[ Truths ]
By the time I’d gotten in bed last night it was a little past 2 a.m. and the sickening melody coming out of my phone at 7 a.m. had me groaning. Why had I agreed to meet Ryan for breakfast at 9 a.m.? Am I crazy?

Nothing went right after I’d rolled out of bed; I struggled with every part of getting ready from hair to makeup to nearly gagging on my toothbrush by accident while brushing my teeth when I’d tried to look at a group text message from Marlene and Lisa about meeting for brunch next week. The best I could hope for by the time I walked out the door was that I didn’t somehow look like a ‘Walking Dead’ extra.

Ryan’s chosen meet spot for breakfast – a truck stop diner just outside of the city – was forty minutes from my house. Finding a place to park on a Sunday morning was impossible, because today the diner was the meeting spot for a group of more than twenty motorcyclists. I ended up having to park at the truck stop and walk a football field’s worth of pavement that seemed to go on forever while in two-inch heels! What was I thinking!!

To make matters worse, the early-morning wind had me struggling to keep the cute skirt I’d decided to wear from blowing up over my waist! And, on my walk to the diner I’d been noticed by a number of truckers, which wasn’t comforting at all. I was slow to figure out that some of those lonely ol’ boys might have thought I was ‘working’ in the area.

Good grief – grow up you perverts!

Being ogled wasn’t something I enjoyed, and I’m sure my pace confirmed how uncomfortable I was with being watched so intently. People noticing me when I’d first started my transition ramped up my ‘passing’ fears, but that became less of a focus as I grew into my own. People thought I was shy after first meeting me, but that was because I didn’t trust my voice to confirm I wasn’t who I appeared to be. I spent an inordinate amount of time being patient with myself as I became someone I never had fully been and in that patience found I liked who I was. If others didn’t, whatever!

Entering the diner, I was hit all at once by the smell of bacon, coffee, something sweet, and the stale stench of cigarette smoke embedded in clothing. I was hungry, but the conflicting smells and noise made me wonder if this was the best place to have a conversation about Ryan’s dad. The older crowd waiting to be seated in the tight little lobby barely noticed me, but I instantly felt overdressed and like I didn’t belong here.

Why did I think wearing a skirt was a good idea?! Was this a last-ditch ‘notice me’ or ‘look who I’ve become’ effort for someone I wasn’t likely to see again for another couple years? Damn it, I should have just worn jeans, tennis shoes, and a t-shirt, pulled my hair back into a ponytail and found a ball cap! I might have been able to pass as a female trucker had I gone that route! Stupid, stupid, stupid!

The hostess gave me a blasé look and a crooked smile. I told her I was waiting for someone, though she probably thought I was working the truck stop area and waiting to be bought breakfast before my next trick. I was about to resign myself to an uncomfortable stand waiting for Ryan to show, since there weren’t any seats in the lobby and I was early, but I saw him raising his hand from a booth near the back. Relief washed over me and I headed that way, after pointing him out to the hostess.

“Morn’n…”

“Is it always like this?!” I asked above the clattering of plates, loud voices, and laughter filling the tiny restaurant at something close to concert noise levels.

“Most of these places aren’t, generally the crowd is still trying to wake up. It’s the bikers making most of the racket, but a few have cashed out, so they’ll be leaving shortly and it should quiet down.”

“You come here often?”

“That sounds like a pickup line, have you ever used that one before? I have, it’s never has worked for me,” Ryan said smiling.

He was way to alert for almost nine in the morning after a night of partying. Well, one of us had had a couple drinks, but I did quit early enough so that driving home wouldn’t be an issue. Could I have feigned being drunk and persuaded him to take me home? Ugh!

What the hell?! Am I like sixteen right now and boy obsessed?! Focus!

If he was like this every morning I’d probably be annoyed waking up next to him. I shook my head at him and then wondered why I’d thought about waking up next to him. His eyes were bright, and his smile betrayed an ease and comfort with us sitting there together. And, fuck, he was a beautiful man all around! I’d had some pretty interesting thoughts concerning him during the short time I actually slept, dreaming about how he…

What is my frick’n problem?! That’s not focusing!!

“Coffee… Or I’ll end up killing someone and you’ll have to visit me in jail,” I said exasperated.

“I’m thinking you wouldn’t like jail much, I didn’t,” he caught the regret on my face, knew I felt like crap for saying that without thinking that out fully, but he cut me off before I could apologize, saying, “Don’t worry about it. Very much a ‘been there, done that, and wore the pink jumpsuit to prove it’. Distant memory and a detour I took when I was younger and stupid.”

“I’m so sorry, I’m just not awake yet… That was rude and not something to be joked about.”

“Honestly, it’s no big deal, forget it, really. I’ll let you know when you’ve crossed any lines.”

“Thanks… But I have to ask one thing, or I’m going to go loopy imagining you really wearing a pink prison jumpsuit, is that true?” I was shocked I’d asked him that without even giving it a second thought and then I thought about crossing lines and whether my attempting to kiss him last night would have done that.

He had to know I would have reciprocated if he’d attempted, but then again there was whoever this woman was he’d been in love with still somewhere out there and maybe he was hanging onto them reconciling at some point. Ugh! I suck!

“Yup, everyone did. We slept outside in a pen under a huge ass tent without any walls. It was hot as hell during the day and windy and cold at night. Arizona prisons are no joke and the food sucks, I can assure you of that.”

“You’re a long way from there now, so… Yeah, it kind of worked out I guess,” I offered that in an attempt to smooth over my screw-up in bringing up the topic and pressing him about the pink prison wear. Why am I acting all nervous?

I watched as he raised his hand to signal a waitress and point to my cup, turning my cup over for me in the process.

“It won’t be Starbucks, but it’ll keep you buzzing for most of the day,” he said. “Sleep alright?”

“I did, how about you?” I asked in return and prayed there weren’t going to be any ‘dream’ questions. I couldn’t handle that right now, at least not without some coffee to wake up my sluggish, man-distracted brain!

“Right out there,” he said pointing, “A generally quiet and uneventful evening, most truck stops are boring like that.”

I looked out the window but didn’t see his truck, though I assumed it was somewhere in the distance. We sat silent as the waitress filled our cups, dropped off a couple menus, and told us she’d be back.

“I could have offered you the bed in my guest room, I thought you were staying with your parents though.”

I could have offered… NO!! Stop looking at him all doe-eyed and stupid!

“It was just easier to sleep here, plus we were meeting up anyway, and this gives me a head start out of here and back home.”

“That almost sounds like an excuse to not be at your parents’ place…”

“Again, head start and easier on me...,” he said softer this time, not as much ‘parent’ angst in that quip.

“Okay, not judging…,” I conceded. “So is the food here any good?”

“Won’t win any awards, but it’s better than Taco Bell or a Mickey-D’s breakfast, most times.”

We both laughed. I took a tentative sip of coffee, saw steam rising from it, made a face, set the cup down, tore open two sugar packets, and gave it a quick stir.

“It’s leaded,” he said chuckling.

“It’s good, just darker than I’m used to.”

“Liar,” he teased and it sounded like he was having fun at my expense. “Really, it’s an acquired taste; you could switch it up for some tea or juice, they aren’t going to care if you don’t like their swill…”

“Nah… I can make it work,” I said with a moderate amount of confidence, opening a creamer cup and dumping it in, stirring, and hoping for a miracle.

He seemed resigned to that push back, asking, “So, you know what I’m up to today, you got plans for later?”

“I’m doing the same, heading home after this and back to bed. My journey will be shorter than yours thankfully,” I said smiling, lifting the cup and trying the overly sweetened version of leaded black swamp water that hadn’t changed its color or character after the creamer addition. It was better, but yikes! Not something I’d want to drink on the daily!

The waitress returned while Ryan gave her his order, which was pretty specific when it came to his Denver omelet: no onion, extra cheese, add chorizo, only red bell peppers, no green peppers, and don’t overcook the eggs. Him being particular about his order gave me a chance to scan the menu for something that might not be drowned in grease before making it to my plate. This place had to be a cardiologist’s worst nightmare! When it was my turn, I ended up ordering a side dish of plain yogurt and a bagel, toasted, with cream cheese on the side. In theory, that was an order that should be hard to screw up.

When the waitress left us he was studying me for whatever reason, so I asked, “Yes?”

“You’ve got questions, I know that… But, I need you to promise me you won’t just walk out once you start hearing what I’ve got to say,” he said, looking a little uncertain about his making that request of me.

“That’s ominous… But I’ll stay until you say you’re done telling me what’s going on, I promise.”

The noise level in the diner suddenly picked up, and for the couple of minutes it took the bikers to leave, it was far too loud to have a conversation. We sat looking at one another and I sipped what can only be classified as the worst coffee I’d ever had in my life – all while singing ‘Far Away’ in my head! Frick’n ear-worm!

When the last of the biker herd had left, the place got surprisingly quiet, though clanking plates and noises from the kitchen hadn’t stopped filling the void left by the boisterous bikers.

“Ya might as well start from the beginning,” I said to get him going.

I could see him organizing how he would tell me what was going on between him and his dad. Something told me he was unsure of whether he could do this or not, or it could have just been him reading I was nervous too, for him, for me and the emotional pins I’d put into boards I wasn’t sure I should be doing after our reunion of sorts.

I reached across the table and put my hand over his.

“I’m not here to judge, Ryan…”

“Yeah, well some of what I’m going to say might lead to you judging me, maybe for the things I’ve done, stuff I’m not proud of, but…”

“I won’t judge,” I said again and squeezed his hand before retrieving it to hold my cup of mud and suck up the warmth it was radiating into hands that were oddly cold all of a sudden.

“I hope so… Okay, from the beginning, eh? Hmm, this thing with my dad… It ah, it started, well came to a head right before you and Jen graduated… Boy, how do I put this? Ah, you do remember what happened when you two graduated?”

I didn’t remember every detail, and I told him so. I added, “I think Jen and I got grounded for going to that grad party at the lake and not coming home that night. I know my parents lost it on me that next morning after I got home, same with yours with Jen, right... But there was no cell service out there, so I’ll die on that hill as part of justifying why I couldn’t call my parents to tell them where I was, same with Jen’s phone too.”

That rendition of events earned me a polite chuckle, so I figured I was in the vicinity of where this problem started with him and his dad.

“Right, that’s what I heard happened, but do you remember where I was?”

I shrugged because I didn’t remember where he was that night, but I did know he wasn’t with us at the lake. I mean we were ‘seniors’ and he was a ‘sophomore’, come on!

“I went with my grandparents to spend the summer working in their peach orchard outside of Sacramento straight after the graduation ceremony, remember? I was gone a month I think.”

“Yeah, okay… I think I remember that now, sure. Your parents wanted you doing something for the summer, a job so you wouldn’t be sitting around the house playing video games,” I chuckled remembering that’s what Jen had told me was the reason he’d been absent part of the summer.

“Yes, but no. The real story is I was being sent away… Do you remember me saying goodbye to you at the convention center after the graduation ceremony?”

“I’m sure we,” and I stopped speaking mid-thought. “You, wait, I think… You looked like you had been crying, right?”

“Not my proudest moment, but yes.”

“I assumed you were happy for Jen and me, did I get that wrong?”

“A little… I… So this is harder than I thought it was going to be…,” he began, stopped, thought about something, and pushed on. “So, from the time I was a little kid, until just before you two graduated, my dad and I had a pretty good relationship. The kind where I could talk to him about anything, ask him anything, tell him what I thought about whatever, and he’d give it to me straight no matter what. He never made me feel stupid or less worthy or put me down or whatever. It was the whole perfect trust gig between father and son that is likely unheard of in most households – but we really did have that and...”

He paused, as though recounting this part of his story had reminded him how far their relationship had fallen and how deeply it pained him.

“I’m sorry…,” I said softly, feeling the ache in his memory of how they used to be so much closer.

“Anyway, I… Well, I thought I was confused about something, someone actually, and asked him about it a week before you graduated… I, I was like, having feelings for, well I had this kind of crush on… On this guy and…,” he didn’t get a chance to finish his sentence because mid-attempt to sip my coffee I set my cup down and couldn’t help but interrupt him.

“You told him that… That you were gay?” I asked softly, unable to hide my surprise because that was the last thing I’d expected him to say to me regarding what was going on between him and his father.

“Does that matter?”

“Of course not! God no!” I said a little too loudly, and took it down a few decibels to ask, “Is that why your dad and you have been at odds all this time? Like, the reason you two have been fighting?”

“No, but… Okay, I need to clarify something… Shit,” he began, then looked around, clearly unhappy with how the story was unfolding—or perhaps with how it differed from the way he’d intended to tell it.

I nodded after checking that no one was paying attention to us. I wanted to encourage him to continue, even as my mind spun up a dozen questions I wanted to ask all at once. I didn’t want to make this any more difficult for him and needed to control my impulsive nature. Ryan being gay was the last thing on earth I’d have thought, but maybe it explained him not chasing girls and hanging around Jen and me more than was probably typical. How hadn’t we seen that?

God! I almost kissed him last night!!

“Let me get this story out before I talk myself out of telling it, and really, you don’t want to jump to any conclusions,” he said sounding seriously conflicted right now.

“That won’t be easy for me, you know that… And you gotta know I’m trying to think about who in your circle of friends it might have been,” I stopped speaking because his face told me I was doing exactly what he’d just asked me not to do – jump to conclusions. FUCK! “Right, shut up, Steph! I’m going to not say anything until you say I can…”

There was a chuckle, and he continued. Not being able to ask questions was going to kill me, and I knew I didn’t have the self-control to keep my mouth shut!

“Anyway, you… I told him it was you,” he said quietly after refocusing his concentration on me.

The ‘you’ in his statement hadn’t fully hit home, but in the couple of seconds that followed I stopped breathing… Literally. Stopped. Breathing. The slight ringing in my ears began to get louder as I tried to find my voice to muster a reply, but couldn’t.

I was the ‘you’, the guy he’d been attracted to? No! That can’t…

“I’m the…,” I croaked barely above a whisper, confused, conflicted, my heart aching for multiple reasons – namely being thought of as a ‘guy’ by him back then! “Wait, you… I don’t understand, you knew I wasn’t ever going to be that ‘guy’, right? Like eventually I’d be, I mean I was always a girl, female inside…”

“I did… And I was attracted to who you were becoming in those times you explored that at our house with Jen. When I got back from my forced exile you two were all about prepping to leave for college and at that point… You pretty much had decided to bring Stephanie to life, and I… I was being left behind, trying to figure out my whatever...”

“But, I thought you said you were… You know, gay, help me make sense of that, like you aren’t?”

“That was my dad’s label, I didn’t know any better. What was I supposed to think when I was attracted to you and you were still pretty much operating as a boy seventy percent of the time I saw you?”

“But… You knew I was never going to stay like that… I mean, all those times I’d been dressed at your house, the makeup, the hair, fuck - that bikini I’d worn,” I began, but stopped speaking when he nodded.

“Look, the simple answer is I trusted what my dad was telling me, that I was confused about what I was feeling. He said regardless of anything you did you’d always be a guy pretending to be a girl, and being attracted to you meant I was gay. Now, sure I know that was bullshit, but at the time I trusted him, I had no reason not to. I know I’d seen you walking between those two existences back then, most of the times I was around the ‘guy’, but when you were truly you… I knew you’d end up a woman one day, if that counts for anything.”

Something struck me: Ryan hadn’t used my dead name in any of our conversations, including those since we’d reunited on Friday.

What he was saying now came with the benefit of adulthood: the interpretations, filters, and understanding he wouldn’t have had as a kid. Was his understanding of who I was more in tune than most people’s ideas when he was a kid? Had he really seen me?

His father had treated Ryan’s attraction to the shell of a ‘boy’ as evidence that something was wrong with him. And that turned a normal, possibly confusing adolescent crush into a source of shame and family estrangement that’s gone on for over twelve years! What the actual fuck?!

I’d been silent for a beat too long and I could see he had more to say, so just nodded at him to keep dumping this shit out into the light while I absorbed what I could as he went.

“God, I felt the weight of his disappointment, at least that’s how I interpreted how his attitude had changed towards me – I was his ‘gay’ son. That shit has gone on far longer than it should have. You’ve seen how fucked up his attitude is about me being attracted to you. When you’d left for college, yeah, his attitude mellowed a little, but from that point on nothing has been the same between him and me.

“I’ll admit I spent a lot of time being confused those last two years of high school regarding my sexuality. When I graduated and you came back for that, I was even more confused because you had finally become the woman I’d always expected you would be. I tried to talk to you one night you’d come over to see Jen, but something was different between us, you were in a different place certainly, and I was just living between denial, embarrassment, being a disappointment to my parents… Yeah, I ended up pushing a lot of that shit down…”

I remembered hanging out with him and Jen when I’d come home from college to celebrate his graduation, but I didn’t have any specific recollection of him trying to talk with me alone. What I couldn’t stop thinking about, though, was what he’d said about his dad being pissed that he might still be attracted to me. Had I heard him correctly?

Shit! Jen…

“Does Jen know any of this?” I asked, worried.

“No, she doesn’t know the truth, and I’m not sure I can tell her any of this… I mean, we’ve talked certainly because she knows he and I are fighting. I keep blaming it on fucking up in college, the DUI, the drug shit… I know she’s tried to confront him about it, but he hasn’t told her the truth, and my mom is toeing the same line.”

His mom too? I shuddered wondering about my place within his family – had I not been accepted? How could that be?

“What happened in college?” I got out before I could let those other thoughts drag me down.

“I needed to figure out some things, I experimented once with a guy thinking, well it… It made things clearer for me, I understood myself better, and who I really was on that front – fuck what my dad thought. Can’t say I didn’t have things to work through though. I was angry though and I fell in with the wrong group of enablers willing to feed that anger. They thought they were being my friends, supporting me, but really I was used as an ATM for a lot of it. I was, yeah… I can’t rightly remember some of that shit because I was doing some pretty bad stuff back then.”

“Of course you’d be angry, how couldn’t you have been,” I said softly.

“I guess…,” he began and looked very sad all of a sudden. “One night I got a double dose of Narcan, ended up spending the night in a hospital, and you’d think this smart guy would have thought he’d hit the bottom, but I hadn’t. That experience was enough, though, to convince me to trade drugs for alcohol. The idea being it was safer, but I was an idiot. I needed more alcohol to get the same effects of a single pill. That episode really set my folks off.”

“You overdosed! Ryan! What the fuck?! How didn’t we know this?” I whined trying to keep my voice down, but my heart felt like it’d been stabbed.

“You really think my parents would spread that around? Their 'gay' son overdosed in college...”

“I… Okay, that… That’s, that’s so fucked up…”

“That was college, and that experience started suffered late my first year, and by the middle of the second year I was facing getting expelled because I was bombing so badly. After I got that news I went on a bender and was clipped for the DUI. Luckily I wasn’t in possession of anything that would have gotten me additional charges, I was alone that night and hadn’t wrecked or hurt anyone, and the rest you know, pretty much...”

“Oh my God… You… You could have died, Ryan… I had no idea,” I said softly, feeling my throat closing up on me as the tears began to well in my eyes.

It was his turn to reach across the table and take my hand, squeeze it, and then give it a couple soft pats.

“The night I got popped for the DUI, the court and shitty judge, the thirty-one days in jail, the forced treatment program – all that made me take a serious look at my life, the shit show that was actually my life I was flushing down the toilet. Somehow I found the will to turn that fucked up existence around… I don’t ever want to be that guy again and I’m never going back to doing any of that shit, ever. I know who I am, what I’m capable of, and what I want from life,” he stated with conviction that gave me goose-bumps to go along with the couple tears that had just slipped down my cheek.

I looked at my lap, grabbed the napkin sitting there so I could dab at my eyes. I didn’t want to look at him for fear I’d completely lose it. A moment later, our waitress appeared with our food, asked if we needed anything else, refilled our water glasses—which I’d nearly drained—and left us alone.

“I’m so sorry… I feel terrible about all of that, responsible…,” I whispered.

“You didn’t do anything, Steph, I made every bad decision and I’ll own them all. Resilience isn’t a mindset, it’s a collection of scars and I’ve got plenty of those to remind me of where I’ve been and where I’ll never return,” he said with ease, reaching for the salt and pepper shakers, sprinkling a little of each on his omelet, and took a bite.

His face told me it must have tasted good, but all I could think was how his dad had helped set his spiral in motion because of me. I’d seen plenty of men worry about their masculinity being called into question for being attracted to someone like me. It was frustrating, depressing, and made most aspects of my dating life a living hell.

I knew Ryan had told me the choices were his, and I believed him. Still, my mind kept reaching for the simplest explanation: if I hadn’t been the person he wanted, his father might never have turned those feelings into a source of shame for him. That idea weighed on me and I needed a moment to compose myself and sat there looking at my toasted bagel.

“I feel like that means your parents never liked me, like never saw me or accepted me,” I said feeling the ache in my chest settle.

I knew his dad’s opinion had to be fucked up concerning me, why else take it out on Ryan? Was his mom really complicit? It would devastate Jen if she were to find out any of this. This was a layer of betrayal her parents would have to account for eventually and all three of us had claims.

“That’s why I’d said it was all an act the other night, I hadn’t meant… Well, I hadn’t meant to go off half-cocked like that, I really am sorry.”

That was his second apology for the rehearsal fiasco and I felt this one more than the first. His confirmation of my suspicions sat between us, adding to the questions I wanted answered. Unfortunately everything I was trying to get my arms around were in an ‘idea’ state and bridging that gap to concrete questions was proving to be difficult. I wasn’t sure Ryan would know the answers, but I hoped he’d help me work through my thought process.

“But why pretend, that makes no sense to me.”

“The bottom line, at least as I understand it from everything my dad and mom have said over the years, is that neither of them believes someone can be trans. I know that doesn’t make much sense though, since they wanted you around. What I think I’ve pieced together is your friendship with Jen was used as a way to keep guys that might be interested in her away.”

“What? No… That doesn’t track… She had guys asking her out all the time, she went to every formal back in high school, and I know there were guys she dated in college!” I ground all that out with barely any restraint or volume control, holding back details he should be privy to, like losing her virginity at seventeen.

I tried to picture his parents watching Jen and me together—not as two kids who loved each other, but as a solution to a problem neither of us were aware of. We couldn’t know they’d planned it that way, and the possibility they had was enough to make every memory of being welcomed into their home feel tainted. I’d – well we’d – been manipulated, and I felt sick to my stomach thinking that.

“After she’d gone to college they’d kind of washed their hands of the idea they were parenting her any longer I think, basically she was on her own. I’m sure they just didn’t want a teen pregnancy to derail her having a shot at a better life,” he said and I winced, angry and wanting to explode, but held my tongue. “My Mom was pregnant late her senior year of high school with Jen, and an abortion wasn’t an option my grandparents would allow. After she had Jen, her parents sent her right back to school so she could graduate. But there was postpartum depression, a shotgun wedding at the courthouse, and a rocky start to my parents’ relationship. I’m sure that’s some of how this rolled out, but I’ve never gotten the full story in a single sitting, just those pieces,” he explained.

“A better life! What the actual fuck! There are other ways to prevent teen pregnancy!” I barked and noticed at least two people at the counter across from us looked my way. Damn it! “How did my being around help with keeping her from getting pregnant?!”

“I’m not sure, but you were pretty much always with her, along with Marlene and Lisa. If any of the guys she brought around said shit about you what happened?” he asked. When I didn’t answer right away, he answered for me, “They got both barrels from her and that was it.  They were never seen around again, am I right? She was done with them because she valued you in her life more than any guy who happened to be sniffing around. You remember how often that happened, some guy getting blown up by Jen for being a douche – a lot if I remember correctly. And all those formals you mentioned, didn’t she end up having you tag along regardless of her having a date? You’d go solo, Marlene too if she wasn’t asked, it was a thing with you girls.”

I remembered more times than I would want to admit that Jen had stood up for me through some intensely stupid trans hate in high school. That was part of why she was my closest friend: my refuge from my family, the person I trusted to help me understand the girl inside me, and someone who ultimately helped shape me into the woman I am today. She didn’t care what the consequences were or the price she paid standing up to the haters. I knew for certain that without her friendship I’d likely have done something drastic, as many kids have while trying to figure out where they fit in the world knowing they are trans.

It made me wonder how her parents could justify using me as some kind of ‘boy’ repellant? That idea landed differently from an insult: it wasn’t that they saw me and disliked what they saw, they hadn’t needed to see me at all – just use me. Maybe they’d looked at a kid struggling to understand herself and saw it as a convenient way to keep boys away from their daughter, given how devoted she was to our being friends.

Jen’s loyalty had been real; I knew that with every fiber of my being. Her parents though had used our friendship, taken something precious and made it serve a purpose we’d never agreed to. I wondered how many times I had been grateful to be included, as though I belonged as a de facto member of their family, without realizing the adults in the room couldn’t stand me or the idea of me.

My vulnerability had been used, camouflaged as my belonging to something bigger – their family. Memories began to bubble up, and the comfort I’d once found in them now burned painfully in the pit of my stomach, threatening to tear me apart. I had felt such relief knowing I could be myself just walking into their home some days, it’s what literally kept me alive, but it was all a lie, an ‘act’.

I didn’t want to believe any of this – but the way his dad looked at me last night, with disgust, then everything he’d said was probably true.

“I’m sorry, Stephanie… I never wanted you to know any of this and I think we need to keep this from Jen for now. It would put a pretty big hole in her heart where my parents are concerned right now.”

I thought about that and nodded, but told him I wasn’t sure how I could keep this from her for very long and that one day I’d probably need to tell her because she knew me well enough to spot something was bothering me and would keep pressing until I came clean.

“I’ll never be comfortable around your parents ever again,” I said quietly, and finally took a bite of my bagel, though wondered if I could keep it down given what the coffee and these revelations were doing to my stomach at the moment.

I must have had a crumb outside of my lip because Ryan pointed to his lip and I got the message. I couldn’t bring myself to smear the cream cheese on it thankfully; I knew my stomach couldn’t take it.

“Thanks,” I said after carefully wiping near the corner of my mouth. I wanted to know if he was done recounting what had been a pretty fucked-up bookend to our growing up together. “Is that everything?”

He needed to finish chewing a bite of omelet, grabbed his cup for a quick sip to wash it down, and set it down – flagging the waitress over for a refill.

When she’d done that and left us he shrugged, “I guess…”

It was probably enough, but I’m sure there were things his parents had said over the years that would only drag me further into the abyss. No sense in piling on to my disappointment with them…

“So, that woman, the one with parental problems, care to expand on what you meant by that?” I asked, holding back saying anything about the idea that he might still be attracted to me.

“I told you, she’s in a better place, has the same problems with her folks, but you know that already,” he stated not looking away, but I couldn’t read anything in how he might have felt answering me.

“Last night, you said you’d been in love with her. Today, you allude to still being attracted to her. What am I supposed to do with that part of your story, Ryan?”

“As sure as I can be that both those statements are true, I didn’t lie to you. And, to be honest, I’m not far enough into figuring this conversation out to tell you where we’re going.”

“No, a question doesn’t get answer with another question!” I stated loudly, not giving a shit if people looked our way, and a few had – including the guy sitting behind him.

Ryan stared at me and I know he was grinding gears trying to decide what was going to come out of his mouth next.

“We’re different people, Steph…”

No kidding! I wanted so badly to believe he could see the whole of me—the kid I’d been, the woman I was, and all the years between—without treating any version of me as a mistake, an abomination.

“Do you see me differently than you did back then?” I asked fearing his answer. Maybe my final evolution didn’t match the one he’d expected or had settled on in his mind.

“I see you, I know with certainty who you are and have always been…”

“And?”

“Nothing has changed about the way I feel about you,” he said softly. “Has today changed anything for you?”

Are you kidding?! Everything had changed for me! How could the past thirty minutes not have changed everything for me?!

He’d just told me he felt the same way he’d always felt about me—through the shit with his dad, his college failures, and everything else that had shaped his desire to stay in my orbit and tell me the truth after all these years. In that story, being around him, I kept getting hung up on the idea there were different ‘versions’ of myself. Was his attraction to a particular version of me, maybe one I no longer would recognize in the mirror even on my darkest days of dysphoria? Would he feel the same way if I allowed him to see all of my resiliency scars, my flaws, and insecurities? Would his desires ultimately have conditions or demand changes of me? Am I now the version he wanted?

He’d trusted me enough to take off his mask, let his guard down, and share his fears. In an unfiltered moment of vulnerability, he’d told me that nothing had changed about his feelings for me since we were kids. The thing was – so much had changed…

--- [ Epilogue ] ---

[ Those Changes ]
“Morning,” the voice said behind me as he walked out the screen door onto the porch.

I turned my head and watched him approach and reach out to steady the oversized cushioned swing I was sitting in from the gentle sway. We let our smiles carry the moment for a few heartbeats and I watched him lean in to kiss me sweetly. Very satisfying, I’d never get tired of that!

Some mornings, I had to catch my breath thinking about how lucky I was. This was my new normal, and something as simple as a kiss from this man could make my chest do a little stutter-step. I had plenty to be grateful for: the kisses, my office on this oversized swing with a view of the mountain to the north, and the fact that I was sitting on the porch of what was now our home. Sometimes I wondered if I was dreaming. If I was, don’t fucking wake me!

“Where’s Maximo?” Ryan asked.

I looked out over the meadow and thought I’d seen movement in the tree line, stuck fingers in my mouth and whistled three times quickly, before yelling, “Max! KOMM!”

I could see the movement stop, recognition he’d heard his name and was being called to come, certainly he’d heard me whistle, but he’d hesitated because whatever he’d been chasing out there must have been close and he was still sowing his oats as a one-year-old. Caught between duty and play, he did as we’d expected though, the tall grass in the meadow giving way to an animal bounding through the deep grass at breakneck speed. Seeing the thin mist moving as he approached had me wondering if I should run the tractor with mowing attachment over it this afternoon.

“I’ll do that tomorrow,” he said still standing beside me said, knowing what I was thinking.

“Aww… Spoil sport!”

“You took out three of the sprinkler heads last time you were on the tractor. Let’s not make another project for me.”

“Fine…,” I replied giving in and appearing to pout for a couple seconds after I’d conceded.

The dog, Maximo, a trained Belgian Malinois, was scurrying up the steps by this time and proceeded to prove his true colors to the two humans on the porch by plopping down in front of me for a quick ear scratch and some loving from his mom.

“Braver Hund (braffer hoont)… Ever wonder if it would screw him up to just say, ‘Good dog’ instead?”

“I think he’d figure it out either way, especially coming from you.”

“You’re a good boy Maximo! Voraus (for-owss),” I said pointing towards the meadow and he wasted no time disappearing into the meadow’s tall grass to get back to chasing whatever was out there.

Max had been Ryan’s gift to me shortly after I’d sold my house in San Diego and moved in with him. He’d also purchased me a small handgun to keep on me when I went out walking the property, but I wasn’t as confident using it as I was using the German commands necessary to sent Max off. No one wanted to hear me say ‘fass’ (fahs).

I felt protected, not only by the dog and gun, but by the thought Ryan had put in to making my transition to Utah a want for something concrete after we’d gotten a glimpse of what might be possible that morning at the diner if we took a chance.

I smiled, closed my laptop, and was about to ask if he had time to sit, but he was already moving to take a seat next to me.

“Thanks for the coffee…”

I smiled, knowing it was the little things I did for him that made this love affair pulse. Brewing a pot for his insulated thermos took no time to do, but we were just like that with each other – giving for no other reason than to show the other our love for them.

“You’re welcome… Back by seven?”

“Should be, weather’s good, and I checked – the container was reportedly loaded at 3 a.m., so it’s just sitting there waiting for me,” he replied looking out over the meadow.

“Anything special you want for dinner?”

“You,” he replied after first looking at me sitting there in an oversized sweater, yoga pants that had seen better days, and gross slippers I had replacements for in my Amazon cart.

There was nothing remotely sexy about what I was wearing. I’d rolled out of bed, pulled my hair back, and dressed like a slob, yet this man sitting beside me still wanted me. No—not just wanted me. He desired me. Whatever spell he was under, I hoped it lasted a lifetime!

“Ha ha… You get enough of that already, mister” I said leaning into him, putting my head on his shoulder, and for whatever reason thought about how I hadn’t had to dilate at all in the past nine months.

“You good?”

I didn’t know how he did that, sensed when I was looking at some aspect of my life that was annoying or I got tripped up on a dysphoria remembrance, but he did it more often than I thought he should reasonably be able to do. Then again, I didn’t have to hold back with him, so there was very little he didn’t know or understand about my transition journey or where my head was most days.

“I am… I like it best when we get to share this,” I said quietly.

“I’ve got the next three days off, and next weekend Jen’s coming up. You ready for that?”

We hadn’t seen Jen since I’d sold my house, other than on FaceTime a couple times a week. I was super stoked to have her here in the flesh!

It had been difficult to honor Ryan’s wishes to not tell her about her parent’s deception, but I’d done that for ten months now. Telling her when she pressed about something bothering me after she got back from her honeymoon about the Ryan relationship possibility and that weighing on me – which wasn’t an outright lie, but a bit of cover. When she pressed a month later knowing again I wasn’t myself, I blamed it on the house sale since by that time I had agreed to move to Utah to be with him. The next time she brought it up while I was still in San Diego I blamed packing up shit for the move.

Every lie, every half-truth, made me feel shittier. I hated keeping things from Jen, especially when she trusted me enough to support my relationship with Ryan. She'd even promised to kick his ass if he fucked things up.

She left me with a couple pieces of advice: to always be honest with Ryan and take it slow. Two weeks ago I’d gotten a call from her saying she wanted to come out for a visit and I was bouncing off the walls for a couple of days afterwards. One day though, I’d have to come clean and I pray it wouldn’t end our friendship or blow up her relationship with her parents.

“Yeah, I’m ready! Was kind of an out of the blue thing though, right?” I asked, knowing we had talked this topic to death since she’d called and not expecting we’d come up with a good ‘why now’ answer today either.

“My money is on them being preggers…”

“Come on… They’re what, ten months into their marriage? She’s got nothing posted on Insta or Facebook, I haven’t heard ‘boo!’ from Anna – and that woman can’t keep a secret, so that’s not why she’s coming out to see us,” I offered with a little concern in my tone.

I watched him mentally dismiss my ‘tone’ for possibly calculating something in his head, smile, and ask, “Did it really take me three months to get you to move in?”

“Not three, three’s how long it took to get here reasonably. It would’ve taken you less time had you brought me out to your truck and tried to convince me ‘that’ way after breakfast the weekend she got married,” I replied with a chuckle.

“You busy now?”

“I’m working ya goof!”

I watched him stand, take my laptop off my lap and set it where he’d been sitting, and then hold out his hand for me to take.

“Ryan…,” I said with mild annoyance, but obviously amused at what he was suggesting.

“Stephanie…,” he said drawing my name out slowly and I got a chill from the way he’d said it, or maybe it was the intensity in his eyes, or maybe my just wanting him in the moment too if he wasn’t kidding around.

“You don’t have time for,” I began saying, but he flexed his hand at me and gave me that smile I’d see plenty of times before. “Really? Like, right now?”

“Yeah, really… So I’ll be home by eight instead of seven. Come on, it’ll be worth it and I like knowing that one of these times, with persistence, we might get lucky and you’ll end up preggers too…”

“You’re an absolute goof-ball!” I barked and couldn’t help but laugh at his ridiculous statement.

I took his hand and let him pull me up, but I moved into his arms, studied him, in awe at my good fortune. He certainly knew how to love me completely – mind, body, and dare I say soul. This is what love was supposed to feel like and I knew I never wanted this to change...

[ Never Changed ]
I knew the second Jen stepped out of the car and I saw her smile. She was already tearing up when I grabbed her in a hug tight enough to pop her if I wasn't careful. I was crying right along with her, rocking us back and forth like we'd been taken over by the Holy Spirit at a church revival.

Two minutes straight of doing the hugging-dance thing with Jen and I got to repeat that same joyful silliness with David when Ryan and I switched people we were gushing and blubbering over.

When David and I split, we watched the two siblings still holding each other, and I was choking up all over again. It took a few minutes for the mushiness to subside, but when it was over, there were the typical questions shot at them in rapid-fired succession: How far along are you? When’s the due date? Are you going to find out the sex? What names have you picked out? How do you feel?

“Pregnant, and tired, and like I’ve gained thirty pounds,” Jen complained.

She didn’t even ‘look’ pregnant – other than she had a glow about her that would be impossible to misread if you really knew her.

After a few clipped conversations, mostly recaps of the answers to my questions, Jen and I did what we did best together, laughed and kept talking non-stop about whatev’s! These moments we were sharing – precious – and doing wonders for my spirit! They were absolutely helping to fill the bucket of my having missed her for the past seven months. Sure we talked, did the FaceTime thing once or twice a week, but she was here in the flesh and I was going to bask in having her physically in my orbit!

In a rare moment of silence between us, the guys took that as their opportunity they could slink off to go look at the barn or tools or fishing junk – we didn’t care, we were already doing our thing and didn’t need them being bored or messing up our conversations. Plus, we wanted to have a little time alone anyway! Ryan had suggested not making this visit about their parents, especially if they were preggers, but I knew she’d eventually see through me and start pressing for whatever was bothering me. Ugh!

“He knew,” I said after we’d made it to the porch to sit after the guys were around the corner of the house and on their way to the barn. “Told me the day you’d called that you were probably preggers and you just wanted to tell us in person.”

“I hate when he does that, figuring out shit without any clues like he’s some walking Ouija board. And yes, of course we wanted to tell you guys in person,” she replied with a smile that wasn’t unlike the millions she’d shared with me over the years when she was truly happy. “IDK how your man can stand driving long distances though, took us nine hours to get here, and I’m not looking forward to the drive back. Boooring…”

“Stay then! Build a house across the meadow, we’ll make it a compound and you two can pop out like a dozen kids, and we’ll help out by watching them, filling ‘um up with sugar and sending them home for you to deal with.”

“You’d do exactly that! Bitch!”

“I would… As for driving, I’m not sure how he does it either. He’s conned me into going out with him in that truck a couple times, told you about that I think,” she nodded, so didn’t have to go into the details of those trips. “Really boring, monotonous, and the idiots out there? You’d think they’d never driven before or can’t see his big ass truck with the damn trailer! I will say this though; he does make good money, not that we couldn’t get by on my salary. I figure, if we keep this dual income thing up for twenty years we can probably retire in our fifties. I’m all for that!”

“Shit… Maybe I should start driving truck? Make the sleeper area a crib and just go. Speaking of jobs, we’re still trying to decide whether I’m going to go back to work or not, David’s leaning toward me being a fulltime mom. We’ll see, I’m not sure I can have a singular focus and not go mad.”

Jen was staring at me, it was a look I’d seen before, and shook my head at her while trying not to smile.

“You look damn good… Must mean he’s treating you right,” she got out before I could detour her.

“Better than good, it’s… I can’t explain it, Jen, he’s a thousand percent everything I need and some things I haven’t realized I need yet,” I gushed.

“I can see that, not just on your face, but he’s got the look of a kept man, deeply committed to his woman,” she stated with a slight bit of burlesque in her tone.

“Haha… That’s really been good too, but yeah, I’m definitely lucky, and we’ve settled into a definite comfort zone around here.”

“Speaking of committed, Max seems to love his momma.”

Max had been sitting next to me after having watched the reunion at the car from the porch because I’d told him to stay (bleib). We’d walked up the stairs after the guys headed to the barn, Jen gave him a pat and a couple long strokes of his back, but he came right back to being next to me.

“He’s a lot of fun, I walk the property almost every day with him,” I began, but her face looked a little shocked. “No, not all nineteen acres, but we get in a good bit of it via the animal trails out there in the woods. I especially like walking along the stream, very peaceful, the water flowing, we’ll go down there later, you’ll love it. I will say I probably wouldn’t walk it without him.”

“I wouldn’t… Gotta be lions, tigers, and bears out there…”

“We’ve got two of the three, mountain lions, and bears, no tigers that I’ve seen, yet. Oh, have seen wolves, though seeing them is pretty rare.”

Our conversation flowed for thirty or forty minutes straight. It was just like they’d always been in the past and on the calls we made to each other since I moved out here – easy, no strain, and no awkward moments or judging. There was an added benefit of the laughs being ‘live’ and from the casual observers standpoint it might look like that’s all we were doing – laughing continually about whatever – but it was just us being connected. God, I missed this, missed being around her!

We’d just finished talking about our jobs and Anna having met someone she was serious about, when the guys came around the opposite corner of the house.

“Hon, Ryan says there’s ten acres for sale a mile down the road,” David shouted when he saw us.

“Yeah, well I’m pregnant and not giving birth in some ‘Little House on the Prairie’ backdrop,” Jen protested.

“There’s a great vet in town.”

“Ryan Michael Baxter!” I barked and gave him the ‘look’! “What the fuck?! Not even funny mister!”

“Hard pass on the vet, ‘runt’,” Jen added.

“Gotcha, no vet,” he replied with a chuckle. “David says he’s about ready for something to eat, I’m hungry too – how about I get the barbeque going and throw the trout on?”

“He’s pretty proud of himself for being able to catch dinner this morning,” I told Jen just above a whisper.

“Sounds good to me… Guess we’ll get things set inside,” she stated.

I looked at my iWatch, then at Ryan, “Thirty-minutes?”

“About that, maybe forty depending on the coals,” was his goofy shrugged reply and I couldn’t help but love his playful antics directed at me, regardless if there were people around or not. He never seemed to care who saw him being silly with me and I loved that he just wanted me smiling on the outside and knew I was doing the same on the inside.

[ The Request ]
It took Jen and me fifteen minutes to make it to the kitchen, though the tour of the house did include that first with a TV game show hot hand sweep over the open concept layout that included the kitchen, dining room, and the living room. We probably could have cut the tour in half, but we’d talked too much about the blending of Ryan and my furniture, décor styles him and I had that were probably in conflict, and how the off-yellow of the master bedroom wall color needed to go! I asked her to put that bug in Ryan’s ear before they left Sunday.

We ended up having just enough time to get the table set, a salad thrown together, and some instant mashed potatoes done before the boys entered with the platter of cooked trout. Since no fish remained when we were done, David and Jen both having ate one and a half each, I’d call this a successful dinner. The conversations flowed, the laughs were plentiful, and the dessert – a blackberry pie I’d picked up in Enterprise this morning at the only bakery in town – was a hit.

After we’d cleared the table, I caught an interesting exchange of looks between David and Jen.

“What do you two have cooking?” I asked.

“Well, we’re wondering what your two’s plans are in say, eight to twelve months,” Jen replied with a little grin.

Ryan did the shrug thing, so I ended up asking, “What’s happening in eight to twelve months?”

By my calculations the baby would be two to six months old given she was about three months in right now, did they want us to come babysit?

“We, David and I, would like you two to come be the Godparents to this little bean,” she said placing her hands on her stomach.

Ryan had been watching me and knew when the tears started flowing that I wasn’t going to be able to answer anytime soon, so while I was hugging it out with Jen, he said, “We’d be honored…”

There might have been a few too many OMG! gasps shared by me.

[ Truths II ]
I loved sitting on the porch as the sun was rising, seeing the dew in the meadow form into a lazy fog bank that was only disturbed by a gust of wind or the occasional deer meandering through it until the sun burnt it off was very calming. This morning it was eerily still, no wind what so ever, but the fog drifted with the few deer grazing out there. I’d had to remind Max he needed to stay (bleib), twice. He’d also heard sounds from the kitchen, and had gone to sniff at the door before coming back to lie in front of me.

“You’re up early,” I commented quietly as Jen came out holding a coffee cup she’d brewed tea in, the little tab fluttering on its tether as she came over to sit with me on the swing.

“It was way too quiet in our room last night, thanks for lending us the fan.”

“De nada…”

“So this is the office, eh? I can see why you like it out here. A lot better in person than seeing it blur by over FaceTime.”

“Offer still stands, build across the meadow or there are those ten acres down the road,” I chirped.

“Hard pass, I’m not a country girl. You don’t ever have any internet issues?”

“Nah, Starlink has been pretty reliable and even during that little winter storm we had in January I was still able to connect without issue. We had three feet of snow overnight. I was sure we’d be stuck here for days, but Ryan was out on the road after his coffee, breakfast, and plowing a path to the main road. I stayed next to the fire with the laptop and Max, thank you very much.”

“He still in bed?”

“Sleeps in on his days off, I allow it so I can have some me time,” I got out with a slight giggle.

“I thought maybe you’d just worn him out last night…”

“You did not hear us last night from the other side of the damn house,” I complained, seeing the look of curiosity on her face, along with some amusement about giving me shit about any possible sexual exploits I might have had with her brother last night.

“I didn’t, but you just admitted somebody got sum…,” I didn’t let her finish.

“Okay, okay… Whatever…, Nothing happened last night,” I whined.

“If you say so, but I’m not buying it.”

We sat with our smiles for a moment, and a few seconds later she commented, “Hey, since we’ve got a couple of minutes alone, kinda wanted to talk with you about something.”

I watched her blowing over her tea and taking a tiny sip, replying, “Should I be worried?”

“Depends on what you’ve been hiding from me or are worried about telling me. I feel like both of you have something weighing on you and it’s been going on a while. I figured you’d eventually spill it, but nothing, and I think whatever is going on has been around since my wedding. You can tell me I’m wrong…”

Jen was sitting on the porch swing sideways, one leg curled under her, an arm propped on the back, and had borrowed some of the oversized blanket I had to keep warm out here until the sun got a little higher in the sky. I’d shifted to face her, but knew my initial facial reaction to her inquiry had confirmed her suspicion. Could I redirect her focus, probably not given the intensity of the look on her face?

“We weren’t sure, well, like when to say anything… Ugh! The timing never was right to bring this issue up,” I muttered helplessly.

“The timing, for my best friend to say something about an issue, would have been when she’d found out about it,” she began and I could feel the restraint in the cadence as she spoke. “With Ryan, I can sorta give him a pass, we’re still trying to build back our relationship and that’s going to take some time. I can’t force him to unburden himself, but I’m sure he’s been through hell and can see he’s carrying some heavy shit, on top of whatever this thing with my dad and him is. I feel like until they can put that to bed it’s going to keep this family from moving forward and I hate that no matter my efforts I can’t bring things to heel, to be like they used to be. Remember all those were great times we had at my house?”

I loved and hated she knew me so well and could tell when even the most minor something-something was off with me. Her disappointment in me stung and I felt it deeper than she probably suspected. As for remembering those times we’d shared as kids at her house, her knowing the truth was going to change her, maybe our relationship even, and I feared that the most.

“There was so much going on, Jen, and saying anything before you went off on your honeymoon wasn’t something I could reasonably do. Plus, I didn’t know everything yet until the next morning when I met Ryan for breakfast.”

“I was gone ten days and when I got back you were at my parent’s house with everyone as we opened gifts. I knew something was going on with you and when I asked you’d said we’d talk later. Then later came, and what I got was, ‘I think I have feelings for Ryan.’ And I told you I was thrilled about that, loved that for both of you. Then I asked a couple weeks later it was stress about moving out here, and after that stress about selling, and… So you used that stuff to cover something else up?”

I could feel my resolve slipping away and she wasn’t about to let this fade back into the background.

“I did, but… That wedge between Ryan and your parents, it’s, that’s kind of my fault.”

“Your fault? K, explain to me how that can be?”

“It wasn’t like, not intentionally, it’s just…” I began to whine, but she cut in.

“Well it was something-ally! How did you get sucked up in Ryan’s drama with my parents? And if you did, why not talk to me about it?!”

“I wasn’t sure how…”

“You pick up the damn phone and tell me what’s going on, come on, Steph!” she complained and was silent for a moment as a realization of something hit. “Did my dad say something about you two being together?”

“No, well… Yes he did say something but it was to Ryan before we graduated...,” I started and didn’t stop talking until I’d told her the entire story.

I only included the details Ryan had shared concerning his father’s thoughts on the idea of someone being trans and his telling him that he was ‘gay’ for being attracted to someone who was born male and could never change no matter how much they pretended. I mentioned his look of disgust at the end of the reception that had likely been directed at me and not just Ryan, and when I was at her house for the opening of wedding presents he’d been very standoffish – hardly even acknowledging I was there.

I didn’t tell her anything about what Ryan had been dealing with over the years, that would need to come from him when he was ready to tell her.

We’d both taken turns crying, trying to console the other through apologies neither of us should have been trying to make for the actions of her parents. The truth shattered some of Jen's memories of growing up together. Her parents had pretended to support her best friend while I struggled to understand what being trans meant. Learning that their support had been a lie was a hard pill to swallow. Nothing between them would be quite the same again.
David had come out at one point, was concerned when he’d saw his wife’s face, but she’d asked him to give us a couple minutes. He was slow to do that, but had. Five minutes later both he and Ryan had joined us on the porch.

“You told her,” Ryan said gently. I needed that from him right now, as we watched him and David sit on the porch railing across from us.

I nodded, but the swing swayed as Jen got up to get her arms around Ryan.

“Why didn’t you tell me,” she choked through sobs which had started when they’d come out onto the porch together.

“I’m sorry,” he croaked while holding her, watching me trying to not lose my shit all over again.

“Twelve years…,” she whispered into his neck.

To his credit David just sat there, knowing that at some point he’d be clued into what was going on.

“I feel worse about all this for you and Stephanie. I thought plenty of times you knew, knew that I had feelings for her, but was afraid to say anything,” Ryan admitted. “Then dad, he’d said a lot of shit and I wasn’t mature enough to think that bullshit through and that led to some fucked up times.”

Jen buried her face into his shoulder, her body racked with every attempt to stifle the sobs.

“Jen?”

We watched her body follow the voice and ended up in David’s arms, that’s when the sobbing really let loose.

“Hey… I got you,” David cooed.

Ryan moved to join me on the swing, getting his arm around me and I was right back to crying.

It took twenty minutes before either of the women in this group could put a hold on the emotional waterworks. David had been a good sport and grabbed tissue from the bathroom at some point and Ryan had gotten them cushy chairs to sit in. When we were situated, David was finally brought into the light by Ryan – a ‘guy’ oriented recap of their family issues – that had moments where we spiraled, Jen and I, again.

“You should have told me,” Jen complained to Ryan and I after David had asked a few questions of Ryan and was satisfied he now had a pretty good idea of what was going on.

“I should have, I get that, but I had things to work through with Ryan and I’m still trying to figure out how I’d missed your parents’ real feelings about me. I haven’t come to grips with that, doubt I ever will… At your two’s gift unwrapping, that was the most uncomfortable I’ve ever been in your parents house or around them! I don’t ever want to go back there, Jen… I’m serious!”

“I’m so fucking pissed right now. I feel like shit they subjected you two…,” I interrupted her before she could heap any more blame on herself.

“No, this wasn’t you, it was me and them having a problem with me… You’ve both always been there for me and I believe that with all my heart. If you guys hadn’t been my friends I wouldn’t be alive, wouldn’t have Ryan, and wouldn’t be happy as I am…”

“I don’t get why he thought saying you were gay was the smart parental move,” Jen bitched.

“You, more than anyone else, know the issues I’ve had with men being questioned about attractions to trans women, come on… If they never believed someone could be trans, then that’s not so farfetched. They betrayed all of us. I’ve had time to think on this and I’m convinced your dad threw out the ‘gay’ accusation as some kind of shock collar thing to sway Ryan or get him worrying about his manhood, maybe to get him doubting what he was feeling for me or that I’d never be complete,” I got out before choking up a little.

“Who’d have thunk my runt of a brother would have been the bigger man in the end,” she said smiling at Ryan.

“Can we dump the ‘runt’ shit, please?” Ryan asked sounding annoyed.

That brought on a couple chuckles from the group of us sitting there.

“I read somewhere the final level of detachment in a relationship is disgust,” David commented, “If his looking at either of you that way at the reception was as you’d said, Stephanie, I can’t believe this family will ever be able to come back from this crap…”

He had a point, and there’s where I felt the heaviest guilt. I was the catalyst of this family's split, but I felt like I had Jen and Ryan’s support, love. Ryan had his arm around me and hugged me a little tighter as if knowing I’d needed it.

“This is our family, right here, right now, forever… We’re going to support what we have, what we love, and that little bean of yours won’t ever have to question being loved by us,” Ryan said.

[ The Stream ]
Jen and I broke away from the guys after lunch to go for a short loop around the easier to traverse third of the property. That meant we were walking along the stream and having Max with us kept Jen’s fear of tiger’s jumping out at bay.

“He really delivered,” Jen said in reply to my having praised Ryan’s sobriety last night after showing Jen his three-year coin.

“I’m proud of him, all that work he did, and continues to do? Yeah, he’s my frick’n stud for sure,” I couldn’t help but gush a little more.

Jen was staring at me as we were taking a break, sitting with our feet in the stream. For a second I felt a little uncomfortable with the intensity, so I shrugged at her to ask what was going on in her head that prompted the stare.

“You know, it wasn’t all him, Steph… It was his love for the woman he knew was there all along, the woman we both saw all those years,” she barely got out before we were dabbing fingers at the corners of our eyes.

We sat in silence, listening to the water flowing over the rocks, and I looked around to make sure Max was close. He’d treed some animal and was patiently waiting at the base for it to try and escape.

“You know I’m pissed at him too, not just you, for not saying anything sooner?”

“I’m sure he knows he should have said something to you long ago or maybe called your dad’s bullshit out, but I think he really thought he was protecting both of us. Go easy on him, okay?”

She was back to staring at me, but her face softened as she said, “You really do love him don’t you?”

I didn’t hesitate before answering, “I really do…”

[ Ever-ly After ]
Jen and David had wanted to get on the road early, so we’d called it a night early last night so they could leave at a reasonable hour this morning. If they were lucky they’d make it home by five at the latest – barring any accidents or ridiculous San Diego area traffic.

There were teary-eyed goodbyes of course, and there were plenty of hugs to go around. Jen and Ryan seemed in a good place, her and I too, and David was dealing quite well with the drama he had no idea was lurking below the surface of the family he’d married into. When they were gone Ryan and I had a brief moment where we’d assured the other we were good, here for the other, willing to talk, but shortly thereafter we found projects to do alone. Ryan ended up changing the oil in the tractor, while Max and I went for an extended walk.

We’d gone to bed last night and talked at least an hour about how to move forward – which was putting us and Jen and David first in our definition of a nuclear family. Ryan had told me he wasn’t going to try to hash things out with his parents right away, but if they laid any shit on Jen we would intervene. We both knew their opinions weren’t likely to change any time soon, overnight, but agreed they’d equally fucked all of us.

Jen had made it clear that there were rocky times ahead for parents and her. I felt bad about that and couldn’t help piling more shit into the guilt bucket I had that was already overflowing. I understood there would be consequences for their behavior, but even with Jen, David, and Ryan repeatedly telling me this wasn’t my fault – I felt the opposite. Their parent’s could have chosen to be kind, rather than hateful, and the family would still be intact if they had.

I could feel the warmth of the sun baking me and the water rushing by almost had me to the little cat nap stage, but Max had sat up unexpectedly. Before I could sit up he was jumping over a portion of the stream and running towards the tree line. When I had sat up I could see the reason for his quick departure.

“You get the oil changed?!”

The lanky gait of a man I’d never get tired of seeing was smiling at me, “I did, still don’t want you taking out any more sprinkler heads.”

I watched as he kicked his shoes off next to mine, waded into the stream and joined me on a mammoth rock that sat in the middle of it and diverted the water around it like a small island. There was enough smooth surface for one person to lie and sunbath or for two to sit.

“Hey,” I whispered and kissed him gently as I scooted over so he could sit.

“Hey yourself…”

“I don’t suppose you’re out here to tell me you’ve got dinner prepared and came to fetch me?”

“I thought you were down here catching us dinner!”

“Haha! By the look of the sun’s position and the rumble of my stomach I’m guessing it’s about time to do something about that, eh?”

“In a couple minutes,” he said looking at me funny for a moment.

“What’s up?” I asked, now mildly curious.

“You know I’ve loved you for a long while now, right?”

I’m not sure why, but I felt a flutter in my stomach and my face felt warm, something was different in his vibe, aura.

“I know, and though I was late to this party I pinch myself constantly to make sure I’m not dreaming… I guess I’m trying to say, I love you too…”

He reached into his pocket and pulled out a small box. I stared at it, not yet understanding what he was about to ask, but knowing the box held a specific promise I hadn’t expected today.

“I’d planned to do this while Jen was here, but… Doesn’t matter… I loved you back then and a hundred fold more now, marry me, make us permanent, forever,” he said opening the box containing the sparkles of a princess cut solitaire ring that took my breath away.

I watched him carefully remove it, take my hand, and slide it on… It fit perfectly. It struck me that there were tears running down my cheek, his finger gently wiping them aside, and I still hadn’t answered him.

“If you’ll be my forever ‘plus-one’, I’m yours…,” I choked out barely above a whisper.

Guess we both had that someone to crow about now…

- FIN -

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Rachel M. Moore