow, cognitive dissonance!”

Suddenly, the bedroom felt a little more foreign, a little less home. A chill ran up my spine, but a sudden warmth drew me in:

Michael was holding me close, petting my hair, “Shh, it’s okay, Candi.”

I couldn’t remember the last time I was touched by someone other than Michael and didn’t want to instantly pull away.

“I never thought I’d be in a happy relationship. Ever.”

“I suppose that I ought to be glad that you’re saying this to me,” Michael’s smile felt warm, but burdened in a way I didn’t know how to describe, “I’m still really worried, I guess.”

“What do you mean?”

Nothing.

“Michael…are you—actually, tell me: how did we break up the first time?”

“Aah,” his voice grew hesitant, like he was trying to avoid saying something, “That’s…like, Candi, it was my fault, I shouldn’t—”

“How, Michael?”

“You were going through a lot, Candi. You got drunk and outed yourself at your parents’ Christmas party and then the next day you broke up with me to focus on yourself.”

I couldn’t recall any of that. Sure, I could certainly imagine being angry at my parents, but breaking up with Michael for four years? How was I that upset?

Michael’s eyes looked as big as a puppy’s, so I held him right back, pressing my tits into his chest. Men liked that, right? “I’m so sorry, baby, I don’t—I don’t know why I did that. I must have been stupid to dump a boy like you.”

Michael said nothing in reply, but the tightness with which he held me felt devoid of ownership and full of desperation. I was being held by a man who wanted little more than to hold me like he owed me the world, and for that, I felt like I could trust him more than anything. As he wept quietly into my bosom, I caressed the back and side of his head through his gorgeous, thick dark hair with my right hand’s finger tips, slowly, but surely bringing him to peace.

For a few moments, he was a boy again. My boy. As sleep drew nearer, the words “I love you” echoed through my mind, like a distant, burdened and weary voice from a ghost. Was it my subconscious? Was it the old Candace, trying to resurface?

If she didn’t plan on ever coming back, I hoped with all my being that she would at least give me some advice.

Why did Michael blame himself for our breakup? Hell, we've been together for so long at this point that we should be married, right? Gay marriage was legal now, wasn't it? He's the man in the relationship, so why hasn't he popped the question yet?

Holding onto Michael a little tighter, I let myself drift to sleep to the soothing smell of his musk and the incubating warmth of his body.

 

***

 

December 15, 2023: 

 

How the heck did I survive a full week of being a responsible adult woman? 

Slumping my sore hips onto the couch while Michael dumped his bag onto the arm chair, I could not help but let the stray familiar feeling that I had seen this picture somewhere before ping-pong around my mind.

“Hey, I'll get dinner going in a minute if you wanna hop in the shower?”

What a gentleman, this one. I had discovered last week that my routine was much longer now, not simply because I was a woman, but because my long hair now took so much more time to dry by way of air. It had been an adjustment, but one I had learned to adapt to pretty quickly.

I had always wondered what it would be like to have nice, long and soft hair like my sister did. 

Now, that ‘wonder’ was but ‘mundane’.

While Michael dug through the kitchen like a miner trying to mine ore, I flipped through my phone to avoid putting myself through the gamut of standing from the couch.

My socials were pretty barren, I had found. Social media had grown exponentially more a part of everyone's daily life since 2013, and I'd been really surprised to find that everyone was posting thirst traps on Instagram.

Several hundred photos of me—or me with Mikey—filled my Instagram. I continued to scroll back until I reached 2014, watching myself becoming progressively less feminine—and dolled-out as fuck—until all that was left was a goofy-looking gay twink in drag and his boyishly handsome mountain of a boyfriend. 

They looked really cute together, posing for a selfie outside of a screening of Mulholland Drive. I remember sneaking glances at the movie when Beth and Megumi had watched it in secret when we were kids. The passionate sex scene had entranced me, a sexually frustrated child in the early throes of puberty. I felt terrible shame for masturbating to love between two women.

My smart phone felt loose in my sweaty palm. Returning my attention to my timeline, I focused on another early photo of me and the boyfriend, him in his football fear and me in a long lavender sweater and long pink skirt, wearing a pink purse with little green frogs on it. All of my senses were repulsed by the embarrassingly gaudy look of it all. Still, Mikey looked far better with his current thin layer of facial hair. The college freshman in this photo might as well have been our son, little Aaron. 

Minimizing Instagram, I took my first real opportunity to look around my phone and found the Twitter app, lost in a third page of apps, married to a thick layer of dust. Much to my surprise, I found that I wasn’t logged in, and quickly remedied that.

Much to my chagrin, my account’s display name was—ugh—still my geriatric, ill-fitting deadname. I had not tweeted since November 2016. Rolling my eyes, I updated my display name to Candi, changed my bio from “The gayest boy you know” to “Bisexual women? On the internet?!” and then replaced my profile picture with a selfie I had taken before work that morning.

My first tweet in seven years was a picture of myself, “Guess who’s back?” The selfie really did say everything that needed to be said about how I had decided to Legally Blonde it up a bit by trading the slacks in for a pink dress suit I found in my closet, a beleaguered little thing struggling to hold a thousand different outfits. The pencil skirt had been nerve-wracking, but an important change of pace—even if it was the old Candace's usual casual Friday.

It also really showed off my killer ass.

Checking my mentions, I found that I had little more than a few bots follow me, but I did have DMs.

One was from 2018, from…Megumi Burman?! My sister's secret ex-girlfriend?!

 

Megumama: Candi, please talk to me.

Megumama: pls it's important

Megumama: u can't just run from all this shit

Megumama: Girl, I *know* you're getting these.

 

Were Meg and I…friends? What, did she and Beth get back together? I had hoped for eons that my elder sister would leave that douchebag husband of hers, so if she finally dumped the chump, then that was a hell of a win for all three of us.

Wait, wasn’t Beth pregnant? Did she have to share custody with that cheating asshole?

Cracking my thumbs, I typed away a reply, hoping she would get it: 

 

Candi: uh…hi, sorry for not replying sooner, I have amnesia?

 

Nothing. 

Locking my phone, I pushed myself up to my feet and walked to my bedroom to doff my day's weathered wardrobe in favor of something lighter, so that I could join Michael in the kitchen and grab a bottle of water before seeing about enticing him to join me in the shower, yet again.

I was aiming for a nice, round, five consecutive days of shower sex.

A notification ping hit my phone like an airplane crashing into the twin towers and I immediately tossed my new shirt aside to grab the pink little slab of horrors.

Megumi had replied: 

 

Megumama: holy FUCK, you're replying?! AND What do you *MEAN* you have amnesia?!

 

Candi: i got hit in the head by a volleyball last week and don't remember the past ten years of my life.

Candi: are we friends-friends? 

 

Megumama: GIRL

Megumama: unblock my phone number and CALL me omg?!

 

Why did I block her number?

Shifting through my Contacts app as fast as I could, I found my block list and quickly unblocked Meg and called her.

My phone automatically selected a video call and within moments, an early-30s Japanese-American woman with lightly hidden bags under her eyes was staring at me, shocked. Her makeup looked haggard from a work day-long battle with the oils of the feminine form and the climate of the workplace.

“Jesus Christ, Candi! You actually called me!” She sounded tired. From what little I could make out of the background, it looked like Meg was in a home office of some sort? “Holy shit, are you—you said you had amnesia?” The black-colored adjustable string bow tie around the collar of her lavender dress shirt was adorable.

“Uh…yeah…sorry…are we on bad terms? Why did I have you blocked?”

“Long story, I’m just glad to finally see you after five—girl, you’re, uh, showing the girls off.”

“Huh?” I followed Meg’s line of sight and was instantly horrified, “Oh, gawsh! I’m so sorry, Meg!”

“Nothing I wouldn’t see in the locker room, girly. Still, my compliments to your surgeon!”

“Oh my gawsh, Megumi! Time-and-place!”

“Yeah, yeah, sure, whatever,” what was this picture-esque mother figure doing, acting so brazenly flirty? “So, like, is everything okay? Are you alone?”

“My boyfriend’s making dinner, but, uh, I’m in my—uh—our bedroom getting ready for a shower. You?”

“I’m finishing up a work thing and then I was going to take Hinata out for dinner before we head to—!”

“—Ooh, new girlfriend? Wife?” Meg deserved better than Beth, anyway, although it sucked that that meant we wouldn’t be related, “Hey, I’ll text you my apartment address and you can try some of Mikey’s cookin’, he’s a mean chef!”

“I—wait, you two are back?—okay! I—we’ll talk when we get there!”

After texting Megumi our address, I popped into the kitchen, breasts bouncing boobibly, “Hey, we’re gonna have two guests coming over, so make more than usual, okay baby?” I had already doffed my bra, and it wasn’t like these things needed the support with how I had gotten them done. I could swear they were getting bigger over the week, too.

Michael looked like he was turning zombie-colored, “W-wait, what?” He took an appreciative—but terse—glance at my gifts to society.

“My sister’s ex and her plus one are stopping by!”

“Megumi?!”

“Oh, you know her?”

“Yeah, you two were really close in college—oh, fucking shit?!”

“What?! What is it?!”

“I’ll…” the poor boy’s face looked as lost as his voice “...let Megumi explain it to you.”

Michael was doing that a lot, lately.

 

***

 

December 15, 2023: 

 

With only an hour to spare, I broke out the hair drier after my shower and went about using whatever instincts I could muster up to make myself presentable. It hadn’t occurred to me to ask Megumi during our call how she was so familiar with my chosen name, but given that she was bisexual, I assumed she must have been okay with me being…transgender.

I was transgender. A woman. Right, right. Still getting used to that, even if it felt right.

Dressing in short-shorts with frayed ends to the pants sleeves and a tight pink crop top—the word BIMBO written in a cute BARBIE-style font stretched for its dear life across the chest—I found stuffed into my closet, I shooed Michael away from his stove babies—a rare time when two of the burners were working simultaneously, apparently—so that he could take a quick shower before Megumi and her girlfriend or wife or whatever could show up.

Luckily, it was a Friday and I could sleep in tomorrow—I had the sneaking suspicion that hosting dinner was going to be an exhausting affair for a woman with amnesia.

Dressed in one of his nicer polos—what was it with men and polos?—Michael slipped from around the corner, back into the kitchen to take stock of his prized Ghormeh Sabzi, the ingredients for which we purchased yesterday “To celebrate your first week back at work in style,” the engaged culinary maestro had declared.

“I learned it from my bibi way back when I was a kid.”

“I didn’t realize you were such a chef.”

“I’ve heard that before, too.”

I rolled my eyes, and left the room. 

Now, however, with the moment of truth arriving, I leaned against the wall and watched my boyfriend in his element, taking particular care with the stove and ladles and whatever else people who knew how to cook used.

I hadn’t been much of a cook, before or during college.

A soft knock at the door earned our attention, which then transitioned to Michael and I sharing a glance. Given that I was decidedly banned from cooking unless absolutely necessary—my boyfriend had oh-so-kindly informed me—I plopped off of the spare counter and answered the door.

Megumi was dressed in a more casual attire—a deep purple top, skin-tight and with a very low crop to leave her surgically enhanced chest on full display. Feeling dirty, I immediately shot my gaze up to her eyes and refused to remove them.

I’m pretty sure she had been wearing the kind of jeans that would get a girl arrested in some parts of the country, too.

“Hiya!” I sing-songed, unsure of what the appropriate greeting was when you hadn’t seen someone since you were in high school, “Welcome!”

Megumi looked like she was on the verge of tears, “Omigawsh, Candi! You look—you look amazing!”

“Uh, thanks? I tried!” Nobody was standing next to Megumi, so I asked the obvious question, “You said something about a plus-one, right?”

Megumi looked down to her right side, leaving me to follow her gaze. A young boy was face-deep in a smart phone, playing some game between his shaggy bangs, “This is Hinata, my son.”

“Holy moly!” I gasped, barely stopping myself saying the word ‘shit’, “You’re a mother?”

“Michael didn’t tell you?”

“He said you’d explain to me,” I stepped aside to let the two in, and the boy stepped forward without even needing to look up, “Is the dad out of the pic—”

“—oh, dear gawd—”

“—what?!”

“Let’s sit down,” the panicked woman guided her son to the couch without the poor thing even acknowledging her prodding, and sat down at the far end of the couch while his mother took the other end.

Sitting in the arm chair closest to Meg, I suddenly felt extremely self-conscious about my choice of attire, even if the kid clearly had no shits to give. Gawd, I hoped Megumi didn’t think I was a freak, “So, uh, should I know something?”

“There is no father.”

“Did George Lucas script your life?”

Megumi’s eyes looked like they were considering leaping out of her eyes and taking their chances with the drop to the floor, “No, no, I’m transgender.”

“Say what?!”

“You know this, Michael knows this, Hinata knows this, it’s fine, fine, fine!” The Megumi I remembered was so much more quiet and intense—always keeping an eye on those around her. This Megumi was so much more…well, a regular—if gorgeous—mother of but thirty-two years. It was weird, like getting to know a new person.

“When did you—”

“—When you asked me to get your sister back.”

“But she was—”

“—yeah, you don’t have to worry about him anymore.”

“But—she had a—”

“Wanna hazard when Hinata was born?”

The kid looked no more than ten.

Oh, gawd?! “Wait, then—?”

“—exactly, dear.”

“Oh my GAWD, how did I not—?”

“We’ve had this conversation, too.”

“Holy cow—”

“—I say fuck around this little guy all the time, it’s fine.”

“Fuck, fuck,” Hinata said, eyes never abandoning their beloved phone screen. It was the first thing he had said all this time.

“I’m—oh my god, then are you and Beth—?”

“—Beth’s engaged. To a man.”

Silence.

Eventually, Michael poked his head out of the kitchen, “Come and load a plate, ladies and—oh, hey Hinata! You’re so big now!!”

“‘Sup,” they were bonded like brothers, that boy and his smart phone.

Michael was irresistible in his ill-fitting ‘Kiss the Chef’ apron. 

I was going to have to tear it off of him, later tonight. 

 

***

 

December 15, 2023: 

 

Our apartment had no actual dining area, so the four of us sat centered on the mismatched armschairs and sofa, like Mikey and I had done every time we sat down to eat.

His cooking always opened up my sinuses.

Turning to my right, I took a spare glance at our guests as Megumi melted at the taste of Michael’s cooking and the ten year old—pushing what he could around with his fork—wondered if Persian food had anything to do with the Pokemon.

Oh my god, I had a nephew. Swallowing, I hazard a question: “So, Hinata, I, uh, guess I’m your…aunt?”

“You look like Mom,” I don’t know what the hell I was expecting him to say, “But prettier.”

I turned to Megumi, who just shrugged, “Umm…thank you?”

“You’re tall,” the ten year old was eyeing his phone, which Megumi had told him to put on the table while they ate.

“Long time, yeah,” what the hell was I doing? “So, uh, what do you do for fun?” Dumb question.

“Video games.”

“I love video games, too. Your mother and I have a cousin with a daughter who was really good at them, too.”

Megumi shot me a look of sympathy, clearly having heard the news about Rachel, before turning to her son, “Hinata, tell Aunt Candi what you’re practicing for?”

His face looked like he was totally out of it, “I’m going to a Smash Brothers tournament soon. I’m kinda good.”

“Ooh, I loved playing Smash when I was your age.”

“I could probably beat you,” the kid sounded so convinced that I wasn’t sure he was even trying to be cocky. 

Across from me in the other armchair, Michael just smirked at me as I floundered talking to my own nephew. Surely, this hackjob of an impromptu dinner party was why I taught high school, not elementary school.

“So, uh, how’s school going, Hinata?”

“School’s boring. All the boys are weird and they don’t like it when I beat them in video games. The girls have pretty clothes and are really nice, though.”

Megumi shot me a look before adding, “Hinata’s just a little more mature than the other boys. I’m sure they’ll catch up with him, eventually.”

“Pfft, I dunno, when I was his age I thought the same thing,” I turned to Michael, who held up both hands like he was protesting his innocence, “Although, I’ve certainly come around on them recently.”

Dearest Michael appeared as if he was taking on the shade of pastel Valentine’s candy hearts at my casual flirtation. 

“Tell them about your friend, Alyssa.”

“Alyssa Johnson’s really nice. She does my nails, sometimes.”

Looking down, I finally caught notice of the boy’s chipped, purple nails. They complimented the richness of his red hoodie quite well, “Those are prettier!”

Turning up to Megumi, the boy asked bluntly, “Can I play my game now, Mama?”

“Keep getting to know your aunt, baby,” the mother turned to me, cautiously, “She hasn't seen you…in a long time.”

Guilt pinged through me, even if I didn't know why.

The dark-haired boy had taken after his mama more so than his mom, but the scowl he grew at the notion of needing to speak to me was hilariously Beth.

I elected to throw the kid a lifeline: “What’re you playing, sweetie?” The casual girlishness felt like a guilty pleasure, like I was a perverted sinner playing make believe. I ignored the little voice in my head telling me not to do it again: I wanted to keep being that stereotype. 

“Candy Crush.”

“I prefer myself three dimensional and not two dimensional, thank you very much,” I turned to Meg, “What's Candy Crush?”

“A matching game.”

“Aah, I see.” 

“”Hey, kiddo,” Michael learned forward in his chair like a giant, hovering over the poor boy, “What else do you like to do?”

“Draw.”

“Anything in particular?”

“Umm…well…” Shyness struck the child for the first time, “I like drawing—”

A rapid, healthy knock at the door captured the scene, “Who could that be at this hour?” I asked as I stood to answer the door.

Mid-walk, I tugged my top down to flatten it a little and better show off the girls, just to be a naughty little thing.

Reaching our front door, I swung it open with a degree of cavalierness, hoping to intimidate whatever late working solicitor with my impressive rack, “We don't want any!”

A shorter, thirty-two-er, not-fake boobier version of me stood behind the door. She looked like she had glammed up in a rush.

“Beth?”

“Oh my god, H—”

I immediately slammed the door, turned around, and returned to my armchair, feeling like I had just aged ten years.

Michael broke the ice-dry silence with the obvious question, “Who was it?”

“My sister.”

“Oh,” Michael replied.

“Oh, Megumi repeated.

Hinata, confused, got up from the couch, walked over to the door, and opened it, “Hi, Mom!”

Beth swooped down to scoop up her son for the kind of hug neither of us knew as children, “Oh my gosh, hello, my baby boy!”

Hinata squirmed like he was less-than-enthused by the nickname, “You’re squeezing too hard!” Points for the wimpy whine.

Beth finally relented, stood, and stepped forward a few cautious steps, Hinata's hand in hers, “I came to pick Hinata up, uh…” Beth’s line of sight shifted all around the room, like a catch adapting to a new environment, “Sorry, if I was too early, Megumi.”

“We were just about done with dinner, anyway, Beth,” the poor woman sounded like she was employing an aged customer service voice. “I was going to drop him off with you afterward, just like we agreed.”

Gawd, this was awkward. 

Michael went for the save, like it was the last play of the Super Bowl: “We have plenty of leftovers, if you'd like to sit down and try some!”

“Oh, no, please, I—”

A devious plot brewed in my mind, “Beth! Please! We insist!” Immediately standing up, I sped walked to the kitchen, drew up a serving of Ghormeh Sabzi for Beth, handed it to the confused woman, and motioned to my free chair as I stepped over to and sat on Michael's lap, wrapping my arms around his muscular neck.

Seeth and cry, bitch!

Defeated, the put-out woman sat cautiously and entertained her hosts by entertaining a taste, “It’s good!”

“Mikey made it,” I gabbed, making sure to beat him to the punch, “He's an amazing chef!”

“I do what I can,” modesty wasn’t always a virtue, Michael—especially when I was trying to make my sister jealous.

“I-it's good, quite good,” cat got your tongue?

“Mom, why do Aunt Candi and you look so much alike?”

“Hormones,” we said, infuriatingly simultaneously. 

I should really get some more work done to fix that.

Beth stole quick glances to her right, where Megumi and their son shared the couch, and then forward, where Mikey and I shared the armchair opposite her. She looked like she was lost on an island, Gilligan-style, and I couldn’t have been happier.

The dumb bitch should've just married her queer lover and enjoyed her free queer love baby. They didn't give those out to just anyone, after all.

“So, Beth!” I opened, “How did you find my humble abode?”

Megumi interjected, “I texted her the address, just in case she wanted to come pick Hinata up at some point—if it got too late, I mean,” then turned to Beth, “And, I guess she has.”

My sister looked deflated, not that I cared much, “I must admit, I was quite surprised when Megumi told me she was at your home. I didn’t realize you were back in Gravelly Lake,” a beat, “Candace.”

Stuck-up bitch, “Oh! Yes, I moved back in 2019 to begin teaching at the high school. I'm an English teacher, you see?”

“I wouldn't have guessed,” Beth's eyes looked like they were calling me a call girl as they scanned up and down my body, judging me. “I almost thought you were Mother Dearest, given that you’re both more plastic than woman now.”

Jealous bitch, “Oh, yes, no, I'm quite successful in all the ways that really matter. The kids love me, especially the queer club I advise.” Michael gave my arm a gentle squeeze, but I ignored him, “Do tell me, Beth, what are you up to these days? Any new girlfriends, hmmm?”

“I'm engaged to a man, actually. His name is Trevor, from the firm.”

“Trevor Fromthefirm? That's an odd family name, is it Finnish? Swedish? Are you taking it?”

Michael whispered in my ear, his voice strained, “Candi—”

“—You know, Beth, if you're still looking for a Maid of Honor, I'm sure Me—”

“—Candace!” Megumi shouted, standing from the couch.

I blinked, suddenly aware of my surroundings and what I was saying and doing, “Oh—oh gawsh, Megumi, I'm sorry, I forgot—”

Megumi sighed, turned to Beth—a complete wreck of a woman, her makeup looking to collapse at any moment—and then turned to Michael.

Michael was out from under me within seconds, taking Hinata by the hand, “Hey kiddo, wanna see the Nintendo Switch we got set up in the bedroom?”

Hinata—perhaps sensing the mood—nodded without a word and followed Michael into the bedroom, phone forgotten.

Gently ushering the boy into the room, Michael turned to me and said—with a look—“Fix this.”

What the fuck was I doing, acting this way in front of Megumi and the child?

Beth planted her face into her palms and began sobbing on the spot.

Megumi was on her in seconds, pulling my sister out of her armchair and onto the couch for a cuddle.

I was such a bitch, “B-Beth, listen, I’m sorry, I just—”

Megumi stared daggers up at me, “Candace, I’ve tried to be understanding, I really have—but you don’t get what it’s like for her. For us.”

“Meg, I just—I just wanted her to stop being stubborn and—”

“—That isn’t for you to decide, Candace. Your sister made her bed and she’s trying to lay in it.”

“She’d have a hell of an easier time if you were in that bed, too, I bet.”

“Your parents really did a number on you two, didn’t they?”

I lowered myself cautiously onto the couch, beside Megumi, “I’m sorry. I—I don’t even know why I’m so mad. I—I don’t know. I don’t know anything.”

Megumi remained silent for what felt like an eternity, save for the sound of her hand brushing the quietly sobbing Beth’s hair.

Beth finally sat up from her ex-girlfriend’s lap, her face a warbling watercolor collage of makeup, tears and snot, “I’ve made my bed, Candace.”

Her voice was tinny and in no way impressive. The bold, striking voice I remembered her having had been absent the entirety of the time I had known her as a thirty-two year old working woman. At least, when she had been married to that bastard Mark, she had been able to pretend that she was still strong.

Now Annabeth Woods was nothing more than a hollowed-out woman, her only moments of strength when she was pouring her love into her son.

It was infuriating. Heartbreaking, I hated to admit.

A deep breath took hold and my chest expanded out as I tried so desperately to consider what I could say next, to make it all right, “Do you even love the guy?”

“Trevor’s a nice man. A good man. Saves orphanages and drowning puppies for pro bono, if you could believe it? You won’t need to break his nose.”

“Why would I need to—” a pit like the Grand Canyon filled my stomach, “Oh my god, did I—? Did Mark—?”

Neither of them said anything. A moment passed before Megumi looked at me with sad eyes, their testimony enough for the jury to pass a conviction.

The pit in my stomach filled with bile and acid. 

If I ever saw that son of a bitch again, I’d do a lot more than break his nose. I looked down at my hand, and suddenly felt the ornate grooves of a punch bowl on the tips of my fingers. I suspected the reason for this, but kept it to myself.

Beth hadn’t answered my question, though: “Do you love him?”

Quietly, “Yes.”

“Are you in love with him?”

Beth sat on the lonely witness stand and said nothing.

The jury would have known whether she was lying or not.

 

***

 

December 16, 2023: 

 

I did not get my fifth consecutive day of shower sex last night, obviously. Michael remained in the bedroom with me—having slept with me every night of the week since our second first time sleeping together—but the bed had been cold. Dead. 

I suppose it was the cost of being a colossal cunt to one’s sister.

I woke up ahead of Michael to make breakfast, hoping to try to make up for my embarrassing behavior from last night. It was the first time I had gotten a really good look at the fridge in the week and a half since waking up as without my memories: there wasn’t a drop of alcohol in the house. Ugh.

Maybe I could pick some up later?

When Michael eventually woke up, he looked conflicted. All I really knew how to make was eggs and toast, and even the yarn I had spun of knowing how to make toast had been shifty, at best. The scrambled eggs were tough and the toast—my taste buds suspected—had just been in a fire fight in France, during the war. 

Michael downed my cooking, anyway.

“Bread makes you fat,” a little voice in the back of my head reminded me. I put a buttery, quarter-eaten piece of hellfire charred toast down on my plate and elected to enjoy my rubbery eggs, instead.

While Michael and I both sat on the couch while the television played some scripted-unscripted episode at low volume in the background, the mood was terribly off. It felt like the couch had grown several miles longer over night, placing me and Michael on opposite ends of the country altogether. 

“I’m sorry about how I acted last night,” I finally said. It had to be said, at some point.

“Thank y—I appreciate the apology.”

I wasn’t sure he was supposed to say that, just because I was saying the thing I was supposed to say, anyway, but I took the win and kept quiet.

“You should apologize to your sister, too.”

“Umm…I mean, I did last night and all—”

“You should do it again. Take her out for lunch or something. Shopping. Whatever sisters do.”

‘Sisters’—hah. When had we ever truly been sisters?

Even so, I wasn’t sure how to read Michael’s tone of voice. He just sounded very hurt and withdrawn, and it hurt me to see him like this. He was my guy, my one piece of proof that men could be normal and have emotions and not call me a faggot or hit me or tear off my dre—

“—Mikey, do you wanna get out and explore the town today?”

“Huh?”

No, no, it was my fault. I had hurt Mikey, too. Who the hell wanted to watch their girlfriend being so cruel to someone? Especially her own sister?

“I mean, I haven’t had a chance to get out and see how things have changed, y’know? I haven’t been back to Gravelly Lake since I moved to Seattle in August 2013, after all,” sound sweet. Sound innocent. Sound fun and chipper. Michael has to know I can do better. Be better.

Michael considered his options in silence, save for chewing his rubbery eggs, “Sure,” he answered, swallowing my shitty cooking, “That might be nice.”

God, did I hope it would be.

 

***

 

December 16, 2023: 

 

In 1953, Gravelly Lake’s Mama Dee became a wealthy widow after her husband—the young heir to the Jameson family fortune—passed away unexpectedly. Using her newfound wealth, Mama Dee opened up the town’s first hang-out for teens and other youth, Mama’s Malts. The chic shop was the length and width of what would one day become known as a strip mall and situated on a plot of land not too far behind the high school—itself at the edge of the city. Mama's saw its income supplemented by a gas station run by an industrious and trusted group of teens—led by the snappy George Waters. The scrappy bunch convinced Mama to let them operate the gas station by themselves, with hopes of someday turning it into a proper mechanic's garage. It wasn’t long after that George and his friends managed to set up their shop. Mama Dee was famously pleased to see the additional revenue—bolstered by a lack of competition and a surplus of unserviced folks at the town's edge—bring the property taxes on the plot of land to their knees. 

Additional patronage from the nearby wealthy families living on the coast just outside of town only made the whole outfit that much more flush with cash.

Over all, Mama's had been a lovely little escape for the youth of the 1950s and 1960s to escape from their parents in a world before mass television, before the internet, and before the smart phone. Mama’s changed with the times over the decades, sliding further from its original 1950s aesthetics over the years into both a record shop and indoor minigolf, then adding an arcade in the 1980s, before entering its golden years in a tired, quieter early 2000s as a hodgepodge of services including arcade cabinets long past their prime and a series of makeshift batting cages already third-hand at that point.

Rumor had it that Mama had even hosted a Nirvana concert in the 1990s.

Mama’s closed down when the recession of 2008 hit, its matron having herself passed at the turn of the century and its successor—George Waters—no longer able to keep the place afloat amidst the economic downturn.

In 2012, Waters’ equally industrious daughter, Millie, reopened Mama’s as a manga café, attracting every queer and self-proclaimed otaku from four towns over for its relaxing atmosphere, free manga to read, decent enough non-alcoholic beverages, and array of bodega cats with no keep to earn in the well-kept building.

I recalled the cats being nevertheless very popular among the catgirls and other visitors the few times I had snuck in after school instead of going straight home to masturbate to hentai, or worse: transgender fiction. 

Any new shine of paint that Mama’s Manga Café might have taken on eleven years ago had long faded, however. The overall structure of the building remained what it was when it had been built seventy years prior, which gave it a degree of charm, but the myriad of trinkets, manga, and other Things To Do, kept the outfit looking bright, colorful and alive. A lot like Mama was said to have been, actually.

Michael and I browsed the densely packed together rows and rows of manga while I nursed a small green apple smoothie that I had bought up front. I wasn’t sure I had the space in our shitty apartment to buy any manga as it was, but I could at least give back to the shop by purchasing a smoothie.

Ugh, it was probably way too much sugar, though. 

Michael flipped idly through a copy of Berserk, while I stood around looking like the normie straight, blonde bimbo girlfriend to a man who appreciated a good action manga. Dressing like a slutty Sorority girl probably didn’t help, but, well, fuck it—I didn’t dress slutty enough when I was in college. I think? I don’t remember all that well, given the whole amnesia thing. 

The irony that I was in actuality a bigger manga and anime nerd than Michael was something I was very aware of. I still couldn’t believe he watched dubbed anime!

When…had he told me that, again?

I could tell that Michael was still trying to loosen up after last night, and desperation was mounting in me to speed that up, so I found myself pulling random volumes off of the shelves and reading the descriptions on the back in funny voices to try and make him laugh.

“Omigawd, so, like, this one, is about, like, these two really hawt twinks who're trying to outwit the other one and undercover their i-den-titties and also, they're like, so obvs in love and should make out and stuff! But also, like, the one with the dye job should obviously get on HRT already, ‘cause, like, I've seen the way that prissy bitch treats the straight girls in her life with, like, zero interest, but also she's got those big boobie magazines she looks at and, like, GIRL, samesies!”

The bimbo voice earned me a brief smirk. My oasis.

I couldn’t shake the feeling that Michael was still being weighed down, though.

Turning the corner from one row to the next, I found a group of teenagers huddled around one another giggling and immediately recognized them: they were students of mine.

Not wanting to be perceived on my day off—especially while wearing a key hole top I had expressly picked to keep Michael’s attention on my tits—I turned around like I was being yanked back by a master fisherman and bounced chest-first straight into Michael’s rock-hard torso as he followed me around the corner.

The little squeak I made was enough to tip the group of kids off to my presence.

“Oh, hi Miss Queen! Coach Summers!!” Claire—accompanied by Andi, Isaac and Drake—waved and walked over, blowing my cover. “I didn’t realize you were into manga?”

What, was I a boring teacher? “Oh, uh, yeah. Kind of hard not to be when you’re my age,” I laughed the awkwardness of the comment off. A week ago, I might have considered this kid a peer, but now that gap between us just felt wider than ever before. I was still trying to figure out exactly when I had become an adult, but there was no denying that I truly was one now.

I wasn’t sure it was more professional or not, so I took a step to the side to put some distance between Michael and I, but that just felt weird, so I stepped back and just held his hand, “You kids have fun, but also, pretend you didn’t see us here, yeah?”

‘Kids’ was a weird thing to say to a group of eighteen year olds, but it wasn’t like they were anything like me, either, so I decided to not question the choice of words too much.

Michael—wrapping his right arm around my waist in the way a boyfriend wrapped his arm around his girlfriend to show off a little—added, “We’ll see you kids on Monday, yeah?” and then guided me away towards the forest of figure display cases.

In the distance, the thumping of several pairs of feet rushed up behind us. An out-of-breath Isaac led the pack, wrapped in a yellow dress that contrasted with her boyfriend's—Drake's—typically over-the-top Gothic look.

My eyes shot up into a polite look of interest, one the past week of teaching had taught me was well ingrained in my mannerisms, “Yes, dear?”

Don't look annoyed, don't look annoyed, don’t look annoyed!

With a strained swallow, Isaac opened her mouth, struggled to keep her eyes up, and then finally just came right out with it: “Paula.”

“Huh?”

“I chose my new name,” the girl was taking on the shade of a tomato, “I'm—my name's Paula now!” The brown-haired girl nervously tucked a strand of her long hair behind her left ear as she clutched her selection of reading material in her right.

I couldn’t remember when I had chosen my name, but it was hard not to envy the joy the young woman before me was feeling, “I'm so proud of you, Paula!”

It felt surreal to be the touchy-feely type—to embrace a younger person who looked up to me, but my body apparently felt differently, as it wrapped my arms around her and poured all the congratulations it could into her.

Even the usually serious-looking Drake seemed to show his heart on his sleeve a bit by offering the world around him a proud smile. 

Jeez, his skin looked oddly good. Almost like he was—

—when Paula backed off after our embrace ended, I noticed a similar glow on her face.

Were…were these kids on estrogen?

“Oh, shoot!” Andi—Claire's girlfriend—spat out, “Hey, if we're gonna make that movie, we better hit the road pronto!”

Two sets of eyes—those of Claire and Paula—burst out of their sockets as the four teens looked around at one another to determine their course of action. 

“Don’t let us keep you four,” I offered, looking to avoid prolonging any awkward interactions, “Go have fun, or whatever!”

The four queers nodded and waved their goodbyes, before storming off for the checkout counter up front.

It must have been nice, being able to be out as teenagers.

 

***

 

December 16, 2023:

 

On the way to the other side of the building, I dumped the rest of my small smoothie into a trash bin and attempted to focus on the afterglow of Michael’s arm around my waist.

“I guess I should have mentioned that we’d probably be recognized here,” Michael chuckled darkly.

“Of course you would be recognized,” I snorted, “You dress like a coach, even on your days off!”

“And you dress like a slut, memories or not,” Michael’s hand slid a little further down, flirting with an ass grab.

“As if you don’t likey, Mikey,” I wrapped my arms tighter around the shit-talker, flaunting a little boob by letting the left side graze Michael’s own side boob.

It was so much fun being gay—bisexual! And a girl!

The boyfriend and I passed by rows of figures, all locked up in glass cases out of their boxes on full display. The plethora of glass cases had perhaps seen shinier days. Some figures were clearly bootlegs—given the quality—but gooners hardly cared, especially if they were going to be putting said figures in a jar full of their cum. 

It sucked not having any room in your shitty, tiny little apartment for any kind of hobby collecting. As a teenager, I had managed to collect some manga, but those were surely all gone, now.

When the hell were we going to be able to afford a new place, anyway?

“Hey, Mikey?”

“Yeah, babe?”

“Why are we still living in a shithole, again?”

“Uh…promise you won't blame yourself?”

“Huh? Uh, sure, I guess?”

“You’re in debt. A lot. Medical bills and stuff. You’re also scheduled for, uh, you know—that. This summer.”

Wait…was I getting a pussy this summer? Holy fucking shit?! “Are you saying what I think you’re saying, Mikey?”

“Taco time—” Michael confirmed, as stealthily and succinctly as possible

“—Time to get stuffed,” I finished, almost automatically. Two dumb grins spontaneously blossomed across our faces.

I suppose it made sense, though. I'd already de-cherry'd the tree, I might as well cut down the hollowed-out, dead wood and soil the ground. 

That was a terrible analogy.

“I…wow. I guess that makes sense.”

“Are you still okay with it?”

“Huh? Oh, gawsh, yeah, yeah, I—I guess I've already admitted this to you, so maybe I can say it, even without my memories.”

Michael remained silent, respectfully.

“Michael…uh, so—” I wasn't sure how to look him in the eye, so I stared at some ¼ scale figure of a pregnant anime girl, clutching her massively swollen belly, “—growing up—what little of it I can remember—I, uh, really wanted to be a girl.”

Michael smiled.

“I would never say it, but I could remember all those silly stories I would read—and even write—about a boy turning into a girl. My favorite was when she would be able to get pregnant.”

My right hand betrayed me and rubbed my flat, pudgeless stomach. 

As a teenager, the fleshiness had just reminded me of what I couldn’t have.

An echo rang throughout my mind, “I hated being a boy. It was like I was being forced into a role I never had a choice over.”

My right hand curled into a ball on my stomach, as if I was trying to grab something, but that something was not there to grab.

“God, Michael, I—”

I sniffled and wiped away the tears attempting their prison break before they had a chance to make it past my eyelids. Michael brought me in closer, to feed me his warmth.

There would be no warmth from our children to do the same.

 

***

 

December 16, 2023: 

 

I felt fat after eating Michael's cooking last night. In truth, I had barely touched my food, but the sensation of the meat sliding down my throat was not the sexy kind, but rather the kind that reminded me that I was eating.

Michael had said at some point over the past week or so that I battled eating disorders in the past, but I had been ‘doing better lately’, which could only mean that the stress of losing my memories had been sending me back into my old habits.

Grocery shopping didn't make things easier.

Michael filled the cart with all the things Michael needed to work his magic in the kitchen.

Candace tried not to purge when she saw the $7 bag of Cool Ranch Doritos on the endcap. 

While Michael compared prices between protein powder, I slipped away out of his sight and immediately click-clacked my way through the grocery store to the back restrooms. Slipping into the unoccupied family restroom, I locked the door, lifted the toilet seat, pulled back my hair, and bent over.

Sticking a finger into the back of my throat, I elicited a purge and aimed it straight into the toilet. The smell was nearly as bad as the taste of the acidic fire rushing up my throat and out of my mouth.

I couldn’t remember where I had learned that. Was it something Old Candace picked up during the ten years I could not remember? Either way, the little voice in my head said all the right things, “That’s a good girlypop. You should have done that last night, though.”

Falling back onto my ass—and instantly regretting allowing my bright pink skirt to come in contact with the god-knows-how-dirty tile floor of the restroom—I sobbed into my palms

“Why the fuck am I like this?” I whispered through the dregs of stomach acid still burning my throat.

Blowing my nose into a bundle of coarse paper towels, I checked my makeup in the mirror, washed my hands, and then rejoined the outside world.

My walk reduced to a stiff shuffle, I spotted Michael flirting with an endcap display for granola bars and joined him by his side, “Michael, can we hurry up?”

“Huh? Are you okay, Candace?”

“I feel sick around all this food,” a cold sweat borne of the pores on my back was picking a fight with my top, pulling the thin pink fabric towards it.

“Shit, yeah, let's go.”

Michael made quick work at the self-checkout and kept an arm around me while guiding me back to his shitty car.

Once safely buckled into the carseat, I pulled the lever to lean back and did my damndest to not moan or groan.

“I'm sorry, Candi,” a beat, “I should have seen the symptoms sooner.”

“Huh?”

“You've barely eaten since last night, when you indulged in petty behavior that I haven't seen from you in years. Are you sure you’re doing okay?”

“I'll live,” I groaned, my reflexes a naughty child. 

“Okay, okay, just—just let me know, okay? If you need help. With anything.”

In a better world, I think Michael would have been easily able to heal what ailed me.

Unfortunately, this world would never be anything more than cruel.

 

***

 

December 16, 2023: 

 

Laying on my bed—with the buzz of a fan to muffle any movements or sounds I might have made—I swiped through my phone for any more clues as to who I might have once been. What did Candace Queen once know, but had forgotten? Clearly, my relationships with Megumi and Beth were both very complicated, but what about my cousins? In fact, the only member of the vast Woods family that I had ever really been close to was Elliot. Penelope had always been a little too much older than me—hell, she was dead now—apparently murdered by her transgender daughter, whom I had been much closer to in comparison.

Clive was, of course, a boorish ass.

That left Elliot, then, to try and touch base with. Sifting through my contacts list, I found Elliot’s phone number: blocked, much to my concern. What the hell was I doing before I got amnesia? Unblocking Elliot’s number, I decided to make a phone call, just in case:

“Oh my God, Candace?” A woman’s voice answered, “Candace, is that you?”

“Umm…yes? I’m sorry, I’m looking for my cousin, E—”

“Oh, nyooooo!”

“What?”

“Oh jeez, can you meet us for dinner?!”

“What?!”

“Can you?”

“Uh, like, yeah? What is going—who are—?!”

“—I transitioned, dearest cousin!”

Was my life a sitcom?

 

***

 

December 16, 2023: 

 

I loathed the fact that I was being forced back into an environment with food. The delicious aroma of Italian food marched up my nose like a marching band of bipedal pink elephants, beating their drums and playing their trumpets as they jollyingly played a little jingle. It was horrifying. 

Even smelling the carbs permeating through the air of the establishment left me feeling like I was gaining weight. 

Michael guided me up to the fancy podium thingy that you had to walk up to to ask the guy standing behind it to seat you. I felt like I was barely hearing the conversation that Michael and the well-dressed man—with dark, slicked back hair—were having. I just stood there—Michael’s protective right arm wrapped around my blessedly tiny waist—and left my eyes peering at a nearby cushioned bench, waiting for Michael to finish and for us to move to our table.

“You know, we don’t have to do this tonight, if you don’t want to,” Michael whispered as he guided me into my seat.

My hands knew what to do, immediately smoothing out my pink cocktail dress. My body had basically dressed itself after I told Michael about our new plans for the evening.

“No, no, it’s fine. I’m fine,” lies sounded so much sweeter with a woman’s voice. 

Michael took the seat at the table to my left and held my hand, which had seen fit to make itself lay idly on the table. I was glad that he kept his large, masculine hands so well-moisturized. The smoothness of his touch against the smoothness of my backhand felt like touching a nice fabric.

It grounded me, anchoring me to the now.

I remembered so little of my time with Michael and yet all of my senses told me everything I needed to know about him: he was the love of my life. I don’t know why in the fuck I would ever dump him. I needed him to propose again. He could do it right here, right now, and I would burst into tears and say ‘yes’.

The tears were already locked and loaded.

Turning to Michael, I forced my best smile, despite how jittery I was from the cold. I didn’t know why the hell I had chosen such a revealing dress—besides to show off a line of deep, expensive, silicone cleavage, but all that was swept away as I looked at the kindness in his eyes.

They were the one part of his body not covered in black. I had managed to get Michael out of those shorts of his, but at the cost of the sight of his sexy, muscular legs. The long-sleeve black dress shirt and pants were a gorgeous look for the man, however. He would surely look divine in a tuxedo.

“I love you, Mikey,” part of me still felt like such a faggot for calling Michael by such a cutesy nickname, but goddamn it—I loved being a faggot. 

Michael’s touch turned warmer and his grip around my long, mannish fingers grew tighter: “I love you, too, Candi.” His voice was a gentle whisper, bearing weight and wear that I could sense, but not define.

Before I could say anything else, a catgirl with dark blue hair, killer tits, and a cute black dress cut to impress pounced from behind and startled Michael and I.The girl had a smile as wide as the Grand Canyon and as toothy as an autistic catgirl.

“Hiya, nyaa!” The girl danced in place as a sharply dressed man approached her from behind.

“Uh…sorry, who are—wait?! Are you—?!”

“It’s Tabby, nyaa! Candi’s cousinyaa!”

My eyes just about popped out of their sockets at the complete transformation. The cousin I had remembered was far more withdrawn.

“Tabitha, you might want to tone it down,” a smooth voiced man with spiked, black hair dressed in a nice, black suit slipped around Tabby and placed his hands on her shoulders gently, “How about we sit, yeah?” The slick man had a smile that could turn water into wine and a lilt to his voice that gave him an air of confident friendliness that I had only ever heard before with Michael when he was teasing me: the man knew he had it made.

“Uh…sorry, I think I’m a little lost here…Tabby, right?”

“Yeah, nyaa—sorry, uh, yeah. This is my husband, Jace!” The young woman moved and spoke with a cadence as if she was still a teenager, despite being twenty-eight. 

I turned back to the man with a magnificent mustache and was greeted with a peace sign. He wore alternating black and purple nail polish, “Hiya, it’s nice to finally meet you, I’m Jason Martinez."

More than a little stunlocked, I held out my hand automatically, “Uh…sorry, um, I’m Candace Queen.”

“Oh wow, you really did change your family name!” Tabby sat perched on her chair, holding her knees close to her chest, “That’s so cool! I changed mine, too, when I married Jace!”

“I’m…sorry, sorry, uh—” I turned to Michael, not sure how to speak with my head swimming, “Tabby?”

“Yeah, nyaa?”

“I’m…I have amnesia, actually.”

My cousin and her husband looked more than a little taken aback, “Woah, like—you don’t remember anything?”

“Mostly, I don’t remember anything from December sixth of 2013 up until December sixth of 2023.”

“That is insane. How the hell did that happenyaa?!?!”

“She accidentally got hit in the head by a stray volleyball.”

“Wow, nyaa, that’s insane, nyaa!”

“My wife does that when she’s excited!”

“Nyaa!”

“Oh, no problem at all. Reminds me a bit of Rachel, honestly.”

“OH. MY. GAWD! You heard about her, right?”

“Yeah, Mikey told me—it sounds insane!”

“Uncle Allistair was so pissed, from what I’ve heard from the grapevine.”

“About Rachel being trans or his daughter being murdered?”

Tabby snorted in laughter, which told me just about all I needed to know about Uncle Allistair’s reaction.

“You look amazing, by the way!”

“Girl, you look like a million bucks!”

“Yeah, that’s why I’m a million bucks in debt!”

“Omigawd, Candi!”

My life had become an anthology of surreal episodes strung together by a common theme. It was no different now—talking to Tabby like this. The cousin I remembered was a lot more of a sullen, withdrawn kid, keeping his—her—head down, living a life of being in the myriad of shadows cast by older siblings or the recipient of bullying from their prick friends. As the youngest of the cousins, she had been burdened with quite a legacy to follow up throughout school.

Now, she was just a giggly catgirl…with a husband. Wild.

“So, like, uh…I’m an English teacher now, if you didn’t know that?”

“Oh, I figured. You told me you were majoring in education years ago, although I’m surprised you aren’t doing Onyaa Fans!”

I ignored that last part, “Right, right, uh…yeah. It’s kinda wild, but I enjoy it. It forces me to be, like, a responsible adult and stuff. I never thought I’d be one of those, though.”

“Oh gawd, I know what you mean. I’m an endocrinologist, which means I have to put my serious girl hat on most of the time!”

“Wait, you’re a doctor?”

“Yup! Dr. Tabitha Martinez! I like to make trans people’s dreams come true!”

“That’s wild, congratulations, I guess?”

The theatrical twin-tailed girl nodded her head like she was closing a stage performance, “Thank you, thank you!”

Jace watched his wife’s performance with a wry smile.

“So, uh…it’s nice to meet you, Jace.”

“It’s nice to meet you, too, Candi. I’m sorry we never found the time to meet before.”

“Pfft, don’t be, dear, I wouldn’t remember it even if we did,” the three of them gave me the chuckle I was reaching for. Turning to Jace, “Thank you for taking care of—fuck, ugh—Tabby! There!” 

“Don’t worry about it, Candi Candi! I can tell you’re processing, like, a lot!”

Michael interjected before I could reply, “She’s been under a lot of stress lately, what with the memory loss and all that.” His grip around my hand only grew warmer and firmer, like he was afraid I was going to blow away in the wind. No chance of doing that with watermelons as ripe as mine, though.

A waiter finally appeared and took our order. I ordered a basic salad, but kept the conversation going so as not to draw attention to my choice of food, “So, Jace! How are you keeping my dear cousin financially liquid?” Please laugh, please laugh, please laugh, please—

“Pfft, Tabs makes way more than me,” Jace weakly placed his water back on the table, taking care not to spill it from his chuckle, “I’m a zoo veterinarian, though.”

“Woah, that’s wild?”

“Savage pun, I love it—I mean, like, it sucks needing to commute to Seattle so much, but it’s worth the work.”

“I spend so much time at the hospital that it’s not like he’s leaving me at home, though,” Tabby’s voice was decidedly mature for once. It was an interesting shift from the pitchy catgirl voice. 

“Any animals?” Then, I ventured where I should not: “Kids?”

That killed the mood really well.

“Oh, uh, I’m sorry, did I—?”

“Oh, no, no, no,” Tabby interjected, reaching across the table to take my hand in hers, “We just—uh—”

“—What she means,” Jace replied, his voice deliberant, “Is that we might adopt someday, but for now, that’s not something we’re concerned about.”

Oh God, what the fuck was I thinking? Tabby was trans and married to a man, of course they’d have to adopt! “Oh gawsh, Tabs, I’m sorry, I wasn’t—”

“—Honey, you’re fine. It’s not a big deal at all!”

For some reason, I didn’t believe her, “I’m—I know how you feel, I swear, not being able to get preg—I mean—I—”

Tears washed away at my makeup, smearing the war paint as they overwhelmed the border that was my eyelids and streaked down my face. Why was I crying? Why did my chest ache so much? Each breath felt like inhaling fiery ash from a volcano. 

My body stood on its own and the next thing my mind recorded was the inside of a toilet bowl, blue with an aromatic cleaner. 

Tabby was not far behind.

“Candi, are you okay?” A comforting hand rubbed my back as I tried—but failed—to initiate a purge into the disabled stall’s toilet. “Candi, don’t—”

“Fuck off, bitch!” I shouted, swiping Tabitha’s hand away. I accidentally cut my right backhand with her dark blue acrylic nails.

As far as I could tell from my view crouched on the title floor of the toilet stall, Tabitha remained standing above me, silent.  

Neither of us said anything for what felt like an eternity.

“I’m sorry.”

“You sure say that a lot.”

“I know.”

“Do you really not remember the last ten years?”

“I—I don’t know. It’s like, my body will just move on its own, sometimes. If I’m not thinking, it’s like it’s all still there, but—”

“It probably isn’t a physical issue, then.”

“Huh?”

“Like, your brain, you know? It’s not physiological, it’s psychological. Your mind is blocking your memories.”

“What’s that supposed to mean, Doc? That I’m intentionally not remembering?”

“Subconciously, more like. I dunno, I’m an endocrinologist, not a psychologist.” 

“Thanks, Bones. Pfft.”

“I’m not calling you Captain Kirk, but—have you seen a—well, were you seeing a therapist before all this started?”

“I dunno. I don’t see any appointments in my calendar and Michael hasn’t mentioned it.”

“Jesus Christ, Candace, did you ever ask Michael—or yourself—why we’re not close anymore?”

“I was hoping you could tell me, actually.”

Tabby crossed her arms and looked to the side to watch the drywall peel, “Sweetie, you had this big blowup at the family Christmas party six years ago.”

“Yeah, I kind of heard about that, but I still don’t—”

“—You got so plastered that Michael had to carry you out while you were still shouting incoherently about how gay you were. You stopped replying to my calls and texts a few days later and that…was that, you know?” Tears welled up in Tabby’s eyes, “Girl, you’re—you’re like a—”

I wanted to kill myself right then and there. Stumbling back up onto my feet, I wrapped my arms around Tabitha and held her tight, “I’m sorry, I’m sorry, I’m so sorry.”

We both stood there in the stall, sobbing.

And sobbing.

And sobbing.

 

***

 

December 16, 2023:

 

It was exhausting, but I managed to text Michael not to worry about us. Tabitha and I were sitting on that god awful bathroom floor, propped up against the wall and one another, resting. My voice felt fried, so I said nothing.

“I want to thank you, you know,” Tabby’s voice wasn’t much stronger.

“For what?”

“For being yourself.”

“Wh-what?”

“I know you weren’t, like, out-out, but it still meant a lot to me, to see you transitioning.”

“Oh gawsh, honey, do you mean—?”

“I mean, like…I was jealous. Really, really jealous of you. When you were just, like, doing it, you know? Just taking feminizing hormone replacement therapy and shit, you know?”

“I’m—well, I’m sure the old Candace knew—yeah.”

She giggled at my choice of words, but I wasn’t sure I would ever understand what about it was so funny, “I wasn’t sure if, you know, I could do it? I was so scared that Dad was going to pitch a shitfit over me being bisexual that I never even considered adding being transgender to the list. But when he accepted me and Jace—I, well—”

“I guess—” a flash, like a frame out of context, Tabby, all those years earlier, saying all those things—garbled sounds unpinning her voice, distorting it, but nevertheless, still there: Uncle Andrew supported her having a boyfriend. Supported her being bisexual. She told me. At—she told me, six years ago. Right, right, right—

“Unlike my dad, your dad’s a piece of shit, in more ways than you can imagine, Candace.”

I rubbed my temples, trying quietly and nonchalantly to soothe my blaring, thumping headache, “Am I missing some context?”

The beating of a drum in my head would not stop, but I nevertheless pushed it aside.

“You’re missing a lot, babes,” Tabby’s Serious Business voice was so strikingly sultry that if she spoke to baking supplies they would probably assemble themselves into a red velvet cake all on their own.

“Fuck.”

Tabby took a deep breath, smiled weakly, then continued: “I was already on HRT the last time we spoke, actually.”

“Not that I remember that, but…really?”

“Yeah, just two weeks. I decided to toss caution to the wind and make my relationship a cute little tee-for-tee couple.”

“Huh?”

“Trans-for-Trans, nyaa.”

“I’m not following?”

“Jace is a trans man, which Old Candace knew, so don’t worry.”

“Woah, that’s cool?!”

“Very cool, yeah. Anyway, you made that possible, Candace.”

“Oh, gawd, Tabby, I—I don’t know what to say?!”

“Not ‘I’m sorry’, that’s for damn sure, nyaa!”

Like a well rehearsed stage production, Tabby and I broke out into a fit of powerful giggles, our bodies literally falling all over one another as we grew too weak to prop ourselves up.

“Oh my gawd, Tabs!” Who is this happy, unrestrained princess of a woman?

“Sorry, sorry, it’s just—”

“—it’s just that now you’re apologizing!” How am I her?

“Pfft! Fuck all the way off, bitch!”

“You fuck off!” How is she simply a woman, like all the women I longed to be one of growing up?

We collapsed on one another again.

“Candace?”

“Yeah?” 

“You’re an amazing sister.”

“Wh-what?”

“I mean, that’s basically what you are to me. Might as well say it.”

Tears clawed their way past my eyelids yet again, “But, I’m such a bit—”

“—Candace?”

“Yeah?”

“Who gives a shit?”

If I was going to be sticking around, then I needed to start acting like the best sister possible—not just for Tabby, but for a lot of people.

 

***

 

December 16, 2023: 

 

Michael’s eyes appreciated my figure as I retook the unimpressive padded seat next to him. The poor little visual knowledge acquisition spheres traced their way up my surgically enhanced physique with the sort of thinly veiled lust a figure such as mine was deserving from her partner, before settling on my face, and acknowledging that yes—my makeup was freshly applied. 

From the brief glance I took at Jace—with his stupid look of peaceful worship—he had noticed the same of his charming catgirl wife.

“Sorry we didn’t wait for you girls,” Jace replied, idly tapping his right hand’s fingers on the table top as if he didn’t know what to do with them.

“We told you to eat, don’t worry about it,” I replied, assessing the battlefront before me. My salad looked like it had been fighting a losing war with the exposed air of the restaurant. Hardly a surprise to see it looking wetter and soggier than a pervert’s taste in men.

Settled back in our chairs, Tabby and I exchanged a knowing look before she dug into her pasta. The sauce had probably been steaming when it was brought out from the kitchen, three presidents ago.

“Jace was just telling me how they took a vacation in Japan over the summer.”

“Woah, that’s awesome!”

“Yeah,” Tabby said between swallows, “It was so gorgeous over there. And the lolita dresses I saw were so cute!! Aaah!!!”

“Wow, you’re going to make me jealous, Tabs,” I laughed.

“Pfft, as if we both don’t know you aren’t definitely jealous!”

I rolled my eyes, “I mean, we’ve only been talking about it since we were little girls, after all.”

“Yeah, yeah, lay the guilt on thick, Onee-sama!!”

“Oh my god, Tabitha, I swear to gawd—”

“Onee-sama, Onee-sama!! INAZUMA KICK—!!”

My foot flung forward, showing the cringey weeb how a real Inazuma Kick—to the shin!—felt, “Hush, you!”

“I’m glad you two are doing well,” Michael mused, jaw resting in palm. The look of smug satisfaction was welcoming, like the first day of a Washington summer.

“Congrats, Mikey! You’ve finally seen me not in a tense mood today!” I giggled, leaned to my side, and gingerly kissed the big meathead on his inviting lips. The taste of marinara sauce remained on his breath.

“Not to ruin the mood, of course,” Tabby took a swish of her wine, “But I figure that I could probably fill you in on some, uh, Woods family tea before you find out from someone else.”

“What do you mean?”

“I mean, you haven’t spoken to Beth lately, have you?”

“Uh…not in a way where she really opened up to me about…anything. Also, ‘tea’?”

“Oh, gawd,” Tabby took another drink, like she was bracing for something, “You’re going to want to sit for this one. Also, right, you’re behind on slang—’tea’ means ‘gossip’!”

“I’m already seated, Tabitha.”

“Right, shit—don’t say the meme, Tabs—fuck—” Jace took her hand in his, like a good husband, “So, like…this is—there really is no good way to tell you this.”

I braced myself. Michael held my hand before I even had a chance to fidget.

“Candace, your mother is dead.”

Time stopped before Tabby could even finish her sentence. Nothing seemed real. I was nineteen again—no, I had never stopped being nineteen. Nine. A child, unsoiled by puberty. I could hear nothing. I could see nothing. I could think of nothing. The people and world around me were barely stable blobs of water colors, jiggling—wobbling—endlessly, like I was underwater.

Underwater: I couldn’t breathe. I felt only the dull impact of something—my right hand—thudding atop my chest. I looked down—or tried to—and saw my hand melting into the flesh of my chest. More and more and more, until my hand melted down to my wrist, then further and further and further I melted into myself, my arm, my shoulder, and all that followed until—

“Honey, are you there?”

Tabitha was doing some doctor thing—checking my vision for any signs of conscious thought or whatever people did with little flashlights. Her phone case was pink and had an anime-style catgirl printed onto it. Finally, I blinked and was back, at Luigi’s Italian Restaurant. Very original name. Right, right, right—

“—Candi?” Michael’s voice called for me, his hand a vice grip over mine. Tears welled behind his eyelids, threatening to escape and water his reddened face.

Focus, focus, focus!

“H-how did it happen?” What I heard of my voice sounded like the quietest whisper of a little girl. Part of my brain wanted to squeal from the gender euphoria, the other part reeled at the shift in my reality.

“It was ruled an accident. She was drunk and alone at the mansion and fell down the main stairs,” Tabitha’s was that serious kind of voice that seemed almost flat, but her intense stare was like a propane fire, armed and dangerous.

“Oh,” I whispered back, “That—that makes sense, for her,” a beat, “I guess. Yeah.”

Michael asked the question that I would have asked next, “When?”

“Last night, apparently.”

“Wow, it’s not every day you find out that your mother is dead,” I retorted, my voice strangely upbeat, “Huh. Weird.”

“Candi—”

“Girl, how do you—?”

“Wow, just…huh. Yeah. Okay. My mom died in a drunken stupor,” an awkward laugh escaped my mouth, which only confused me more, “I mean, yeah. It makes sense. It makes a lot of sense, actually. She was always drunk growing up. I guess I would be, too, if I was married to Arthur Woods. Gawd, Mikey, like, you don’t know this—I don’t think—probably—or whatever—but my dad used to say and do the most horrible shit to me, Beth and Mom. See this burn on my right arm? Once, he put his cigar out on my—”

Suddenly, Michael was holding me, sobbing. His big, strong hands rubbed my back—like he was trying to press me into his chest and merge our bodies like two puddles of water combining. Michael sobbed words I could not understand. I could not figure out what emotion I was supposed to be feeling, so I sat rigidly in his embrace. I looked to my right and saw Tabby being consoled by Jace, who had his arm wrapped around her. She was going to ruin her makeup again, the silly girl.

I needed a drink so, so fucking bad.

“I bet the old man’s happy,” more whimpering spiked up into my ears, “Yeah, probably out celebrating by fucking his secretary or a mistress or whatever. I mean, I don’t think I’d ever seen him genuinely show Mom any love or romance her, you know? Like, God, Mikey’s so much better at that!” I turned back to Michael and pulled his head off of my shoulder, giving him the same thousand mile stare I had been giving the wall behind Tabby, “Gawd, you’d be an amazing husband. When are you going to propose to me, anyway? Oh, right, you did that once already and I said no because—because…”

A lump caught in my throat—I couldn’t breathe! I couldn’t even bring my hands up to my chest or throat to grab at them. Everything was silent, yet loud at the same time. I opened my mouth, but I had no voice. 

Yet more proof that I was truly a woman, surely.

“Candace?” Mikey’s deep voice sounded so funny when it cracked.

“Because—oh, gawd, Michael!”

My head poured my face into Michael’s chest. His bear hug only tightened around me as he pulled me in. Oh fucking hell, we were in public! I was making a scene in public again! Sobbing into my boyfriend’s loving embrace, for all the world to see. My entire body ached, like I had run a marathon for fourteen hours. God help me if a parent of one of my kids saw me like this.

I pulled myself together and slipped back off of Michael, sniffled my cute little $20,000 nose, and straightened my dress out. Taking a sip of water, I cleared my voice, took a deep breath, then exhaled, “I’m okay, you three. Sorry about th—” crack! “—at!”

Chipper, chipper, chipper! Women were supposed to be chipper, right? After all, that was how Mother always did it.

She had been the best.

And now, I was the best.

 

***

 

December 16, 2023: 

 

It was December, so of course the parking lot was cold as shit. I hadn’t brought a warm enough coat with me, so Michael held me close as I wore his while we parted ways with Tabby and Jace. If my breasts hadn’t been so large, it could have wrapped fully around me.

“Sorry about breaking down in public like that,” I beamed. Laughing made it easier to ignore the pain.

“Candace…” Tabby still looked so sad, which was weird since I was smiling broad as a billboard. 

“We should do this again, babe! Only, y’know, without me breaking down sobbing a bunch!”

Tabby pouted, took her hand off of the passenger side door of Jace’s SUV—perhaps they went camping often?—and rushed over to me for a big, strong hug. It felt nice.

Tabby smelled like spring.

“I love you, Candi.”

“I love you too, Tabby,” I whispered back into her ear. She had numerous piercings in it, Goth but still professionally acceptable, I'm sure. 

I hated when the embrace ended.

“Text me regularly, yeah?”

“Will do, sis!” All I did was hurt her, so I probably wouldn’t. Still, it was nice to pretend I deserved being so close to her.

Michael and I moved aside so that Jace could back his car out of their parking spot, which gave Tabby enough time to roll her window down and shout, “Candi!”

“Yeah?!”

“LIVE!”

What a weird thing to say to me.

Jace and Tabby drove off into the night, leaving only me, Michael and the warmth between us.

 

***

 

December 17, 2023:

 

Michael’s warm body was always a joy to wake up next to in bed. I was fond of the way he liked to hold me close, because it felt less like he was being possessive in a weird and creepy way, and more like he was holding me in the way you hold someone who had just come back from war. I wondered if that was how Michael viewed our relationship, as I laid there in bed, combing his thick, black hair with my right hand and watching his face while he slept. It had not escaped me last night—when we arrived back from dinner and crashed—that Michael was just as drained as I was. The lack of color in his face had worried me, but as I watched him breathe in softly, all I could see was my precious hus—a boy, like we were back in college again.

Except, we weren’t. Michael was a man and I was a woman. There was no more room for error in our relationship, I realized.

After all, life was short.

Sunday. It was weird having to return to that “go to school five days a week, only get the weekends off,” structure again. The summer break between senior year of high school and freshman year of college, then college itself, had offered me a far less rigid structure, after all. I enjoyed the breath of fresh air after thirteen years of the same schedule with little in the way of deviations. 

And now, it was like returning to a nightmare. A never-ending cycle.

Only, I got paid, like, $30,000 a year for twice the work and more hours spent at school.

Well, the co-workers and the children whose lives I could make an actual improvement to were a pretty nice perk, at least.

Michael finally stirred awake from my playing with his hair and mumbled into his pillow, eyes still closed, “How are you doing?”

I wasn’t quite sure, “What else do we do for fun, again? Besides video games and going to the zoo so I can cry all over myself?”

“Fuuuuuuck,” Michael droned his reply, unstoppable sense of humor meaning immovable exhaustion.

“I’m being serious, Mikey,” I was nobody to talk, given I felt a little too sore all over to give him little more than a weak giggle, “Let’s have some fun today! Something you like!”

Michael made a groan that no archeologist could have deciphered.

“I’ll suck your dick if you get out of bed with me?”

That did the trick. With a sudden push, Michael managed to push himself onto his back. Even through the comforter, I could see a twitch in his crotch. Removing the layers of sheets, I found Michael’s bulge showing through his name brand boxers and immediately pulled them down while he just groaned and laid there weakly. 

Michael’s cock sprung from the confines of his black, long-legged boxers, standing like a proud radio tower among the thicket of the wild, giving out little radio waves that squeaked, “Suck me! Suck me!”

Wanting to suck dick was still such a weird, new experience for me. And yet, my body knew exactly what to do. As much as I expected the sensation of swallowing a big cock whole, I still did so, feeling no unfamiliarity in my body as it got on its knees on the bed, lowered its head around the cock it so-craved, and began chugging it there on the spot. 

Even my back muscles felt familiar with the language of it all.

“Ungh, b-babe?”

“Wafuwan?”

“Y-you d-don’t—oh god, s-stah—okay, m-maybe keep go—”

Annoyed, I withdrew my forces from the frontlines with a wet ‘plop’ sound, “Will you not with the mixed signals?” I blew a strand of gold out of my line of sight, errant breath striking Michael’s dripping cock and catching it afire. 

“S-sorry, FUCK! I just realized that it was kinda sh—” Rolling my eyes, I dunked my head back down on Michael’s cock “—itting fuck!”

I had little time for Michael’s feigned chivalry, given how it was apparent we both wanted for his precum to continue to salt and enrich the earth that was the inside of my throat. As Michael made those bestial groans and grunts that made my asshole tighten, I combined a right-handed pump of his cock with an intentionally loud, wet, slurping sound until I successfully brought him to deposit his seed in my mouth.

Gawd damn, it was so much easier to dominate men in the bedroom than it was women.

 

***

 

December 17, 2023: 

 

It was surreal being back in Seattle, given the last time I had been up here it was 2013, I had been a—significantly different looking—young lady. Well, that and the fact that—for me—2013 had been less than two weeks ago, not ten years ago. The city remained as vibrant as ever, yet it was hard to ignore obvious changes—not merely within me, but in the city itself.

There were just enough masks respectfully left on faces to remind me of the ‘lockdown’ I had apparently missed just three years earlier. Michael wore one, so I joined him, if only because of the denser crowds of people compared to back home.

Also, it just made me feel painfully basic not to.  

The Japanese book store that Michael and I were browsing had been a fun little perk of moving up to Seattle when I left for college. The three-story building was filled with a mix of books both in English and Japanese, with a dedicated anime figure and manga selection on the top floor and an entire wall of imported Japanese books and manga on the ground floor. A small, sub-floor was home to a wide array of newspapers, magazines and other non-fiction books. The entire experience was unlike anything I had seen growing up back in such a sleepy little town.

Well, a sleepy little town where insane shit like big, national news story murders happened, I suppose.

It had been a little over ten years since I really had an opportunity to buy any manga. My collection had been no doubt tossed out by my parents years ago, and while I didn't have much in the way of space for manga in our small apartment, I still enjoyed looking at the wide selection of titles available to read. Manga had exploded in popularity since 2013 and the new art styles and ideas were all so cute and sexy. Perhaps a twenty-nine year old should have more ‘mature’ hobbies, but what the hell did that mean to someone from a queer—and thus, developmentally stunted—background? It was okay to be a bit of a teenager again with my hobbies, surely.

A sexy, ¼ scale model figure of a gyaru character—with tits, hips, thighs and ass that simply would not stop—captured my eye as I browsed the densely packed, narrow aisles of the third story. While it would be a pain to make sure that it didn't get damaged on the train ride back down to Gravelly Lake, the carefully sculpted curvature of the figure’s gravi-titty-defying, melon-esque breasts were exquisite. Sure, most normal women don’t buy such perverted figures…but most women didn’t turn themselves into cartoonish depictions of womanhood, either.

Nobody would think I was a boy, nobody would see a boy buying this figure, and nobody would—could—know that I was anything more than a woman with tits out to eastern Washington, anyway. I was okay, I was fine, I was picking up the $300 figure and walking to the cashier and I wouldn’t get judged for the figure—

—my giant honkers that bounced with every step would surely still be the thing that caught anyone’s errant eye, anyway.

At the register, a gawky college twink with a nametag that read ‘HIROSHI’ impressed with his ability to work the cash register without ever lowering his eyes from my chest. With the figure secured in a cute, pink tote bag I had brought from home—it had cute little frogs on it!—I ventured over to the wall of imported manga to find Michael lost in thought.

A volume of something in his well-moisturized hand, Michael turned and waved me over as he heard the noise my thighs made in the pair of jeans I had put on this morning. Once by his side, I recognized the characters on the tankoubon immediately.

They made a new Dragon Ball manga? 

Michael visited the once again lucky Hiroshi—he should feel blessed by the titty gods to see up close such delightful hooters a second time in one day—and purchased the new Dragon Ball Super manga volume. I remembered that there was a new movie released in 2013, but the creation of a new, serialized series was still shocking. I was curious as to why Michael had gone with a volume of manga in Japanese, though. I could only imagine that he had been working on learning the language, which is funny since I seemed to recall that he was a dubbie when we…when we…first met…in 2013.

Flashes of that night flickered through my mind, like single frames rapidly inserted into my vision: the anxiety and unexpected relief of freedom that came with being able to just fag out had been so liberating. Michael’s warm, large hands wrapped around mine, pulling me out of my shell was the first time I could ever feel like I was happy and myself. It was the first time realizing just how right it felt being with a man. 

It felt like I had barely acknowledged that fact, amidst the hustle and bustle of exploring the parts of my life outside of our apartment. All the drama with family and work from the past week had distracted me a bit from that which was closest to me: the man I shared my bed with. How stressful had the past eleven days been for him? It had to be hell dealing with a girlfriend with memory loss—especially such a specific kind of memory loss. 

I needed to give him the attention he deserved. 

I had been failing a lot of people like that, lately.

 

***

 

December 17, 2023: 

 

The smell of a nice hot pizza steaming in front of you surely counted as a form of torture.

“As I recall, dearest boyfriend, the Eighth Amendment forbids cruel and unusual punishment.”

Michael the Mountain peeled a meaty piece of pizza off of the tray between us, “That’s only for the government, dearest girlfriend.”

Some weird part of my mind still hadn’t gotten used to ‘the g-word’, “You’re a public school teacher, I think that counts for some kind of government job!”

“Girl, just eat a slice if you want a slice,” a curious thing to say as the magician of a man made a slice disappear right before me. Did our university have a magic major I didn’t know about? Could Michael make a deck of cards disappear? How about a dick of a girl? 

Without the use of one of his holes, that is. 

Michael had wanted to take the opportunity to hit up his favorite pizza place, since we were already in Seattle. It was a nice little bar and restaurant on Pike Street. Given that it was thirteen minutes past one—the double thirteens, one might ominously say—the place wasn’t all too busy, so we took the time to have a little sit down, rather than risk the pizza going bad on the train ride back home.

As I watched Michael make another slice of chicken—and some other topping that I couldn’t make out—say goodbye to the outside world, the thought occurred to me that with how healthy Michael ate at home, he probably didn’t have to worry about splurging on such a horrifyingly grease-soaked hunk of bread and meat.

Part of my brain told me that even smelling the warm red sauce as it soaked into the sponge-esque bread would make me gain ten pounds, while another part of me wondered if it would go to my tits or ass.

Could silicone tits gain weight from food?

Michael was making his way through the twelve-incher like he was racing toward the last copy of the action figure our son wanted for Christmas. Vestiges of the old Candace whispered in my ears like a sex kitten, telling me that I didn’t need the slice of pizza, that I was too ugly and manly and Michael would leave me at any given second for being a barren, fat, fag—

—I swiped up a slice of pizza, docked it into my pie hole, and felt my sinuses instantly water as the steam travelled up into them like a vacuum sucking up a dirty carpet that didn’t look dirty, until you vacuumed one spot and then realized perhaps six months without vacuuming the carpeting installed in 1991 was ill conceived at best and downright dumb at worst.

Tears welled up in my eyes as the half dozen different tastes one can possibly feel on one’s tongue when eating a slice of pizza hit me like a nuclear bomb going off. Warmth, a little bit of spice, a little bit of salt, a little bit of rich, thick, textured cheese—good god, the soft crunch of the crust made me want to moan.

Before I knew it, I was audibly moaning.

“Toldja tho.”

“Gawd, I could cum, Mikey!”

“Bimbo,” he snickered.

“M-meathead! You’re literally a meat head, with all that meat in your mouf!”

Looking down, “I bet you want all this meaty head in your mouf!”

I just about spat the mauled up pizza in my mouth at the bastard, just to spite him, “Thaggot!”

Michael chuckled horribly and infuriatingly, unperturbed by my clear distaste for his dominance. I was the dominant one in this relationship! Just because he had a big, fat, girthy cock and big, strong, arms that could lift me up and onto it didn’t mean that I was his plaything. I was his queen—it was in the name!

I kicked my naughty subject in his shin, but it didn’t dissuade his annoying laughter.

“Meanie!”

“God, you’re pouting just like always. I love it.”

“Yeah, ‘cause I got these big DSLs, right?”

“Hey, you wanted the fillers. I was perfectly happy with them before you got all that work done.”

“How many times have I gotten them done?”

“Twice, since we’ve been back together.”

“I’m thinking a third time is in order, tee-bee-aych.”

“Jesus, you sure? Will you even be able to keep your mouth shut?”

“Michael, do you know how badly I’ve dreamt of looking like this?”

“I mean, you’ve only dropped hints about it sixty-nine million times over the years.”

“I’m gonna sixty-nine million times you, buster!”

“You already have, blondie!”

“Ugh, men! Anyway, like, I’ve dreamed of looking like this since I was, I don’t know, a teenager?”

“Those trans stories you used to read, right?”

“Well, that and…other material. Anyway, like, you know? I like the lips. Sure, it’s embarrassing looking like this in a professional setting, but—”

“—but it’s that just society’s sexist view of how a woman should look if she wants to be taken seriously doesn’t match a feminist stance on the subject?”

“Err, basically, yeah! Like, omigawsh, Mikey! Michael!! I got all this work done because I can finally look at myself in the mirror and sometimes not see a—” my voice caught in my throat, but I shook my head, fighting through it, “—I can finally just see me. Sometimes. Often.”

“I do worry about you, you know?”

“You do?”

“Well, yeah. I mean, I’ve been with you—you’ve been in my heart for over a decade, now. Even when we were—” now, his voice caught in his throat, “—even when we were separated, you were still my first and last thought everyday. I know it’s pathetic for a guy to not be able to get over a girl, but I—Candace, I tried proposing to you. I was—I still am—ready for us to be husband and wife. I love you, Candi.”

The sadness in Michael’s eyes summoned a miasma to the forefront of my chest, like an acid burning through the skeleton and flesh and through the skin and BIMBO tee shirt I wore. Something there, inaudible, whispering coldly into my ears the thing that I wanted nothing to do with. 

“I've been wondering, you know?”

“Wondering?”

“When you were going to propose to me, again.”

“You have?” His eyes grew at a steady pace, even as they wobbled with tears.

“I mean, yeah? I just don't get why we aren't already married, you know?”

“Well, that’s—complicated.”

“I know. It just—I don’t know why I broke up with you before, Mikey. I can't remember. All I can remember—all I can feel—is that I'm supposed to be your wife, you know?”

Michael ventured a wan grin, “‘Mrs. Candace Summers, twelfth grade English’?”

“Hah, yeah,” the thought of it alone brought a brilliant smile to my plumpened, glossy lips, “I just—Michael, I don’t want—ugh!”

“Candi?”

“You’re the man in the relationship, Michael!” I motioned with my entire body as I sat in the booth opposite Michael, a quarter eaten slice of pizza cooling on the small plate before me. 

“Oh!” Michael sprung out of the booth, catching me off guard as he rested on one knee: “I know it's lame and problematic to do this in public—”

“—There's literally nobody else here, Michael!” I bawled out, sensing his very next words.

I couldn’t fucking believe that I was being proposed to with snot running down my face because steamy pizza had loosened my fucking sinuses!!!

“—but—” Michael pulled out a little box and opened it, “—it would be a dream come true to wake up to you every day for the rest of my life—”

Fuck, fuck, fuck, this was actually fucking happening?!

“—Candace Queen, will you marry me?”

“Omigawd, ye—”

—Doesn't Michael deserve to be able to have children of his own?

Grabbing my mouth and my stomach, I tore out of the booth and immediately ran for the nearest restroom. 

Michael wasn’t far behind and by the time I was vomiting in the bowl, Michael's familiar hands were holding up my hair, like I could remember them doing so many times before.

“It’s okay, Candi, you don’t have to say ye—”

“It’s—it's not you, Michael!” My voice was a hoarse cough.

“It sure isn't you, either, Candi,” Michael's voice was a calm so rich and seasoned that you could have sworn it was the role of wizened therapist that Michael had gone to college for, rather than math and physical education. The intimacy of his physicality and his voice left me disjointed and removed totally from the scene at hand, even if logically I knew I should have been relieved. 

Pulling myself up and away from the toilet, I wrapped my arms around Michael and wept like I was trying to get all the poison out of my body.

It would have worked, if the poison wasn’t my very body itself.

 

***

 

December 17, 2023:

 

The train ride back to Gravelly Lake was silent, save for the swaying of the train car and the murmurs from other passengers. 

The stuffiness and the distasteful warmth of the train car was awful.

Michael and I stared at our phones, saying nothing to one another.

I just wanted to love him and finally have a husband.

It felt like I had been waiting to have one for twenty years now.

 

***

 

December 17, 2023:

 

Crashing back onto my bed, I looked at the large breasted gyaru figure now placed lovingly on my nightstand. I didn’t have the spine to display her in the living room—especially not if Hinata was going to be coming over again—but it was still nice to enjoy her aesthetic beauty up close and personal on my nightstand. I loved how her leopard print panties were hiked up over her short-shorts. They matched well with her bra, which could be spied just spilling out of her loose-fitting pink crop-top. It was sexy! I couldn’t help these things!!

Would it be lame to try to cosplay this character at some point? A tan would look pretty good on me. I'd look a lot less like Beth or—or a lot less like Mom did, if I got one.

My penis—perhaps I was imagining it—twitched slightly as I kept staring at the girl. God, I couldn't wait to turn the stupid thing inside out and masturbate with the front hole for once.

Because—I normally just fucked my ass with a toy, if Michael wasn't around to plow me.

Right, right, right—

—I had a dildo—not as big as Michael—hidden in my dresser, for times of emergency. I didn’t need it as much anymore, though, given that I was with Michael again.

Again.

Again.

The look on his face at the pizza place was the same look he had the first time I ruined a proposal of his.

Because Michael deserved better than to be stuck with a tranny who couldn't give him children. 

That was why we weren't married now, after all.

Michael cautiously opened the door to the bedroom and entered like a beat dog. It was a devastating thing to see a set of shoulders that broad droop so low.

“Join me?”

Michael laid down on his side of the bed and looked at me face-to-face. I didn't like seeing my boy so sad, so I placed my right hand on his cheek and indulged myself by slowly rubbing his fuzzy face. 

Even if I couldn’t recall how many times I had done this before, it was like I knew that I had. The feeling was imprinted in every cell in my body.

“I love you.”

“I love you, too.”

Silence.

It would do Michael no good to know that I had remembered more—that I remembered why I had broken up with him before.

The guilt and the shame and the humiliation of living in this body. 

“You keep that ring on you?”

“Is it lame?”

“It’s sweet, actually.”

“Can I tell you something?”

“Sure.”

“I was going to propose back on the sixth.”

“Our—” Between each blink, it was like I was back at the diner—the world a rich, 35mm black-and-white—checking my phone to turn off the alarm set for 6AM on the seventh of December, 2013, which meant,”—our tenth anniversary of our first date beginning?"

“You remember?”

“Vaguely,” it was a lie. I remembered that magical night and morning perfectly now, “You were going to propose at Luigi's?”

“Stereotypical, I know.”

“But then I got amnesia?”

“Yup.”

“Damn, I'm—I'm sorry.”

I still couldn’t remember that day at all. Anything from before I woke up in May’s office was like a piece of 8mm snipped out of the reel and stitched back together poorly. So little of 2023 was back, none of it painting a clear picture in my mind.

I remembered the good times: Michael and me covering each other in paint at a couple’s art class, blowing him while he chilled on the couch with the television on mute, Michael snickering like a fourteen year old boy when my massive tits prevented me from hitting balls at the batting cages…

…sneaking off with his sister and her girlfriend for time with the girls while leaving Michael to entertain his dad.

Sarah…like a weird little sister I never had. Ruby, growing more confident in her transition by the month.

Even their mother, Desiree, blazed out her mind on her days off from managing the store. 

So much was there, floating to the top, and yet so much remained beneath the surface. It was a familiar feeling, one I could recall having even as a teenager.

“I’m sorry about all this.”

“Don’t be.”

“Why are you so sweet to me?”

Michael half-chuckled, his warm breath hitting my wrist and traveling up to kiss my face like a warm wash cloth cleansing the day's stress and sweat, “Because, I never stop wanting to wake up next to you.”

“You said that earlier, at the restaurant.” 

“It’s true.”

“Why?”

A moment was born—a moment that felt like it was doomed to last an eternity. Finally: “How do you explain a simple desire like that? I don’t know—I just do—I just want to be with you. When we were apart, I woke up every morning and reached out for you, but you weren’t there. I tried ignoring it—I dated guys who were pretty incredible—well, not all of them—but they always felt like a distraction. God, I hated that. Have you ever used someone else to distract yourself from what you really want, but can’t have? It’s fun at first—refreshing and a relief, even! You even convince yourself that you're happy and you're content—that you've made peace with the void where your heart should be. But then—after a while—you realize that there’s a stranger lying next to you in bed. Sure, you know their name and you have some degree of vested interest in them! Hell, you probably even fucked them last night. But—they’re still not the person you expect to be lying next to you. Then, you start to feel the anxiety building up, you know? Like, you’re cheating on them—or maybe you’re cheating on the person who isn’t there in bed with you. Then you realize the unsettling truth: being with this other person is like a vacation to you. You wake up one day, after a few weeks in the Bahamas, and you realize that you miss your home and you want to go home, to your own bed and your own pillow and your own bedroom with a ten year old TV that you know you should probably replace, but you’re like, “I’m barely home as it is, it would be a waste of money!”

“That last part wasn’t about me, was it?” I sniffled, unable to stop the tears from streaking down my face, salting my cheeks and my pillow. My voice was a canary being choked by a feral feline.

“Hah, no—I just missed your smile. Oh! There it is.”

“W-why are you so good to me, Mikey?”

“I was raised to take care of my home.”

Michael wrapped his left arm around me as I rolled in closer to him, bringing my head to his broad, hairy, beating chest, filling me with a safety and a comfort I never knew from any other source or any other home.

Held like so in my boyfriend’s arms, I finally realized why Michael fought so hard for us.

As little as I understood myself, I hoped with all of my being that I would fight as hard for us as Mikey fought for us, too.

 

***

 

December 18, 2023: 

 

Big box stores were barren wastelands of grays and blues that threatened to suffocate anyone who entered to death with their implicitly fascistic aesthetic. 

And gee-fuckin’-willikers, did I feel like I was being suffocated to death.

Six days until Hinata’s birthday party and seven days until Christmas meant that I technically needed to do a lot of shopping, because near as I could tell, Old Candace hadn’t done a lick of shopping for Michael’s present and now that Hinata and Megumi were back in my life, I needed to do some shopping for them, too. Ugh. 

I wasn’t sure what to buy Michael now that we were both working adults. What, was I going to give him another broken heart for Christmas? The last two years, I had given him lame football memorabilia and lame—if snazzy-looking—sex vouchers I had made on my computer, which meant all of bunk given how often I was asking him to fuck me.  

How the hell had I known this guy for a decade and still sucked so much at getting him presents? Fucking hell, I couldn’t even let him do it raw in my pussy, because I didn’t even have a pussy! Or a womb he could fill with that hot, creamy cummy-cum-cum of his!!

Ugh, guess I’ll just buy him socks and let him cum in my hair or something.

“Ma’am, do you need help?” A young woman with a golden braid draped over her front asked as I passed by the fitting room. 

“Oh, umm, I’m fine I’m just looking for the socks—wait, aren’t you the mom from the zoo?”

Sitting behind the desk of the fitting room was the woman I had met at the zoo, named Bree—as confirmed by her nametag. A pleasant look of realization dawned on her face as her right wrist betrayed the dark circles under her eyes and sprung into a chipper wave, “Omigawd, Candi? Fancy meeting you here!”

“Oh, wow, like, yeah! I almost didn’t recognize you!”

“Without the two kids hanging off of me?” She giggled

“No! With the braid! Okay, yes, the kids, too!

Sharing a giggle with another woman was oddly euphoric

“So, out Christmas shopping?

“Oh, uh, yeah. Almost last minute, again. Luckily, I’ve got the week off from work.

“Wow, lucky!

“Aah, sorry, perhaps that was dumb of me.

“Must be nice to be able to afford it, pfft.

“Well, I’m a public high school teacher, so I wouldn’t say I can afford anything.

“Jeez, that’s probably worse than my cruddy retail job here!”

Bree spoke like a mother of small children, not just in her choice of words, but her cadence, too. I hadn’t noticed when we first met at the zoo, but now that I had her to herself, it was remarkable how much the Mom Voice stuck with you. It reminded me a lot of Beth and Megumi, now that I thought about it.

“Oh, well, I enjoy it—even if it is nerve-wracking. The kids can be sweet, when you can command their respect.” 

“Can't be easy, especially with smart phones and stuff.”

“Oh, for sure, yeah.” Truth be told, I was finding it easier than my other colleagues did, judging by the conversations I had had with them before, between, and after classes. I suppose it was a perk of being popular? Jesus, all I did was listen to the kids and try to be helpful.

“So, looking for anything in particular?”

“Eh, socks for my guy and probably video games for my nephew.”

Bree opened her mouth to say something, but then stopped.

“Yeah?”

“Oh, no, it’s nothing.”

“You sure?”

“I’m probably just confusing you with someone else, but I could have sworn you also had a son?”

A cold sweat ran down my back, pulling in my blouse to adhere to my skin. My blouse was pink, it would stain! “Aah, well, no. Sorry, I think you are. I don’t—” my voice caught in my throat, “—I don’t have kids, dear.”

“Aah, yeah, no, right. Sorry, I know so many women through being a mom, so sometimes—”

“—everything just blurs together? Yeah, I can imagine. Teacher, remember?” 

Bree’s nervous little titter was adorable, so I focused on that, instead of the crushing reminder pressing its way into my solar plexus, despite the breasts protecting it, “It’s Winter vacation now, right? I bet your son must be happy to not have to go to school.”

Bree’s chuckle was dry, “Oh, he is. My poor mom, though, has to watch the kids while my husband and I work—oof, it’s not easy, you know?”

“Oh, I imagine,” I lied, a vague reel of 16mm film running through the inside of my eyelids with each blink. A world where my relationship with my mother had been bearable scrolled down my vision between each blink, taunting me with a life where I could trust Darcy Woods to not have neglected and abused my children like she did me. I dug my nails into my palms to stay in the now, “What’s your husband do?”

“He’s overseas right now—military, you know?”

“Aah, yeah, that is the kind of town we live in, isn’t it?”

“Yeah, we—uh—had our son—Cody—really young, as I’m sure you can imagine.”

“Oh, I definitely get it, I had classmates who had kids in high school. Appearances can be deceiving, after all.”

“Oh, do I not look twenty-three?” Bree blushed.

“Well, not quite as much as I look twenty-nine, I guess.”

“Wow, really? No way!”

“It’s the estrogen,” in more ways than you know, darlin’, “Well, that and I’ve—uh—you know? Had some work done.”

“Girl, don’t you feel bad about it. You had to put the work in for it, you might as well be proud of it.”

It was my turn to blush, now, “Omigawd, thank you so much, hon!”

“No problem! Hey, I know this is hardly professional since you’re technically a customer and I’m on the clock, but—”

Before Bree could finish her sentence, I was flashing her my phone screen: my Instagram was on display.

Bree turned a brighter shade of red as she quickly friended me on her phone.

This shit was so much better than high school.

 

***

 

December 18, 2023: 

 

What the hell were boys into these days, anyway? I mean, I suppose I should know—given my own childhood—but as it is, I wound up being a tranny, so did that all cancel out or something? The electronics departments of the modern big-box store was as much a drought of wonder and excitement as they had been when I was nearing the end of my teens in the early 2010s. Everything was gray, with the barest hint of a dust-covered blue to accent it. 

Childhood was a distant memory: something remembered not as truth, but as something that meshed with how we saw adulthood. As little of it as I could recall, it almost never betrayed the world I saw now as an adult.

Even Michael, who’s role in the play that was my life was that of my North Star, was just as gray as any memory that I still held of my youth.

As a child, I could remember seeing the world as this place of bright, beautiful colors, and endless possibilities. It clashed with the childhood that I remembered only for its most fringe moments. Two contrasting ideas, existing parallel to one another, forever muddying the meaning of what it meant to be Candace Queen, or whoever she had been borne of before.

The video game display case before me had smudgy fingerprints all over the glass, obscuring the bright red video game cases before me. They were calling Pokemon ‘Scarlet’ and ‘Violet’ versions now? Back to the colors of my childhood? How poetic.

With knowledge of which consoles Hinata owned in mind, I glanced over the selection of games—locked behind those tightly constructed, smudgy glass display cases—and felt plausible—and perhaps ridiculously petty—envy that I was not going to be able to afford to buy myself any video games, what with all the money I was already spending on others.

Not that I would have any time to play them, of course. Between work, trying to get my life back in order, and, well, smashing my romance novel cover boyfriend, there wasn’t much time for karting or catching or fantasy-ing. 

Two pre-teen boys and a girl stood in front of the wall of—unprotected—gift cards at the other end of the aisle. They were passionately disagreeing about some video game I had never heard of before. The color in their passion was—no doubt the color of that which they saw the world in—manifesting through the sound of their songs and the life of their animation.

Through the corner of my eye, I watched as the trio of children selected their little, flat pieces of cardboard and then trotted off to buy them. Making my way down to the now empty space, I browsed the selection: most kids were into these games that required in-game purchases or subscriptions now, it seemed. Hinata had been playing one of those games on his phone, if memory—hell of a thing, mine—served. It seemed anticlimactic—and more than a little exploitive—but I grabbed a few of the cards for a couple of different games and then made my way to the counter, determined not to be one of those old bitches who couldn’t accept the world changing around them.

I was really beginning to feel my age, now.

 

***

 

December 24, 2023: 

 

When she had elected to upgrade to a house of her own, Megumi Burmen had chosen to purchase a house near the center of town. A small thing—not cookie-cutter white, like the newer houses in other parts of the town, but a proper green color not dissimilar from the Douglas Firs that Washington State was known for. The house was a two-story affair that was undoubtedly a bit too big for a woman who—even at six feet tall—lived alone most of the time, but it was—nevertheless—a good find. Three bedrooms—and even a livable basement—strong, Megumi’s house—while paling in comparison to the size of the Woods family estate that I had spent the latter half of my childhood in—was most enviable. In a better world, Michael and I would have been raising our children in a house not dissimilar. 

Little else represented the disparity in wage between a public school teacher girlypop and a tech girlypop than a house—with a hell of a yard—that looked like it was built to house a family of five or six. 

Situated on the street behind the old public library, Megumi’s house was blessedly graced with trees that—while often requiring maintenance—kept her home cool during the summer. A fresh re-tiling of the roof—likely over the summer—maintained that moss-free aesthetic that placed the house a solid rating above any of the surrounding homes. Even the front lawn was kept trim—despite it being that time of the year when mowing was a pain in the neck due to the thickness of the wet grass—but it was nevertheless a grand aid in her campaign to have the nicest looking front yard on the street, for which I suspected she was quite pleased.

There were, after all, political signs for candidates from the Grand Old Party in the yard across the street. I had no doubts in my mind that such signs made her life extra spicy, given Megumi’s nature as a single Asian mother—who was often visited by a blonde woman with a similarly Asian child—several days of the week. 

As Michael and I climbed the steps to the front door, I wondered just how awkward it was for Megumi having to be ‘neighborly’ in such a neighborhood. Between the lewd leers from men and the occasion look of derision from an older woman, what few interactions I had with my fellow tenants in my shitty apartment complex were a mix of casual, cordial, or united in the face of just how much we all fucking loathed the lack of proper maintenance. 

Slumlords were a hell of a unifying factor. 

With a terse ring of the bell, Michael and I were soon greeted by the ever familiar Hinata. The small lad of now—an official—ten years stood plainly, but lived with the kind of eyes that were immediately analyzing you, like they were looking for any and all weakness. It must have been a skill picked up from playing video games—that or I had simply forgotten what it was like to be ten years old.

“Hiya dear! Happy birthday, Hinata!”

Cautiously, “Uh…thank you,” Hinata pulled the door open more and allowed us in. A number of girls—some with their matching adult—roamed the house, caught up in the party festivities. The birthday boy in question quickly rejoined his peers, but the disconnect remained clear: the poor kid really had not made any friends with any boys, did he? Well, not that I had had any when I was his age, either. 

Looking to divest myself of the two bags containing my lovely nephew’s presents, I shuffled—well, sashayed, but I was attempting to look more modest in the presence of parents—over to the table where the other presents were on display for later opening. Once unburdened, my hands immediately went to smoothing out my long, pink sweater dress, fighting for its dear life as it stretched over my hard earned hips. 

Michael wasn’t very far behind and joined me in greeting Megumi as Annabeth—made up like she had just been at the office in a pink blouse and black woman’s dress slacks—hurriedly dashed around the house, trying to make sure everything was in perfect order for her little boy’s big one-oh. She did not look lost in the least bit, knowing her way around the house that was not her house—even though it would be her house if she would just ditch Trevor WhatsHisName and marry Megumi already.

From my place at the table housing the presents, the parents of Hinata’s friends seemed nice enough. Certainly, none of them seemed to mind the fact that he clearly had two mothers. I wondered how they explained that, especially with neither of them married to the other? Was it appropriate for me to ask Megumi that, especially as she played host to a group of twenty and thirty some odd year olds? Speaking of which, damn, that lavender dress shirt and black ankle-length skirt that she was rocking were cute in a graceful, high-class kind of way.

A woman with brunette hair styled into an under shave and thick-framed glasses casually approached Michael and I as we took in the chaos filling the house and Megumi facilitated conversations with other parents, “Hiya, I’m Rose, Alyssa’s mom.” Her voice was like if the unpopular girl in school had decided that being a nerd didn’t mean that she had to be a loser, and the rest of her demeanor decidedly fit in line with that. The entirety of her right arm—exposed thanks to the black tank top she was wearing—was covered in tattoos. Similarly, her left leg was also covered in tats. 

Years of practice dealing with parents kicked in, “Hello there! I’m Candace, Hinata’s aunt,” there was a striking feeling when introducing myself as someone’s aunt. All those years running away from that title and here I was, embracing it anyway, “And this is my boyfriend, Michael.”

“Michael, hi, yes, nice to meet ya,” Michael delivered one of those firm handshakes that probably could have torn a hand off of someone if he wasn’t careful.

“Lovely to meet you both, Beth mentioned that she had a younger sister, I just wasn’t expecting the two of you to look so similar!”

It was surreal to hear that Beth had mentioned me existing at all, given how sour our relationship had always been, “I get that a lot,” fake laugh, “I’ve heard a bit about your daughter from Hinata. I’m glad that he has such a close friend,” god knows the kid needed one, given how close-to-the-chest he seemed to play his cards. 

“Hinata really is the sweetest boy. I know he’s kind of—well, awkward—but I don’t think I’ve ever met a boy like him. He really seems to open up when he thinks he’s just around Alyssa.”

“Kids can be like that, yeah.”

“Gosh, yeah, I was kind of withdrawn at his age, too. Oh, by the way, I’m sorry if this is a random question, but I was just wondering, are you a model?”

Michael snickered behind me, so I stepped back onto one of his feet, “Oh, gawsh, I get that one a lot, too. No, no, I’m a high school English teacher. I teach at Gravelly Lake High.”

“Oh wow, really? The girls and I went there for high school!”

“Huh?”

“Yeah, Class of 2007—god, that was almost twenty years ago!”

A cold sweat ran down my back as the pieces began to click into place. Did Rose know that Beth had had a younger brother in high school? Did Beth explicitly mention that I was trans? I had fought too long and too hard to have the world see me as a woman, I wasn’t going to have people willy-nilly knowing about my past. 

“Those two were an oasis in Hell for me and my wife at the time—”

“—Oh! That makes sense!!”

“Huh? Oh, yeah, the hair,” Rose pointed to her under shave and rolled her eyes in mock superiority, “Yeah, no, it’s—well, I—there isn’t much point in denying it, you know?”

“No, no, I get it. I was wondering if the parents here were—y’know—chill with how Beth and Megumi are two women who share a child and all that. Two women with a kid together and all that kind of leads to…uh…y’know?”

“Oh, yeah, no, I’m pretty sure everyone here is pre-screened,” Rose’s laugh was a nervous little thing that was quite cute, in a tomboy-ish kind of way, and the way she wiggled her shoulders as she crossed her arms under her chest was a fitting addition. In retrospect, her apparent queerness should have been more apparent, given that no cishet woman had full sleeves of tattoos like hers. 

 The name ‘Jessica’ was tattoo’d onto her right arm, upon closer inspection.

“Well, I’m glad for them,” play it cool, don’t sound overly emotional, “It can’t be easy, even these days.”

“Yeah, definitely,” Rose shifted her line of sight between me, the kids and Megumi and Beth as they scurried around the house, “What about you? Have any kids?”

An uneasy pit knocked on the door to my clenching stomach, “Oh? No, I don’t.”

“The boyfriend doesn’t want any? Well, that’s none of my business, forget I asked.”

“Oh, no, no, he does—I just—” my voice caught in my throat and I took a moment to recompose myself, “—you know?”

Whatever face I was wearing slowly led Rose to understand what I was getting at, “Oh my god, I am so sorry, Candace, I should’ve been more sensitive—”

“—No, no, you’re fine, dear. It’s not your fault.”

“Have you gotten a second opinion?”

I bit my lip, “It’s conclusive.”

Rose did what I did not expect from someone I had just met, and comforted me with a hug, “I know how difficult it can be, Candace. When my wife and I were trying, we were so scared that—” Rose pulled back, suddenly aware of what she was saying, “—Sorry, I mean—I guess you’ll probably need a little more context, huh?”

“What do you mean?” My mouth was on autopilot, my brain was a million miles away.

“Well, I’m sure that you know about Megumi, right?

Cautiousness painted my face as Rose spoke, “If you’re talking about what I think you are talking about, then yes, I do.”

“My wife won’t mind me saying this, then: she’s like Meg, you know?”

A chill ran down my spine as the full scope of what Rose was getting at settled in my mind, “So, you know, Alyssa and Hinata are both the children of—y’know?”

“Yeah,” I replied dully, my voice rough, “No, yeah—I get what you mean—yeah.”

“So, like, yeah. My wife and I were scared that, you know, we wouldn’t be able to have kids because sometimes the banked—uh—samples don’t always mean a successful conception, you know?”

“Yeah, yeah, definitely,” I was a field of rotting flowers, deprived of the warmth of the spring sun in favor of the scorching summer blaze.

“So, like, I get it—you know? The thought of not being able to have my partner’s kids scared the shit out of me, I can only imagine how much worse it is for you.”

I feigned a polite smile, “Oh, thank you dear,” and didn’t give Rose any time to continue, “If you’ll excuse me, I need to run to the ladies room, you know?”

“Oh, uh, yeah, sure, no, please, yeah!” 

I sped walked to the nearest restroom, locked the door, kneeled down in front of the toilet, and then stuck a finger as far as I could into my mouth.

It was the only way to reset.

 

***

 

December 24, 2023: 

 

A knock at the bathroom door echoed through the confined space as I sat in front of the toilet, back to the wall. I felt like dirt so dry it could fly away in the lightest breeze. While my entire body ached, I struggled to my feet, checked myself in the mirror, took a breath mint, and then opened the door: Michael was waiting on the other side, a not unfamiliar look of concern on his beautiful face.

The thin layer facial hair really was an improvement over how he looked in college. It complimented the black sweater he was wearing.

“Hey,” that deep voice of his somehow sounded softer than usual—berift of its usual weighty quality.

“Hey,” I didn’t sound much better.

“Rose filled me in—”

“She’s the cis one, she can’t fill you in,” I countered, bitterly.

“Candi, please don’t—”

I pulled Michael into the bathroom and shut the door, and hissed, “—Don’t you fucking tell me how to deal with this, Michael!” Michael looked stunned, “You don’t know what the fuck it’s like to not—goddamn it, Michael!”

“Candace, are you—? Do you—?”

“Just forget about it, Summers,” I signed heavily, doing my damndest to expel whatever tension was gripping my shoulders like a garbage press, “I’m fine.” 

“Candace, you can open up to me, I love—”

“—I know you do, baby,” I wrapped my arms around Michael’s neck, desperate to change the subject, “I’m doing fine. I’ll be fi—I’m ready to get back out there. L-let’s get back out there before we make a scene, yeah?”

Michael didn’t look convinced, but I didn’t need him to be. Reaching around him, I opened the door, prompting Michael to reluctantly move out of the way. 

Once outside of the bathroom, I caught sight of the pleasant fact that nobody seemed to have noticed anything was amiss. From the entrance to the hallway, I spotted Megumi shooting a quick look my way—as if to ask if everything was alright—before her attention was once again taken by the parent that she was conversing with. 

Rose had managed to find a moment to stop Beth from running ragged around the house to talk to her.

Determined to put it all behind me, I decided to indulge in being a nosy bitch. With a quick look around, I found Hinata and the girls situated in the living room, sitting in a circle on the floor talking about school gossip. Doing my best to look like I was not eavesdropping, I stood close enough to the friendship circle to get the deets. It was fascinating getting a glimpse back into the world of fourth graders. From what I could make out over the murmur of adults talking in my other ear, I learned that some girl named Lucy had confessed to some boy named Sean, and it was Very Serious Business. 

Hinata looked tepidly rapt, but was obviously trying to not show his obvious interest as he fiddled with his phone—a classic tactic for distracting yourself.  

Thanks to the power of being three inches over six feet, it was clear from my vantage point that the screen wasn’t even turned on. 

Come on, kiddo, at least fake your disinterest better by having a Wikipedia tab open or something.   

A light touch on my shoulder—not light in that way that Michael’s touch was light—turned me around. It was Annabeth, in all her made-up glory.

I couldn’t remember the last time she had physically touched me. The day she first discovered me with Michael? Christmas 2013?

“Are you okay?”

“I’m fine.”

“‘Fine’ means the opposite of ‘fine’, Candace.”

“What are you getting at, Beth?”

Taking my right wrist, Beth pulled me down the lit hall—away from the party right into Hinata’s room, “What if the kids come in here?”

“Then we’ll move! Now! What’s going on?”

“Why do you care?”

“Stop deflecting and just tell me, Candace.”

“I’m surprised you’re calling me that name, especially in private.”

Annabeth simply rolled her eyes.

“Thanks for not telling Rose that I’m trans, I guess.”

“We’re hardly in the kind of relationship where you would just trust me to hand out that information, now are we?”

“I guess so,” crossing my arms, I rolled my eyes and huffed, an irritation that I couldn’t even put into words traveling up my back.

“Were you purging?”

“Why would you think to ask that?”

“I know you better than you think.”

“Whatever, maybe I was?

“Candace, please don’t. It’s not good for your health—especially your teeth, Jesus!”

“What the hell do you even care?”

“I’m still your older sister, you know.”

“Then why the fuck has this—have we always been so—?!”

“—Life isn’t so easy that we can just do what we want, Candace.”

“Oh my fucking god, you know that is bullshit!” I yelled in as much of a groaning whisper as I could. “Look at me! Look at Megumi! What you’re doing makes no sense, Beth!”

“This isn’t about me, this is about you, Candace.”

“Me? Me? You mean the freak tranny brother who fucked off to become a woman and ruined her life and still wound up with a body and a career that she loves?”

Beth scrunched up, arms crossed and shoulder rising higher and higher, “You don’t have to call yourself that, you know.”

“What the fuck do you care?”

“Jesus Christ, do you really think I would be transphobic to you?”

“You have before, haven’t you?”

“I’m sorry, okay?! I was going through a terrible time—and it wasn’t like you were even officially out! You were still running around calling yourself a gay boy—like a fucking lunatic!—when you were four years on hormones, for the love of god!”

I shook my head, turned around and tried to figure out what to say while swaying in place. My eyes caught sight of several stuffed animals on Hinata’s bed, even at age ten. The room was—in general—warmly furnished, with a nice hardwood floor beneath a large rug that gave the floor some contrasting color and something soft for the kids to stand and sit on. Hinata’s walls remained the same baby blue I remembered them being from when he and Megumi had first moved into the place, all those years ago.

There was something about the room that I couldn’t quite put my finger on, though.  

“Candace,” Beth started back up again, softly, “Megumi worries about you. Your boyfriend—Jesus, shouldn’t you two be married already? Whatever, your boyfriend worries about you! Please just keep that in mind, okay?”

“Why the fuck—ugh, I’m repeating myself!”

“So then stop.”

“Stop running from what we both know that you want, then.”

“I can’t!”

“Why?! Megumi would take you back with a single look into her eyes and I’m sure Hinata would love to—”

“I’ve committed myself to this life, Candace.”

“Why?! You’re a successful lawyer, aren’t you? You don’t need Dad’s money! You don’t owe him shit! Especially if I sure as hell don’t!!”

Beth dropped herself to the edge of Hinata’s bed and silently placed her face in her palms.

“Why the fuck are we like this?” I mumbled, pacing back and forth before her.

“Father abused you so, so much when you were—I don’t even know, Candace. I don’t know why I can’t stop. I don’t know anything!”

I don’t know what came over me, but I joined Beth on the edge of the bed and wrapped an arm around her. It was what Miss Queen—beloved English teacher—would have done, “You can do it, Beth. You really, really can.”

Beth pulled her puffy, red face from her palms and turned to her left to face me, “What’s with that voice?”

“Huh?”

“You sound like a teacher.”

“Sorry, occupational hazard.”

“You said you were a teacher now, right?”

“Guilty as charged, yeah.”

“You must be a good one.”

“That is so weird to hear coming from you.”

We shared a giggle, a curious thing as it was. If we had ever done so before, I was hard up for any prior experience to recall. 

“Beth, listen, I’m—I don’t even know. I’m sorry that I hurt you when you came over to my house the other day. I was—I’m really fucked up, and I don’t always act my age because of it.”

“It’s a common effect of trauma, Candace,” a dry, hollow voice and a blank stare that seemed to bore a hole into the bedroom door before us, “I’m the same way.”

“Where’d you hear that?”

“My therapist. I figured that if I wanted to make things with Trevor work, I’d have to put in the work, you know?”

“Is he really that good?”

“He’s great.”

“But, you don’t love him.”

Silence. 

I sighed, moving my eyes to the vibrantly colored rug that Hinata’s bed sat atop, “I’m sorry. I’m nobody to judge.”

My sister sniffled, then turned back to face me, “Why aren’t you and Michael married yet?”

“I broke up with him, you know?”

“Yeah, I heard from the grapevine. Eventually. But you’re back together now?”

“Yeah, two years now.”

“Why?”

“Michael found me when I was—I was doing better, you know? He found me and I was doing good and my body looked—well, almost as amazing as it does now.”

“I mean, you do just look like a taller, more plastic version of me, of course you look amazing when the base is so gorgeous.”

“You bimbo!” I cackled back.

“Hey, don’t blame me, you’re the copy cat!”

“Omigawsh, shut up! I’ll have you know that I didn’t exactly intend to become you!”

“Pfft, yeah, I’m sure you didn’t know you’d look like me or Mom in all your research on hormone replacement therapy.”

“I didn’t think it would be so—you know—literal?”

“Have you seen how much Megumi looks like her mother?”

“I’ve only met her, like, once or twice. She’s kind of a MILF, you know?”

“Oh my god, you dyke, turn the faucet off!”

“Takes one to know one!”

“What, a MILF?”

“No, a dyke! Omigawd!”

It was hard for either of us to keep it together, which inevitably meant more falling over one another laughing.

It didn’t take long for me to nearly slide off, which only sent Beth in a bigger cackle.

“B-bitch!”

As I struggled to pull myself back onto the bed with just my arms pushing myself back up, Beth’s cackling subsided as she pulled a tissue off of the side table and began dabbing her face for tears.

“But really, why aren’t you—?”

“I can’t stay with him, Beth,” I finally admitted, too run down to deny it anymore.

“Huh?”

“I can’t. I know it, I—I don’t know—I don’t remember everything yet, I mean.”

“Your memory—”

“—I took a football to the head a few weeks ago and it’s been slowly coming back to me. But—well, no, I do know why. I know why, and I just can’t—things with Michael’s won’t work, Beth.”

Beth returned to looking at the floor, hard up for a suitable retort—people in glass houses, after all.

“I don’t know how you do it.”

“Do what?”

“Be a single mom.”

“Oh, yeah—Megumi mostly working from home helps a lot. Hinata’s old enough for sleep overs now, too, so that helps every once in a while.”

“With Alyssa?”

“Yeah, some other girls, too, sometimes.”

“Must be nice.”

“Yeah, it was—well, I was lucky with Megumi. Mom and Dad didn’t know she was trans, after all. Or that we were, you know?”

“Gals being pals?”

Beth rolled her eyes, “Oh, lord.”

“Yeah, it’s kind of embarrassing how little straight people know how to read between the lines, isn’t it?”

“Yeah, but they also never hounded you about staying over with girls.”

“I mean, I never spent the night with any. Even when I tried sleeping with them.”

“I think they were just glad that you had a girlfriend, not a boyfriend.”

“Well, they didn’t know that we were dating or anything.”

“They knew.”

“You sure?”

“Mom—” Beth’s voice caught in her throat, “—Mom would gossip about it all the time.”

“Christ, really?”

“Yeah, she would come up to my room or call me if I was out and talk about how you were over at a—you could hear the air quotes—friend’s house. It was embarrassing.”

“Did she really think I was gay?”

“Everyone thought you were gay, Candace. Well, most everyone.”

“What do you mean?”

“You really don’t remember, do you?”

“Sorry, I’m not sure I—I mean, am I forgetting something?”

A soft knock at the soft sent The Sisters Wood turning in perfect sync to the bedroom door, like two meerkats catching the rising of the morning sun.

“Yeah?”

The door opened with trepidation, until Megumi was able to poke her head through, “Knock-knock, you two. I do believe that we need to cut this cake before the kids are up all night high on sugar.”

Megumi shot a look downward at us, leading Beth and I to look downward—like the meerkats we had apparently become—to follow her line of vision: Beth was holding my hand.

I didn’t even bother to try holding back the tears.

 

***

 

December 24, 2023: 

 

What seemed to be over a dozen warm bodies crowded around the tiny little thing that was my precocious nephew as he sat at the head of the dining room table, a—unsurprisingly—chocolate cake before him, topped with the ten flaming spires one might expect on a birthday cake. One had to have wondered, did such a reserved, withdrawn boy truly care to be surrounded by so much spectacle and with so many expectant eyes upon him?

I tried not to look at Hinata with too much excitement and expectation of him—it seemed rude, in the moment. 

Face undecipherable, Hinata’s entire frame seemed to tense up as the singing of Happy Birthday To You reached its end around him. The young boy looked up as more than a dozen faces—surely appearing to him as exaggerated horrors—looked down on him, waiting for him to complete the ritual and blow out his candles.

Slowly, Hinata returned his line of sight down to the cake before him, drew in a deep breath, and then finally—

—A torrential typhoon of gale force burst forth from the child’s lips, sweeping the fire at the tips of the candles off of their wicks. In but a moment, the lights of liberating aging were snuffed out. All that remained were the last vestiges of the smell of melting wax.

A rousing chorus of cheers and claps filled the confined room, painting the moment with even more intensity. 

Bending beside her precious child—the one unquestionable light in her life these past ten years—Annabeth Woods asked Hinata the question that one is perhaps not supposed to ask: “What did you wish for, baby?”

Turning to his mother in pink, the dead-eyed child seemed paradoxically on the verge of tears: “I wished that I could be a girl, like Mama.”

My chest tightened as the tumulitude of what Hinata had just said settled in. It was only by the grip of Michael’s soft, warm, and ever-so-large hand suddenly around my own that I could feel some semblance of ease flirt with returning to me.

As Hinata’s words cut through the rest of the chorus, Annabeth Woods stood—hunched over and unmoving—as the curtain fell on the second act.

 

TO BE CONTINUED…