Nightmares tied my duvet almost in a knot overnight. I woke, clinging to my pillow, still half in dreams, chased through mistily-remembered classrooms and offices, shedding clothes as I ran but still moving too slowly, tearing my skin away in wet clumps trying to make myself lighter. I finally made it to my cold, dark apartment, shutting and locking the door against my invisible pursuer, collapsing into my bed, breathing hard, drenched with sweat, alone and awake.

My phone, blinking darkly at me from its charging cradle, informed me it was 3:51am.

The tracksuit bottoms and the t-shirt were plastered to my skin. I felt filthy.

~

I couldn’t bring myself to get changed before I walked to work.

~

I’d never arrived at the office before 6am before. Certainly we’d pulled overnighters pretty often, James and I, with two desks pulled together and a mountain of takeout between us, working on some project or other, huddled around a circle of light from our computer screens like campers around a bonfire. One time, he actually made s’mores with a lighter, to distract me from a particularly nasty bit of code that was making my brain hurt, and we tried feeding them to each other on our impromptu s’more skewers (pencils); it didn’t go well, and more marshmallow got on my face than went in my mouth, which James found terribly funny for some reason.

But when it came to ordinary work days I had firm(ish) boundaries that started at 8:30am and included something from Starbucks.

I unlocked the main door and stamped inside, hauling my ratty suitcase in after me. It was mostly empty, apart from yesterday’s outfit, the breasts and the underwear, the handbag, and some toiletries. The plan was for Ben to fill it with my ‘real’ luggage; I wouldn’t be needing my ordinary clothes on this trip, after all.

I headed down to the basement, hoping to find it as empty as six in the morning suggested it would be. The office building had a mini-gym, which was a grander name than two exercise bikes and a broken treadmill would normally command, and an even mini-er laundry room, but crucially it also had a shower. And it had a pile of disposable shower caps, a resource I lacked at home, so I wouldn’t have to wrap a towel around the hair extensions.

I dumped the luggage by the treadmill, stripped, threw the sweaty clothes from last night and the tucking knickers in the washer-dryer, stuck it on ‘refresh’ (which was a setting I’d never seen anywhere else that hit your clothes with five minutes’ soap, five minutes’ water, ten minutes’ ultra-fast spin and ten minutes’ heat; I’d always assumed it was intended for the executive in a hurry who’d slept in their work clothes, but maybe the designers had spared a thought for what panicked crossdressers might need, I don’t know) and stepped into the shower.

The hot water didn’t have the invigorating effect on me I’d been hoping for. I still felt enervated after a night of bad dreams and whatever the hell that had been in my bathroom before I’d gone to bed. Whenever I felt the wheels of introspection start turning in my head I carefully and deliberately redirected them; I couldn’t afford to be a mess today, or at any point over the long weekend, and I knew myself well enough to know that once I got started thinking about something unpleasant I’d have trouble stopping.

I resolved to just accept certain facts about myself — I was bisexual, fine; I was attracted to James, fine — and deal with the implications when I could dedicate a good solid couple of days to thinking about them. It finally gave me the boost I’d been hoping for, and I hopped out of the shower a good deal more refreshed and optimistic than I probably had any right to be. I wrapped myself in a couple of complementary towels and settled down to wait for my clothes to be done.

~

Putting on the bra and popping in the boobs was becoming routine, and I was even getting used to putting on the dreadful tucking knickers (reach down, push back with your middle finger and up with the fingers next to it, and then pull your underwear up quickly with your other hand before your junk works out what you’re trying to do to it). But even with my genitals jacked up right into my subconscious I couldn’t wear the new bum pads with my tracksuit trousers, so I was feeling top-heavy as I headed up to the office. I examined myself in the semi-reflective elevator walls and confirmed that, yes, I had a flat butt. At least the trousers and the underwear were fresh from the dryer (and only slightly damp) and would keep me warm until the heating clicked on at 8am.

The next task was going to be a challenge: makeup. If I was going to just accept the things I’d learned about myself and deal with them when I had the time, then I had to go along with the fairly large part of me that was suddenly squeamish about the idea of James seeing me as a man. As much as it made no sense when I thought about it — he’d known me for years and I’d been a man the whole time (well, a boy, really; even at nineteen I couldn’t bring myself to use the word man because it didn’t seem right for me yet, like I hadn’t earned it) — I didn’t have the energy to deny it any more. If last night was anything to go by, then I was just hurting myself by pretending something hadn’t changed in me. Future Alex could deal with the fallout; I owed it to him to make it that far.

If I wanted James to find me attractive, and if because of that I needed him to see me as a… a… not-boy… (Oh God, why was the word woman almost as hard for me to claim as man? Where was all this shame even coming from? Later, Alex; later. Start again.)

If I wanted James to see me only when I was dressed as a woman, then I couldn’t rely on Ben happening to show up first and I-Dream-of-Jeannie-ing me into someone who made James catch his breath when he looked at me. I’d have to do it myself.

I emptied my handbag out onto my desk, but there wasn’t enough stuff in there to do a proper job on my face; just lip gloss and a powder compact. I’d thought there was more, but I must have been thinking of my old handbag, the one I’d had in the restaurant. I stuffed everything back in, checked the time — coming up to 7am — slung the handbag over my shoulder, and headed back downstairs to the mini-gym to check myself out in the full-length mirror.

With the boobs on under the relatively snug hoodie I had enough shape even without the bum pads that I didn’t think anyone would look twice at me. Yes, I had a flat butt, but lots of women have flat butts. The big question was my face. I’d stuck some lip gloss on in the elevator down, but there was nothing particularly transformative about that; I could still see me, peeking out from under all the hair. I honestly couldn’t tell if I looked different enough just from the hair and the body shape or if I would excite comment the moment I stepped out onto the street.

“Oh, hey,” said a voice.

I’m pretty sure I didn’t jump. A guy I vaguely recognised as working somewhere else in the building was standing in the entrance to the shower area, an outer layer of shed gym clothes in his hand. I tried to remember his name: Vikram, I thought. He was glistening with sweat.

“Coming or going?” he asked.

“Huh?” I said, winning a handful more prizes for intelligence and quick-wittedness.

He pointed past me to the cubicles. None of the basement facilities were split by sex, which I remembered with a start at the exact same moment I realised that was probably a good thing for me: it meant I couldn’t be caught coming out of the ‘wrong’ cubicle, depending on how I looked at the time.

“Are you done with the showers?” he said, smiling.

Okay, he was smiling. Good news, probably. “Um, yes,” I said. “I’m just on my way out.”

He dumped his hoodie on the bench and took off his t-shirt — he was more slender than James, but still nicely-built overall; he looked perhaps like a runner or a swimmer — and then reached out a hand to me. “I’m Vikram,” he said. “I work at Williamson's, on the fourth floor.” Some kind of consultancy outfit, I think. Education, maybe? “Are you new?”

Was I new? “Yes,” I hazarded. “At McCain.” I took his hand and shook it; he had a good, strong grip.

“Ah, the computer people,” he said.

“That’s us.”

“What’s your name?”

“Alex,” I replied, without thinking. Shit. Would he remember me? We hadn’t exactly talked a lot.

“Hi, Alex,” he said, finishing the handshake. He was still smiling, so I think I got away with it. “I hope I see you here again.”

I smiled at him in return, and escaped the basement, forever grateful to my parents for choosing a name that was plausibly unisex, as if they knew I would turn out to be a massive dumbass.

~

I made it to the retail park shortly after it opened, and after a few minutes’ confused browsing in the cosmetics aisle at Superdrug I gave up on trying to find direct substitutes for the products I remembered Ben using on me. So I picked up a makeup gift set, of the sort you might buy a teenage cousin if you were a patronising and rather inappropriate uncle, and a tube of liquid foundation that I colour-matched against the back of my hand, the way I was fairly sure you were supposed to. The girl behind the counter treated me with the bored indifference I always hoped for from people who worked in shops (I hated when it seemed like they were happy to see me; I knew from experience it meant their bosses were forcing them to act that way, and it was impossibly tiring to do that all day) and I was back at the office by seven-thirty.

I went back to the YouTube makeup tutorials I’d looked at before, but couldn’t really see how they applied to my own personal face, so I kept clicking until I found someone who not only explained every step clearly and carefully but took ten minutes at the start of the video to go through all the tools one might or might not have access to, and the proper care thereof. The only thing I didn’t have was primer, but I figured I could cope without, and after a few attempts — there was a travel bottle of cleanser and some cotton wool in my handbag, thank God, or Ben — I decided I was good e-fucking-nough.

Ben could, and inevitably would, re-do me at the hotel, anyway, when I had to put on that awful garish dress I was trying not to think about, so I figured I didn’t have to be perfect; I just had to silence the voice in my head that panicked about James seeing me the ‘wrong’ way.

I was just debating whether or not to go back out to the retail park and pick up some nicer clothes than the hoodie and tracksuit bottoms I was still wearing, when James walked in.

I couldn’t help but smile when I saw him, but I do have to admit that the short period between him coming in through the office front door and him noticing me, sat at my desk, grinning at him like an idiot, was one of the more nerve-racking of my life. We’d made up yesterday evening, certainly, but I’d all but run out of the office after we hugged, and I’d sent him kind of a terse text message afterwards. He could very well have been in a mood with me.

He wasn’t. He answered my smile with one of his own, and dropped the cases he was towing as I almost ran over to him. I hugged him with all the enthusiasm I had inside me, because I was done pretending I didn’t want to. Screw reticence. He returned the hug with one arm; the other was still tangled up in various large cloth bags.

“Hi, Alex,” he said warmly. “You feeling okay this morning?”

I was right. He’d been worrying about me. “Yes,” I said honestly.

He must have sensed something in my voice, though, because he asked, “You sure?”

“I had a difficult night,” I admitted, releasing him from the hug and relieving him of the cloth bags, which I started to lug over towards the formerly empty desk in the corner we’d earmarked for expo crap, “and kind of a difficult morning, but…”

My pause was clearly enough to spark concern. “But…?” he prompted.

I dropped the bags off and hoisted myself up on the desk, remembering a moment after I did so the fantasy I’d had about him the night before. I tried not to blush, and was predictably unsuccessful.

“I decided to change my attitude,” I said. “You were right: I am having fun. And yes, it’s scary sometimes, and yes, it’s knocking my head about a bit. But I think some of what was causing me trouble was, I suppose, fighting against the realisation that I’m actually kind of okay with it. You know? Worrying about what it ‘means’—” I finger-quoted, “—that I’m enjoying myself.”

James’ smile couldn’t have been wider. “Good,” he said. “Because I’ve been worrying that—”

“Don’t,” I interrupted. “You agreed to make this easy for me, which I so appreciate. It’s time for me to make it easier for myself.” I hopped off the desk and fetched my handbag from mine. “Just don’t do anything that’ll make me regret this,” I added, wagging a finger. “Want some coffee?”

“Oh, uh, sure,” he said.

“How do I look, by the way?” I asked, walking back over to him. “I know, jogging clothes and all that, but I did my own makeup this morning, for the drive up, so… how do I look?”

He looked at me for a few seconds, and the warring expressions on his face made me desperate to know what he was thinking, but I resisted the urge to beat it out of him.

“Really good,” he said at last. “Like, really good.”

I beamed at him.

~

It was almost like old times. We drank coffee and chatted about nothing in particular, lounging around the office in a terribly unprofessional way. James sat with his legs propped up on some box files that were undoubtedly full of vital documents, and I reclined next to him in the only office chair that went back all the way (which was his; I always stole it from his office at times like this). The only difference from normal was that I had cheekily propped one of my legs on top of his, just above the ankles. I had no idea what he thought about it, but I was enjoying the small, hot point of contact, and I could play it off as just ‘being in character’ if it really came to it.

Okay, it wasn’t the only difference; the boobs, the makeup, the hair and the voice all come to mind, but I was used to them by now. The boobs were almost ignorable, the makeup was just a reason not to touch my face too much, the hair was all gathered up in a clasp because it had gotten kind of fluffy from the moisture in the air and I wanted it out of the way until Ben came and fixed it, and the voice was absolutely second nature at this point. But the prolonged physical contact with James was something else entirely. I luxuriated in it.

Some time shortly before 9am, while we were being sensible adults and actually discussing sales strategies for our software, Ben arrived, stumbling through our office door with all the grace and poise of someone who was, spiritually, still in bed. He, too, was towing a couple of huge suitcases behind him, and I felt a little guilty that I’d only had to lug a single one in from home. Mind you, I was probably also the only one of us who’d walked in.

We both waved at him.

“Why do you two look so disgustingly relaxed?” he said. “Are you aware of the time?”

“It’s not that early,” James said. “It’s almost nine.”

“Yes, James,” Ben said, glaring at him. “It is almost nine. Have you picked up the dresses from the tailor yet?”

“Fuck,” James said. “I’d better go.”

I lifted my leg off of his, to let him out. As he left, he ran his hand along the back of my chair, casually, just to steady himself; the way his fingers brushed against the back of my neck was definitely a coincidence.

Ben narrowed his eyes. “Why is your hair up?” he asked me.

I undid the clasp and let it fall as it chose. “Went fluffy,” I explained.

“Oh my god.”

~

Ben acquiesced to my demands to avoid an early death by in-car embolism caused by an uncomfortable skirt and grudgingly let me wear jeans, and while I’m sure they were very, very expensive Harvey Nicks jeans they were not actually all that comfy. But it was still better than the array of fancies he dangled in front of me, trying to persuade me to injure myself purely on the basis of aesthetics. When he realised he wasn’t going to win, he compensated with a nice but alarmingly low-cut white top which somehow managed to keep the store-bought nature of my boobs a secret, and a loose tweed jacket that I thought looked really ugly on the hanger but worked surprisingly well once it was on me. I got to keep my trainers. He swapped out my handbag for a slightly larger cross-body one in black, with more pockets. I approved.

“I saw you two together, you know,” he said as he fussed with my hair. “Sitting there on top of each other.”

“I know,” I said. “And if you want to say what I think you want to say, you can say it.”

“You won’t get mad?”

I sighed. “I’ve decided that for as long as this lasts—” I indicated, with a sweep of my hand, me, “I’m going to just go with it. So, yes, I like James. Yes, I like him that way. I don’t know why, because I’ve never liked guys before, but I like him.” He grinned and nudged me. “God, I really like him…”

“So, why now?”

“I’m not sure,” I said honestly, and thought about it. It was refreshing to do so without most of my brain screaming at me, telling me I shouldn’t. “Two nights ago, when you first dressed me up, and James came back, and you said…”

“Something obscene about his dick, I think,” Ben put in when I trailed off.

I nodded. “At the time I think we were both watching him to get an idea if I passed, but maybe that was the turning point. You said that when he saw me he was—” I blushed, “—turned on, and that’s when it hit me. That’s when I started thinking about it. Or a small part of me did, anyway. The rest of me was still loudly insisting I was a straight guy.”

He poked me. “We’ve all been there.”

I poked him back.

“So it’s really just been these last two days?” Ben asked.

“Well…” I considered it. “I guess it’s always been easy for him to get me to do stuff. Work stuff!” I added when I saw the look Ben gave me. “Stay late, work on extra projects, and so on. He brought me on only as a favour, I’m pretty sure, because our families know each other, mine’s a mess, and I was going nowhere after school, but then I got pretty good and we started working together a lot.” I frowned. “I never resented the long hours because I liked spending time with him.”

Ben tapped me on the head. “Kinda slow, aren’t you?” he said.

“Very slow,” I agreed. “So, you were at uni with him, right?”

Ben looked at me warily. “Yes?”

“Is he, like, into guys? Guys like me?” Even with my newfound candour, it was hard to say. But I had to say it; I had to know.

“He’s not into guys, no,” Ben said. I tried not to be crushed. “Not in an overt way, and not in a painfully-obviously-closeted way like you were, either. And he had opportunity; as you can imagine, when we went out together, guys would approach him. He turned them all down, even when he wasn’t dating anyone else. He’s definitely straight. But,” he added, and I was hanging so pathetically on his every word that I perked up, “don’t forget that he responded to you the other night. Not to just any guy, but very specifically you.”

I swallowed, unable to get my heart rate under control. “What do you think that means?”

“Honestly? I don’t know. I do know he’s been kind of obsessing over you ever since that night at the restaurant.” I raised my eyebrows: obsessing? “You know,” Ben continued, and he flipped into a bad impression of James’ voice, “‘Do you think she’ll be safe at the expo? Do you really think hair extensions will be more comfortable for him? I really pissed her off today, what do you think I should do?’ God, it’s been endless. Yesterday afternoon especially. And yes, he keeps flipping pronouns; I don’t know what to make of that at all. He might be more comfortable around drag than most straight men thanks to me, but he never really got the whole fluidity of gender thing. In that he is most definitely a normal straight man: ‘Gender hard; sex easy; put penis in now?’”

I closed my eyes and concentrated on my breathing for a few moments. Ben’s little monologue had taken me on a journey and I needed time to process it; the voice in my head that wanted to stop all this and run away was alarmed at how happy the rest of me was at the merest remote possibility that James was interested in me.

When I calmed down, I opened my eyes and asked, “So, do you think I have a chance?”

Ben considered it. “A week ago, I’d’ve said no. But now…” he shrugged, “anything’s possible.”

~

I swear, there is no experience in the world quite like your first ten steps after a two-hour car journey. Your first couple of steps are wobbly and uncertain as your spine has to rediscover that you actually still possess muscles below your waist; the next few are sore and a little tingly as your body overcompensates and pumps out all the blood that had been sitting, unused, in your feet, replacing it with fresh, new, exciting blood at perhaps twice the rate that would be wise; and the next two steps are downright dangerous as your brain finally catches up with the situation and gets mad about all the blood and oxygen it used to have. After that, if you’re still upright you’re basically fine, and nothing else the day can throw at you will be a challenge at all.

Birmingham was refreshingly clear-skied compared to London. I walked a full circle around the ugly fountain out front of our hotel, enjoying the way I wasn’t getting low-key rained on just for being outside.

Ben had added a second suitcase to the one I’d brought from home, and had made dark enough threats about its contents that I had a horrible suspicion there was more in there than just the Harvey Nicks haul. I’d have to wait to get to my hotel room to find out what horrors he had in store for me, though, because we’d travelled up with the two engineers who’d be helping us out on the show floor, and they either didn’t remember me — to be fair to them, we’d only met once before, and I haven’t always been a very memorable person — or were too polite to mention the boobs I’d grown; whichever it was, we didn’t feel comfortable talking about dresses in front of them.

One advantage of being McCain Applied Computing’s resident woman — at least for the purposes of this trip — was that Ankit (“Kit, please.”) and Markus (“Just Mark.”), our engineers, insisted I be relieved of any responsibility for lugging our kit around or setting it up, so they got to go on ahead to the venue in the minivan with all the heavy stuff and my responsibilities were reduced to just picking up all our room cards from the hotel staff.

Which is when I discovered the problem.

I waved James and Ben over when they came trotting in, trailing their own luggage. I’d staked out a corner of the lobby where it looked like we wouldn’t be overheard.

I had my serious face on, so James asked, “What is it?”

“We only have three hotel rooms between us,” I said. “We had six before.” I spread the room cards out on the table like they were a hand in poker.

I watched James’ face fall in real time. “Oh, fuck,” he said, “I cancelled some of the rooms the other day, when we lost those two models and we swapped out my cousin for Ben. I must have forgotten to verify how many rooms we had total.”

I nodded, following the logic. “I’d planned to spread the three models across a single and a double, but I understand why you cancelled two of the rooms if you were thinking two models equals two rooms. Why cancel Ben’s room, though?”

“I thought Ben and I could room together, like old times,” he said, looking sheepish.

“That’s sweet,” Ben said. “Dumb, but sweet.”

“Okay,” I said, “let’s think about this. We have three rooms and six people. I think it goes without saying that Emily gets one of the rooms to herself.” They both nodded. “So she gets the single. It’s the smallest but she won’t have to share.” I pushed her card away from the other two. “Which leaves us three, and Kit and Mark.”

“Maybe you should have a room to yourself,” James told me.

“Lovely thought,” I said, “but that would leave four adults in one room. It’d be horribly uncomfortable and the hotel would probably throw a fit if they found out. And do you want to explain to Kit and Mark why you’re sharing a room with them when you’re the CEO?” I resisted the urge to smack him around the head.

“What sort of rooms are left?” Ben asked.

“A single and a double,” I said. “The double has two queen-size beds; the single has one king-size.”

“I assume they have sofas or comfy chairs that could accommodate someone reasonably well,” James mused. “Clearly, you—” he indicated me, “—need to be roomed away from both the engineers and Emily because none of them know you’re not a real woman.”

I don’t know why it cut me to the bone, but it did. I started hearing static, and I got top-heavy, the way I sometimes do when I’m about to have a really long cry, so before the shakes and the unpleasant noises set in I grabbed the card for the single room off the table and ran for the elevator. God must have been looking down on me in that moment because just as I approached, the doors opened and an old woman emerged, blinking slowly at me. She stepped aside to let me past but blocked the doors with her body.

“Are you going to be okay, dear?” she asked.

I had enough presence of mind to nod. “I just need to lie down,” I said. I well and truly had the shakes by this point, and it gave my voice vibrato.

Behind her, I could see Ben’s arm across James’ chest, stopping him from coming after me. My chest pounded with a frantic need to escape.

“I’ll be in the hotel bar if you need to talk to anyone,” the old lady said, smiling at me and patting me on the shoulder. Then she let me be, and the lift doors closed.

I watched my reflection in the mirrored elevator walls like a hawk. I looked for all the world like an attractive young woman who’d just received some bad news. But that’s not what I was, was it? It was a lie, wasn’t it? I was a lie. A fake. The hair, the makeup, the tits, the voice, all of it was just a convenience, part of a stupid little confluence of circumstances that had put me here, in this lie, so we could sell our fucking software.

When I got to the room I collapsed onto the bed and disappeared for a while.

~

“Alex?”

I was really starting to hate the sound of my own name. Nothing good ever came of it. Grudgingly, I opened my eyes. It took me a moment to orient myself: I was in one of the hotel rooms, the one with the king-size bed, which I’d thrown myself onto with all the violence I could muster. I’d had enough presence of mind to tuck an arm under my head, so I hadn’t stained the bedsheets with the makeup I’d cried off.

Ben had a gentle hand on my leg. He looked like he could wait all day for me, but I knew we didn’t have time, so I sniffed — which sounded disgusting — and sat myself up.

“Hi, Ben,” I said. “I know, this isn’t the time to have hysterics. I’m fucking things up, aren’t I?”

“No,” he said. “Absolutely not.” And then, to reassure me, he added, “Kit and Mark are getting our stand set up. Emily is already there, and I sent James over there to deal with anything else that needs dealing with. The show floor doesn’t open for two hours. You have time.”

I shrugged. “Time for what? I don’t know what I’m doing, Ben. I don’t know why I’m so upset.”

He put a hand on my cheek and stroked my cheekbone with his thumb. “I have an idea about why,” he said.

I looked at him, almost afraid to ask. But what more could this weekend do to me, really? How much more could I change?

“Tell me,” I said.

“This is more than dressing up for you, isn’t it?” he said. “And it’s more than realising you’re attracted to men.”

“I don’t know what you mean,” I mumbled. I really didn’t. “Maybe.” What else was there?

“Tell me what you do know,” Ben said. “Tell me why it upset you when James said you’re not a real woman. What do you think that says about you?”

I closed my eyes. Even the echo of the words made my chest hurt. “I’m not sure,” I said slowly. “It felt… insulting. Like he was judging me. It felt like hearing that should hurt me. But it makes no sense. I’m not…”

I fell silent. Ben, bless him, let me think.

What did I know? I knew I was into James. And I knew James was straight — straight enough that living with a drag queen for years and having a bunch of gay friends and acquaintances didn’t make him question his sexuality. So however much he might see me as a woman right now, and be attracted to me on that basis, he knew I wasn’t a woman, and that therefore we had no future except as friends. Which hurt enough to think about that it had to be it; I’d so latched on to the idea that James was into me that the reminder that he couldn’t be was enough to make me lose it.

They do say your first crush is the most intense, and I’d never been into someone like I was into James.

Now, it seemed like Ben was implying I was transgender, but I knew I wasn’t. Not in the I’m-a-real-woman inside kind of way. When Ben talked about trans women the day before I’d filed the idea that I might be transgender away in the back of my mind to think about, but in the cold light of day I couldn’t see how I possibly could be. People who were transgender knew their whole life; you saw news reports about kids and young teenagers who were doing it, and I was nineteen. I would know by now, of that I was completely certain. I wouldn’t be idly considering it, I’d be consumed by the need to— to— to do whatever the term for officially switching genders was. Get a sex change? I couldn’t imagine having that kind of strength of feeling.

“I think what it says about me,” I said slowly, “is that I’m really not dealing well with the fact that James is straight.”

“Are you sure that’s all it is?” Ben said.

“I’m sure,” I said, shaking my head, “I think I know what you’re getting at, but I don’t think that’s it. I’m bi, I’m into James, he’s almost definitely not into me, and processing all that is messing with my equilibrium. That’s all.”

I couldn’t be transgender. The very idea was ridiculous. I was just being my usual suggestible self, like last night, alone in my shitty little flat, exhausted from stress and practically seeing things. Ben had put the idea in my head, yesterday in James’ flat, my subconscious had run with it, and before I knew it I’d started freaking out at my own reflection. I do stuff like that; I’m a panicker.

In the cold light of day, it was clear to me that I was just spinning out a little. Like anyone would, packing a major revelation about their sexuality into the middle of a packed weekend’s crossdressing.

“I think you need to talk about this,” Ben said.

“Thanks,” I replied, “but I think we need to get moving, honestly. I’ve only got two hours to get cleaned up, get dressed, and get to the expo before it starts.” I was feeling pretty stupid for my overreaction now; I wanted to be doing something, not waste any more time talking.

“Alex,” Ben interrupted sternly. “Don’t push yourself too hard. You can afford to take some time.”

“Ben,” I said, as kindly as I could manage, “I can’t leave Emily down there alone. Oh, and don’t say anything about this to James, please.”

Ben frowned. “Are you sure?”

It was occurring to me that I’d spent the last couple of days falling down a very peculiar rabbit hole, and there was no way out but through. So I’d keep going, but I wouldn’t come to any grand conclusions about my identity while I was still tumbling down.

It was time to assert some boundaries in my own head. I could have fun this weekend, sure, but that’s all it was: a bit of fun, a chance to play at being someone totally different from myself. And I’d get home Sunday night, strip all this off, sleep the sleep of the dead, take Monday off because fuck going into work after a weekend like this, and I’d be fine.

“I’m sure,” I said, trying to inject some certainty into my voice. “I’ll talk to him myself. I just need to relax and get through this without going mad. If there really is anything to think about afterwards, and I really don’t think there will be—” Ben looked like he wanted to interrupt me, so I raised my voice and steamrollered him, “—then I’ll think about it next week, in the comfort on my own home.”

“I’m worried about you,” Ben said.

“Don’t be,” I said. “Please. I got carried away, that’s all.”

He looked skeptical.

~

I was profoundly grateful to my past self for taking the time to go through the sample dress images the tailors had sent and find one that wasn’t either too showy or too revealing. At the time, my motivation had been that I didn’t want our company to look like it was run by horny teenage boys, and I didn’t want to lumber the models with something too uncomfortable. Of course, this was before I knew exactly what ‘uncomfortable’ meant when it came to wearing a dress. If I could have had five minutes alone with Past Me I’d probably have suggested something that wasn’t quite so tight around the waist; right before I told him to run for his life.

The dress was bright blue with yellow accents — the company colours — and while it did have a knee-length skirt, something I’d requested specifically, it also had a three-inch slit I wasn’t particularly happy about. It covered my shoulders but not my arms, and the neckline was fairly high. Overall, it wasn’t too bad. If you took a photo (so you couldn’t tell how weirdly shiny it was) and almost completely desaturated the colours (and cropped out the company logo on the chest) it could pass for an extremely tacky church dress.

I felt very silly, but at least you couldn’t see my thighs unless I sat down. It wasn’t even the most revealing thing I’d worn out; that prize went to the ice queen getup.

“You’re good?” Ben said. I think he was standing so I couldn’t see him in the mirror in order for me to really absorb the full effect. It was working; the particular shade of blue we used was giving me a headache.

“I’m good,” I said. Ben had worked his usual magic with my hair and face. I looked less like my normal self than I had even after doing my own makeup, which helped when it came to getting into character.

“Good,” Ben said, nodding. He passed me a long black coat — God bless him again, it was calf-length, modest, and made me look like a film noir femme fatale in her I-definitely-didn’t-murder-him outfit — and we rushed out together.

~

The convention hall was larger than I’d imagined. I’d seen the specs when I was organising all this, but in person it was quite something else. Ben and I walked past companies that had whole wings to themselves, and even though it was these very companies that James wanted to court I started to feel nervous about our place in all this. Would we even be noticeable next to these huge names?

McCain Applied Computing’s spot was in a relative rats’-maze of booths in the small vendors section of the hall, next to a couple of companies I’d never heard of (and who I highly doubted had ever heard of us). We weren’t the only ones to have models, either, which was a relief; in the Uber over I’d entertained a fear that Emily and I would be the only people dressed like idiots on the show floor, but the two women standing at the booth next to ours were dressed as sexy stewardesses.

Emily was chatting with them. Unlike me, she looked fantastic in our branded dress, but then she was the model and I was the… me. She waved at us when she spotted us coming, which seemed to summon James from wherever he was lurking behind our booth setup. Yeah, he looked worried. I was going to have to deal with him.

Emily called my name. I smiled at her and joined her and the other two models at the intersection of our booth and theirs. Ben, thankfully, intercepted James and they started a whispered conversation on the other side of our booth.

“This is Maria and Kristen,” Emily said, indicating the stewardesses, “and this is Alex. She’s a veteran; been modelling for… how long, Alex?”

I could spot a prompt when I saw one. I looked at a non-existent watch on my wrist, and said, “At least forty-eight hours now.”

It got a polite laugh, which was enough for me. I exchanged smiles with Kristen and Maria, and briefly covered Emily’s hand with mine when she grasped my upper arm in greeting.

“I love the coat,” she said.

“Ben gave it to me,” I said. “I had no idea he had it; I think he’s trying to save me some embarrassment.”

“Is it working?” Emily asked, as I shucked off the coat, revealing myself to be just as ridiculously-dressed underneath as she was.

“No,” I said, and grimaced.

“You look fine,” she whispered.

“Thanks. Oh,” I added, “did you get your room key?”

“Yes, from Ben,” she said, nodding. “He’s really sweet, isn’t he?”

“Yeah, he’s— oops.” James had extricated himself from Ben and was coming over.

“Alex,” he said gravely, “do you have a moment?”

I nodded. As we walked to a spot where we could have some limited privacy, I heard Emily say to the stewardesses, “He’s her boss, and they have history…”

“Before you apologise,” I whispered to James when I was sure we were out of earshot, “I want you to know you don’t need to.”

“I’m still sorry,” James said quietly.

“I think, maybe, that I’m still getting acclimatised to this,” I said, careful to choose words that wouldn’t be revealing if we were overheard. “I panicked, that’s all. Ben helped me put my head back on.”

He looked relieved. “I thought I’d really upset you.”

I gave him a friendly punch on the arm. “I’m good,” I insisted. “It was a blip. I’m over it.”

“Sure?”

“Sure,” I said. “Shall we sell some software?”

“Definitely,” he said, grinning.

Together we headed back round to the front of the booth. I rejoined Emily, who was leafing through her pile of printed materials.

“All good?” she said. I nodded. “Good, because the doors open in two minutes.”

I squared my shoulders, controlled my breathing, and looked out across the show floor. The bigger booths were pretty quiet, but most of the smaller companies like ours were still a flurry of activity as people rushed to make last-minute preparations. I put on my lanyard, smiled at Kristen and Maria, who were adjusting their terrible little stewardess hats, and fixed my eye on the countdown clock hanging from the ceiling in the centre of the conference hall.

You can do this, I told myself. Play your role, have some fun, and then go home and never think about this ever again.

It was going to be fine.