Late Sunday afternoon rolled in the same way all late Sunday afternoons do, like that uncle at the family gathering who everyone hopes isn’t coming this year when they don’t see him around, but inevitably drifts in and starts making people feel bad. Cause, y’know, being in a girl’s body had kind of made me forget I had responsibilities like homework and such, which I was definitely still going to put off until it was basically time for me to go to sleep. To keep my mind occupied, and pacified with placid reassurances that I was doing something productive, I’d gotten started on dinner for everyone early. I felt downright domestic doing it, casually chopping veggies and humming to myself in a flowy dress and apron. For some reason that thought didn’t bother me too much, probably because this was all part of the plan. Like, cooking everyone a nice meal would definitely earn me a good chunk of girl points, right? 

 

A good half-hour in, Penny—err, Tony— strolled into the kitchen and plopped himself onto the counter, crossing one leg over the other and leaning back on his hands, which lay flat against the countertop behind him. “Hey dude,” he asked cheerily, “what’s up?” 

 

“Oh, wouldn’t you like to know,” I said ominously, narrowing my eyes and drawing out my syllables in an overdone mysterious affect.

 

“I mean, I was kind of just asking as a formality, like, it’s pretty obvious what you’re doing.” He gestured to the cutting-board and array of pans on various burners. 

 

“That’s just what’s going on on the surface though, bro. You see all this?” I asked, “This is me winning more girl points. The bet is as good as mine.”

 

“Dude, you cook dinner for the house all the time. It’s the third Sunday of the month, which makes this literally your week to cook our Sunday house dinner.” Okay, fine, yes, he did have a point. But this was different. And I needed him to understand that.

 

“Okay, fine, yes, you do have a point. But this is different. And I need you to understand that.” I said, laying a hand on my hip and flicking the spatula in time with my speech to enunciate. 

 

“And how is it different?” He flashed me a teasing grin and stuck his tongue out. I tried not to think about the way that tongue had felt in my mouth. It didn’t work.

 

“W-well, you know. Like, now I’m doing it all girly and stuff. I have like an apron and I’m humming and swaying a little while I do it,” I stammered.

 

“Oh, so you’re playing housewife, is that it?” 

 

“Well, duh, I mean come on, dude, it’s like you don’t even care about the bet.” I rolled my eyes at him.

 

“I dunno, I care about the bet. Like, I wanna beat you. I’m excited to act all girly and stuff, but you’re way too invested in it. I’m just going with the flow; if I try too hard, they’ll see it as inauthentic, y’know?” He casually pulled out his phone and held it to his face, like he was looking at himself through the selfie camera. My suspicions were confirmed when he carefully brushed a hair out of his face and to a more flattering position, then fussed over his face a little and—wait, was he wearing makeup? That bastard! He looked so pretty and it wasn’t fair; why didn’t I think of getting my makeup done? Like, for the prank, and also the bet obviously. 

 

“Well, I’ll make you eat those words when I totally surprise Will and Rach by coming out as not a girl,” I huffed, then returned my attention to dinner. Out of the corner of my eye, I saw Tony shrug.

 

“Eh, whatever. So watcha makin? You taking requests? Recently I’ve been craving an omelette for some reason.” He leaned over, peering into the pan.

 

“It’s a surprise! But it won’t be an omelette, I don’t know how to make those.” I answered, lightly flipping the sizzling veggies.

 

“You Can’t Make an Omelette?” Tony asked. We both simultaneously dropped what we were doing and turned immediately to stare directly at the same corner of the room, then resumed what we were doing as though it had never happened.

 

“Nope!” I answered.

 

Tony hopped off the counter. “Oh well, I’m sure whatever it is it’ll be fine. Have fun!” He seemed to be about to turn and leave when, quickly and suddenly, he leaned in and lightly pecked me on the cheek. “No hetero, dude,” he said, then lightly slapped my ass, causing me to yelp and jump up a little, blushing. I turned a furiously blushing, wrathful eye to him, and he winked, then quite literally skipped away, ass very prominent in the tight little jorts he was wearing. 

 

I finished dinner, and, with a little help from Will, got everything setup at our communal table. I’d made a nice little noodle stir-fry, with minced pork and an assortment of veggies, plus pineapple for a bit of zing and sweetness. I’d made this dish a few times for everyone and it was always met with appreciation, but this time it seemed to feel especially good. But, then again, all the feelings I’d been feeling had felt a bit brighter, more saturated lately. It was probably the girl hormones and absolutely nothing else. We all sat down, and, after a moment, Will spoke.

 

“Alright, who wants to say Grace this week?” 

 

“Grace!” Tony piped up, giggling.

 

Will raised his eyebrows, then grinned, “Cool, good job, Penny. Let’s dig in,” he said, laughing at the same stupid joke he did for all of us every week. Usually we all just rolled our eyes and ignored him til he went ‘oh? Nobody? I guess I’ll do it then.’ But I guess Tony decided to humor him.

 

“It looks delicious, Heather,” Rachel purred from my left, very obviously not looking at the food and instead devouring me with her eyes. I decided that would be the right moment to stare intently at my plate and start cramming food into my face-hole, to avoid thinking about Rachel cramming other things into my face-hole—or my other holes—and fuck it wasn’t working. Maybe Tony could get me out of this; I hopefully lifted my gaze to see if I could get his attention and oh god nope, now I was just thinking about Rachel and Penny. I’d never wanted to be noodles so badly in my entire life and like, he wasn’t eating them in a particularly sexy way and I swear I’m not into vore or anything but fuck. It was then that I realized Rachel was stilling staring at me expectantly with a smug little half-smile.

 

“Uh, th-thanks,” I squeaked, “y-you too.” I froze, my fork sliding out of my hands and clattering to the plate. “Uh, I mean.” Rachel just giggled coolly, leaning in a little closer.

 

“What did you mean, Heather?” she purred.

 

“Okay, listen, not at the dinner table, you two, do I need to get my spray bottle?” Will interjected. And wow, Will was my new favorite person, my hero, my knight in shining armor. Not that he’d actually stopped the effect she’d already had on me, which was pretty damn substantial. 

 

“Aww, but she’s so cute when Rachel teases her.” Tony pouted, giving him his best big puppy-dog eyes.

 

“Well, you’re both adorable, but that’s besides the point.” Will said, and now for some reason Tony was blushing too? Weird. “Regardless, keep the flirting at dinner to a minimum. Swear to god I’ll get the hose for you three if I need to.”

 

“Hoes, where?” Rachel made a big show of perking up and looking around enthusiastically.

 

Will guffawed and rolled his eyes. “I have a really good comeback, but of course I’m the only one here who isn’t a lady, so I can’t say it.” 

 

“God, yeah, that must just be another thing to be jealous about, huh?” Whoops, it seemed my conversation with Tony last night had slipped my mind for a moment, ‘cause I’d totally just brought up the whole ‘all guys wanna be girls’ thing, or at least implied it, hadn’t I?

 

“Jealous? Of what?” I had to admit, his poker face was pretty damn good.

 

“I mean just ‘cause like, we all get to be girls and you’re like, you know, stuck as a guy and stuff?” I murmured, blushing. 

 

“Uhm, no? I mean, like, I totally support what you and Penny are doing, but our experiences are different; I don’t really relate to the whole wanting to be a girl thing cause, y’know, happily a guy here.” Instinctively, I almost replied with something along the lines of ‘well yeah, neither are we.’ Luckily I didn’t, ‘cause that definitely would have led to some really awkward revelations before the prank really got the chance to take off. Regardless, his act was really good; of course Tony was right, obviously Will saw us as women, so he wasn’t going to discuss his desire to be one in front of us. But for real, what a poker face, if I didn’t know any better I’d have almost believed him when he said he didn’t want to be a girl. Still, I wasn’t about to out him on his big secret, not when I could so closely relate. 

 

“Right, gotcha, sorry. Bad joke,” I said, then flashed him a little wink. Will did a double take, then blinked hard as though trying to recalibrate his vision to reality, and then seemed to go on with his dinner and pretend nothing had happened. Classic move. 

 

“So, Penny, Heather,” Rachel was kind enough to pull the conversation away from the awkwardness I was currently swimming in. “Do the two of you want me to drive you to like, the courthouse or the DMV or whatever so you can get your legal stuff changed? My car should be out of the shop in a couple days.” Penny—Tony and I shared brief, panicked looks.

 

“I um, th-that won’t be necessary,” I stammered, brain trying to come up with any reasonable excuse as to why.

 

“Oh, how come?” She sounded genuinely curious, and maybe a little concerned given the state I seemed to be in.

 

“Well, cause… uhm, you know, in case we change our minds?” Yikes, that was not the right answer. That would cost me a lot of points in the bet thing, assuming I hadn’t just blown it wide open. I mean, how could she hear that and not immediately figure out I was an impostor? How had I even managed to get this far? I was—

 

“Hey,” Rachel had laid a hand atop mine, squeezing comfortingly. “I know things are still tough out there for trans people, despite how much better things have gotten. But with Will and me, you don’t have to worry about any judgment or whatever. We both understand this is a permanent change. And we’re not weirded out or anything by it. So no more talk about changing back, okay? This is who you are now.” I kind of, sort of, hadn’t been listening, mostly because my heart was beating louder than the sound of Rachel’s voice and also irregardlessly, my brain was kind of a soggy mushy meat-mess because pretty girl holding hand. I did my best to pull myself together, and tried to manifest a twoth braincell to rub against my last remaining one. Finally, after several moments of me staring blankly at her hand on mine with my mouth open, I managed to formulate an adequately elaborate, well put-together reply.

 

“Yuh.”

 

Rachel giggled, and let go of my hand, I shot her a look like she’d just kicked a puppy and also that puppy was me. She grinned that stupid hot confident grin of hers and bit her tongue at me.

 

“Alright, that’s it, I’m getting the fucking hose,” Will said, standing with a start and stalking off, leaving all three of us giggling like mad.

 

After we all collectively caught our breaths, Tony came to the rescue for me. “The reason we don’t want you to drive us anywhere, Rachel, is because Heather and I are still kind of getting used to all this. We jumped right into this and it’s kind of overwhelming; we’d rather just enjoy this first little while before worrying about documents and such. Besides, we don’t get out much these days, so it’s not like we need to worry about documents saying the wrong stuff, y’know?”

 

“Ah, gotcha, that makes sense.” Rachel conceded, seeming satisfied. Which was good, cause I didn’t have any other excuses and changing our legal documents was way over-committing to the bit. I mean, if that’s what it took to make this prank work, I totally would have done it. But it would have been inconvenient, and stuff.

 

Dinner progressed naturally from there in a fairly mundane, boring fashion. The food was pretty good, though. About three hours later, Will, Tony and I were lounging on the couch watching some movie that was apparently pretty good. Rachel had gone to bed, making it just the boys. Well, she and Will didn’t see it that way, but that was why this prank was so funny. They thought we were girls! Classic. So anyway, Will was geeking out about like, shot composition or some shit and for whatever reason Tony was really interested in it even though he usually was like me and didn’t pay much attention to Will’s rants about film. Regardless, I wasn’t particularly engaged in what was going on, so I decided to turn in for the night. I bid Will and Penny a good night, then went to bed after decidedly not doing my homework. But whatever, that was future Heather’s problem. Err, future Brody’s problem? Ugh, that was kind of a gross thing to think. Oh well, not important.