“Brie, please slow down, it’s okay” It definitely wasn’t okay. I’d kissed her and she’d kissed someone else back. She’d kissed Brie, the sexy secretary, who definitely was not me. I knew Ria had liked how I looked tonight, but that wasn’t fair on anyone. I was not who I had looked like and who I’d pretended to be tonight, I wasn’t the girl Ria deserved or the girl she wanted. I wasn’t a girl.

If I could just be who Ria wanted, I’d do it in a heartbeat, but it doesn’t work like that. Maybe, I could put in the mountain of work required to look like her and maybe I could put on a smile and act like her, but underneath it wouldn’t be real. And even if Ria didn’t know it was fake, which she would, Ria deserved something real, not a boy playing pretend.

Ria had given up trying to talk to me but I couldn’t stop her from holding my hand. Even that made me feel terrible, she wanted to be holding someone else’s hand. I barely said a word to her, we just walked home in silence, she let me get into bed in silence and she left me pretending to be asleep in silence. Even drunk though, sleep was elusive. One small thought refused to leave my mind, refused to be ignored and dismissed as it had been a hundred times before over the last month.

It was a simple step of logic, combining two immutable facts. If I was Ria’s soulmate and Ria only liked girls, did that mean I was a girl? Maybe drunk at 3am really wasn’t the time, but I’d chicken out in the morning, I needed to actually think about this. If this was in debating club, with the motion ‘This house believes Brie or James or whatever-they’re-called-this-week is a girl?’ What would I say? 

Okay, in favour of being a girl: my soulmates a lesbian, therefore girl. That argument was either definitive proof or completely irrelevant, depending on your opinions about determinism and whatnot. There were more grounded arguments too, Brie namely. That’s a girls name and I preferred it to James, but it was also just a more fun name and people had treated me nicer when I’d been Brie than as James, maybe that was enough to tip the scales? Regardless, liking a girl’s name didn’t make me a girl, it didn’t even make me not a boy.

Now that’s a thought, if this was debating I’d want to start with explaining a win condition and then try to meet it. What would make me, or generally anyone, a girl? Was it just wanting to be one? Or were there more quantifiers? Were you a girl once you decided so, or once you told people about it, or once you started to transition? Or were the people who did any of those things girls all along? It had to be that right? So, there were girls who didn’t and might never know, which was awful. Was I one of them? Were you still a girl if you wanted to be one but for bad reasons? I’m getting ahead of myself.

So, to win the debate and be a girl I’d have to want to be one. How on earth is the answer to ‘do I want to be a girl?’ not obvious? I knew for certain that I wanted to date Ria, which had girlhood as a prerequisite, but that was wanting to date Ria, not wanting to be a girl. I was curious about dresses, and I liked the skirt I wore that evening, but girls' clothes were not the entirety of being a girl. If I wanted to be a girl, that would make me trans and then to get to the parts of being a girl I wanted, like dresses and Ria and general girl stuff, I’d need to transition. Which meant hormones and surgery and legal documents and shopping and awkward conversations with friends and probably being rejected by my parents and… I didn’t want to transition, not medically and not socially, it would be too much work and stress. Regardless of if I even did want to be a girl, I didn’t want it enough to do it.

Shit. Why did I even think about it? I felt worse than ever, I wasn’t a girl, I was a depressed boy looking for an out. I didn’t want to be James and I was too cowardly to be the Brie that Ria wanted. The girliest thing I could do was cry myself to sleep.

It’s been a month now since the party and things are just getting worse. People keep mistaking me for a girl and every time I feel more and more uncomfortable and guilty about how I’m being lazy for not correcting them and selfish for getting Ria’s hopes up. We’ve not talked about my drunk mistake but it’s not for her lack of trying. She’s increasingly worried too, not that she’ll show it openly. I meanwhile am just angry and short fused, it’s the one manly thing about me. My work is slipping and I know I’m socially retreating, isolating myself from the few friends I have. Even the gym is going terribly, I’m worse on the bike than a month ago and I feel so flabby sometimes.

I was debating calling off this afternoon’s gym trip when Ria cornered me. “Brie, can we talk for a moment?”

“As long as it’s not to tell me about a party you want to drag me to, in drag, so that I can make an arse out of myself.” I was feeling very snappy today.

“What? No. That’s not what I want now or ever.” Urghh I know that’s not what she wants.

“Right, yeah, that’s right, what you want is to get me drunk enough to act like your ideal subby slut girlfriend” Was I being too harsh? Maybe. Did I want her to admit it though? Yes.

“Brie, please, you know that’s not-” I really didn’t want her to cry, but I was so fed up. I wasn’t totally oblivious to what Ria had been doing the past few months, she wanted me to be a girl. She had been trying to make me one.

“Ria, what I know is that you wish I was a girl, but I’m not. So stop trying to make me one. For a start, no more girls' sports kit.” I was shaking more than I’d like by this point, but her reaction to ‘no more girls’ sports kit’ really set me off.

“Wait, that’s what you wanted to talk about isn’t it? You’re here to give me, I don’t know, some lycra booty shorts or some shit. Tell me I’m wrong.” The guilt and sadness flooding our link told me all the answers I needed.

“I’m sorry Brie” Oh god, I’d made her cry. Why am I like this? Why do I need to inflict my misery on others? “I just wanted to help” I hated seeing her sad but I had to stand up for myself at some point.

“And you think girls' clothes are going to help? Unless the bag you’re poorly hiding contains a magical instant transition kit then I’m going to be like this forever and no amount of clothes will change that. We have to get used to it.” It wasn’t nice to crush her hopes like that but I had to do it, from her stunned silence I knew I’d done the trick.

“Brie, if, just hypothetically, I did have a magical transition kit, would you use it?” Damn it, I should have chosen my words better. Of course I’d use the kit! But no good would come from saying that, we could not have this conversation. I couldn’t keep getting her hopes up.

“It doesn’t matter, there isn’t one Ria.” I’d have said no but we always knew when we lied to each other.

“That’s not an answer, Brie. Would you use the transition kit, yes or no?” Why couldn’t she just drop it?

“No.” She gave me a stern look. “Fine, yes. I’d take it, are you happy now? I can now spend the afternoon hating myself more than usual. If transitioning was easy I’d probably have started already, but it’s not. It’s-” She interrupted me before I could elaborate on how much work transitioning was for girls like Samantha.

“Brie, please, shut up and listen for a second. In the bag is a sports bra, Okay? And it’s not so I can trick you into being a girl, it’s because you’re growing boobs and I want you to be able to run comfortably.” What? Had she been drugging me in secret? That was obviously awful, but I couldn’t say I wouldn’t ask where she got the hormones. No, I was being silly, Ria wouldn’t do that and I’d have known. There were simpler explanations here.

“I know I’ve put on a little weight but-”

“You’re two inches shorter than at the start of term. Samantha says it’s the proximity to your soulmate giving health benefits. So I kinda sorta do have a magical transition kit on me. At this point Brie, not transitioning would be the harder option for you!” Stunned silence followed. I was already transitioning? That was terrifying. It was also amazing! If I didn’t have to deal with doctors and bureaucracy then that would mean… I’d still have to transition socially but, half of campus already assumed I was a girl called Brie… and there was something fun about the idea of Ria berating my parents. 

Was I a girl then? Was that it? I was almost certain there should be some other hurdles to cross, but those hurdles would surely have to be internal and none sprang to mind. I’m a girl! Never had a sentence sounded better in my head. I had to try it out loud! Happy tears would not stop me. “Ria, I’m a girl!”

She was crying too, but her smile matched mine. “Yes, Brie, yes you are.”

“Wow, this is… I can’t wait to transition more! Then I can be your girlfriend and we can make out and-” She shushed my giddy rambling.

“Brie, you dolt, we can make out now. I’ve wanted to kiss my girlfriend for months.” We never made it to the gym.

Five years post new valentines day:

A lot has changed since I first met Brie. First the nature of romance in our society, then her first name, shortly followed by her pronouns and her figure. Last week we managed to change her last name too, which is well worth the countless hours we put into wedding preparations. She insists I’ll forget the price tag of the wedding dress long before I forget how perfect she looked squeezed into it. I know she’s right. Besides, it’s impossible to be grumpy with someone you love that much!

Before Brie, the future had never been very obvious, but right now I knew exactly what was coming up and I couldn’t wait. We froze some of her sperm before her transition finished and we’re going to line things up so that I’ll deliver our baby just after she finishes her PhD and becomes Dr Brie Moore. Then, I’ll start my new job at the firm while she realises a few of her housewife fantasies. After a year or two of the horny housewife experience we’ll readjust our focus to getting her a professorship and her consequently being the sexiest maths lecturer there ever was. It’s a good plan right? I can’t wait.

I don’t know what else the future holds, but I know it’ll be with her and that’s all that matters.

Rewq

Thanks for reading everyone! I hope you had as much fun reading this as I did writing it! ~Alice