Disclaimer: Welcome to chapter 5 of The Square Peg. This story contains a relationship between a mtf and a ftm. Things don’t always go perfectly. If you haven’t read the previous chapters, much of this won’t make sense. For story telling purposes, when Kevin and Andrea are alone, they think of each other as Vonnie and Drew, and pronouns change accordingly. All persons having sex are over the age of 18.
******
I waited until after my mom had left for work before I even thought about trying to repair the damage from last night. I had a headache and my entire body felt old and achy. I wanted nothing more than to crawl back into bed, but the longer I put it off, the worse things could get.
First, though, I wanted another shower, even though I had one before bed. Maybe the hot water would help soothe my aches.
I pulled my Vonnie shower caddy from under my bed and made my way to the bathroom, setting the water temperature almost high enough to scald.
I got myself good and wet, and stood underneath the hot spray, not really willing to do much of anything but absorb the heat just yet. I briefly thought about using my hair removal cream, as Thursday was a really inconvenient day to do it. If I switched to using it on Sundays, though, then I would be the furthest from it on the weekends, and that wasn’t any good.
I had plenty of time to think while I stood in the water. I needed to talk to Nicole, and I needed to talk to Drew. I couldn’t believe that I had Little Richard out in the open right in front of Nicole. That was probably going to have to be a phone call for my apologies and gratitudes. I didn’t think I could look her in the eyes just yet, even if I still needed to help her edit her video.
Somehow, I also had to get Drew past this, and repair his and Nicole’s friendship, but I had no idea how to even start. It didn’t seem like the kind of thing I could bribe him with sex or food for. Even if I was feeling up to having sex, which right then I really, really wasn’t.
I uncapped my body wash, the pleasant green apple smell wafting from the tube, and squirted a decent amount into the loofah. Drew washed my hair last night, and I was only supposed to wash it every two or three days, so I skipped that and washed my face and body down.
Once out of the shower, I rubbed scented lotion into every bit of skin I could reach. I was going to have to make time to scrub my feet with the so far untouched pumice stone, but I didn’t have the will to try something new today. Maybe I’d find some time to watch a video or two and figure out just how rubbing a rock on your feet was supposed to make them better.
I picked out one of the few Vonnie outfits I had that wasn’t skintight or skimpy, a pink zippered hoodie with matching sweatpants, and I put on a white tank top under that, with a comfortable white cotton bra and panty set. I did put in the effort to hide away Little Richard and apply some light make-up, because I felt like crap enough without also having to be Kevin. With that in mind, I put my hair into tiny pigtails that just barely worked, given that my hair wasn’t growing as fast as I’d like. I gave the waist cincher a pass for the day.
I had procrastinated as long as I dared, so I picked up my phone, pressing the contact button for Nicole before I lost my nerve.
“Hi.” Nicole’s voice sounded off. Not unfriendly, but definitely not the same girl who used to cheerfully answer my calls.
“Hi Nicole. Listen, I need to apologize for last night, and to thank you for taking care of me. I don’t… I don’t know what to say, exactly. Do you hate me now?”
“No!” she was quick to correct me. “I don’t hate you! I thought you were going to blame me for yesterday!” I heard her sniff wetly before I could answer her back.
“Why in the world would you think I’d blame you for anything?” I didn’t see how any of it could be her fault.
“‘Cause, ’cause… it was, like, my idea to go to the club, and I didn’t know you didn’t know about the drink thing, you know? If I would have remembered that, like, you’ve only been a hot girl for a little bit, I might have said something!”
“Okay, I get it. I blame you for nothing, understand? I’d have been in so much trouble without you, and you took care of me even when I was kind of throwing myself at you, and my memory of some of last night is gone but the parts I remember are of you being the best friend ever, okay? As far as I’m concerned, we’re still great.”
She sniffed again, like she was crying. “Can… can I ask about some of the things you said?”
Oh God. What did I say that I don’t remember? “Uh, I guess so?”
“Y-you said that you didn’t have any friends and were, like, way miserable all the time, like, before…”
I closed my eyes as humiliation poured over me. “Yeah,” I said quietly, “that was true.”
“But what does that even mean?” she asked plaintively.
“Before I moved here, and Drew took an interest in me and introduced me to all of you, I hadn’t had anything Betturkey even close to a real friend since the sixth grade. When I told you that you were the best friend I’d ever had, I really meant that, Nicole Peterson.”
Nicole sobbed on the other end of the line, and I was suddenly wishing I had done this in person so I could hug her. “I’ll never not be your friend, Vonnie. I promise,” she cried.
“I wish I could hug you right now. Look, I’m going to talk to Drew, and make everything right again, okay? But, uh, have you talked to Ava?”
“Yep. We’re going to a movie tonight!” My cheerful friend was starting to show back up, and I felt such relief that a tear escaped before I could stop it. Whatever the after-effects were from what I was drugged with were making me more emotional than I was used to being.
“That’s great, for real. Do, uh, do you think you could ask her to not spill the beans about me?”
“We already talked about this, don’t you remember?”
“No… I don’t remember that at all.” That was worrisome.
“Totally! Ava helped me get you out to my Jeep, and promised to not say anything about Vonnie, and you promised not to say anything about Ava liking girls.”
“Okay… uh, did I make any other promises I need to know about? Does Ava know about Drew? Did anything else happen I need to remember, or do something about, or anything?”
“Lemme think… No other promises. Ava doesn’t know about Drew, but if I was her, I’d be wondering about how Andrea knows about Vonnie, you know?”
That was something I didn’t think I could be that proactive about. I’d have to tell Drew, and wait for it to come to a head. “Okay. I’ll get together with you in the next day or two and we’ll work on your video? I mean, if you want?”
She laughed a little. “You bet. I’m so glad you don’t blame me for last night, Vonnie. You’ll… you’ll talk to Drew?” she worried.
“I said I would, and I’m calling him next. Uh, I kind of spilled a lot of secrets last night, and Drew knows about Ava, but I’ll tell him to keep it to himself, okay? I’ll talk to you later, Nic. Bye.”
“Bye.”
******
I opened the door for Drew, and let him into my house. Before he even took his shoes off, he placed his hand on the side of my face and looked into my eyes. “How’re you feeling, babe?”
I wrapped my arms around his waist and buried my face into his chest, breathing him in. “Like I got run over. Drugs are bad, m’kay? Bad.”
He didn’t laugh, just continued to hold me as I held him. “I was so worried about you last night. Uh, how much do you remember, anyway?”
I’m sure he felt me stiffen up. “Some, not all of it though. What did I do?” I asked anxiously.
He held me tight for a moment, before letting me go and kicking off his shoes. “Let’s sit down, okay?”
That didn’t fill me with a good feeling. I sat on the end of the couch, and he sat right next to me instead of the other end. That actually did make my anxiety ease a bit.
He took my hand, enveloping it in his own, much larger one. “Do you remember admitting that you loved me?”
“Yeah, I do,” I said quietly.
“Why… why didn’t you tell me sooner?”
I looked at his face, and underneath the confusion was a little bit of hurt feelings. “Because you’re the best thing that has ever, ever happened to me. I was afraid that, like, I’d scare you away if I told you too soon, and that would have killed me, Drew. I fell in love with you, so hard, before we even had our second date. It was way too soon, understand?”
Drew wrapped his arms around me, and gave me a loving, lingering kiss. “Well I know now, and I’ll never get tired of hearing it. You love me, and I am so in love with you too, Vonnie.”
I cuddled into him, and basked in the sound of him saying he loved me without my brains being addled. “Now that we got that straightened out, can we talk about Nicole? Please?”
“Look,” he started, “I told her last night I wasn’t mad anymore, and I meant that. I just… I wasn’t prepared for anyone else to like you like that. Like I do. Stupid of me, with how beautiful and amazing you are, but the thought just didn’t occur.”
I chewed that over. “You do know that I’m totally committed to you, right? That you don’t have to worry about me cheating on you, or leaving you for someone else?”
“I do,” he smiled ruefully, “but maybe I just needed to hear it out loud. Now what’s this about you never having any friends?”
I closed my eyes in shame, despite the no-shame space I was always reassuring Drew with. I was hoping he wouldn’t remember that part, but apparently it stuck in both his and Nicole’s minds. “I don’t know what there is to explain. I didn’t have any real friends.”
“I don’t understand how, though. You’re so awesome, and funny, and smart and all that… How?”
I couldn’t look at his face, and shuffled over to listen to his heart instead. “I don’t know. I guess… I guess I was always awkward, you know? Awkward, Betturkey Giriş and shy, and… out of place? It wasn’t until I started being Vonnie that I really understood that it was all because my outsides didn’t match my insides. If it wasn’t for you, I might have lived my whole life without figuring that out, and whatever else, I’ll always be grateful to you for that. So thank you, Drew.”
He squeezed me, and we just cuddled in comfortable silence for a while.
“So… uh, what do you want to do now?”
I shrugged against him. “I dunno. If you wanted private time, you should have taken my begging seriously last night, ’cause today? I’m so not up for it.”
“I couldn’t do that!” he protested.
“Okay… if, God forbid, something like last night ever happens again, you have blanket permission to fuck me like you won me in a tournament, okay? I mean it, I trust you implicitly.”
Drew groaned in regret, and started rubbing his hand up and down my back. “I wish I had known that yesterday, you don’t know how hard it was to say no to you.”
The hand on my back, lightly massaging me felt like heaven. “If I’d had a clearer mind, I’d have tried out Option Theta on you instead of just pleading. That might have worked.”
He laughed. “Probably would have. I didn’t have a lot of will power left when you finally gave in.”
“Listen, Ava knows about Vonnie now, and that you know about Vonnie too… but she doesn’t know about Drew. I don’t know if anything is going to happen because of that, but… you’re going to have to decide what you want to tell her if she brings it up.”
He groaned and rubbed my back some more. “Super. Well, I’ll jump off that bridge when I come to it.”
I chuckled, and burrowed into his embrace further. “Can we just cuddle? Maybe watch some TV? I’m really not up for much of anything right now.”
He grabbed the remote from the coffee table and turned on the television. “Anything you want, babe. Anything you want.”
******
I checked my phone, and I had a missed call and a voicemail. Drew had left school before lunch for his eligibility physical, so I didn’t feel all that bad about ducking out on the beginning of lunch to return the call.
I wandered outside of the school building and over to a spot where hopefully no one could overhear me.
“Fresh Face Modeling, how may I direct your call?”
I cleared my throat and took a surreptitious glance around, double checking that no one was in earshot. “Hello, this is Veronica Coy, returning a call from Maggie Roth?”
“One moment, please.”
I was put on hold, with the standard elevator music that seems to be on every phone system everywhere. Thankfully, I didn’t have to listen to it for more than a few minutes before Maggie picked up the other end.
“Veronica, darling, how are you?”
I had never thought that there were people in the world who actually talked like that. My agent sure proved me wrong. “I’m good, Maggie, thanks. How are you?”
“Wonderful, sweetie. I’ve got three jobs this week for you.”
“Three? Isn’t that, like, a lot?”
Maggie laughed gaily, and only a little phony-like. “Word travels fast about teen models, sweetie. It has to, otherwise by the time you hear about them, they’re too old to be teens any longer. Now, you impressed people last weekend. Do as good, or better on the jobs this week, and next, and demand will rise. More demand means a lot more money, girl,” she cheerfully explained.
I needed to sit down, this was moving really, really fast. “I don’t… shouldn’t this be harder? I mean, don’t girls try and break into this kind of thing and fail all the time?” I asked.
“Oh Veronica, that’s true. But, and this is the important part, you have this great marketing point. You’re transgender. The girl more than beautiful enough to model, who wasn’t born a girl. Also, not to pat myself on the back too much, but I’m pretty good at this. Now add to that the fact that Margarite has been singing your praises, and well… I don’t expect it to be very long at all until you are the Next Big Thing.”
“That reminds me, we still need your headshots. I can’t keep using the cropped photos from your phone camera. I’ve emailed you the details of the jobs, so unless I hear from you by the end of today I’m going to assume you’re on for them all, okay? Talk to you later, darling.”
******
“Explain that shit again? I still don’t get it.”
I looked across the library table from Shausty to Nicole, who looked just as uncomprehending. “Okay, uh… ‘They’re’, with an apostrophe, that’s a contraction for ‘They Are’. Anywhere you could use those words, that’s the ‘they’re’ you want. ‘When are they coming? They’re coming at nine. They are coming at nine. See?”
“‘There’, T-H-E-R-E,” I spelled out, “that’s a location. Here and there. Easy to remember, ’cause it’s one letter away from being ‘here’. ‘Where is it? It’s over there, not here. In that location.'”
“‘Their’, Betturkey Güncel Giriş T-H-E-I-R, that’s a possessive. His, hers, its, and theirs. Like personalized towels, right? None of them get an apostrophe. ‘Whose ball is this? It’s their ball. Both hers and his ball.’ Is that better?” I asked, hoping that this explanation got through to them.
Shausty and Nicole were both scribbling notes madly while I spoke. It didn’t seem that hard to me, but then again I knew my strengths leaned towards scholastics. Tutoring my friends was an aggravation I was willing to put up with, but I don’t think I’d ever do this for anyone else. I was finding out my patience as a teacher was somewhat lacking.
Shausty looked up from her notes, and flashed her grin at me. “Yeah, that time it made more sense.” She tilted her head thoughtfully, and turned to Nicole. “So what in the hell is going on wit’ you an’ Andrea, huh? Downright skittish around each other this morning.”
Nicole’s panicked gaze snapped to mine, and I jumped on the grenade. “It’s all my fault,” I admitted.
I waited until I had Shausty’s full attention before I continued. “Saturday night, when you and Andrea were hanging out, Nicole and I went to a club. Someone slipped something into my drink, and I said things that damaged their friendship. They’re working through it, but all the blame is mine.”
Shausty gave me a disbelieving look. “Someone slipped you a mickey?”
Instead of getting offended, I just rolled my eyes. “It’s far more likely someone was trying to get Nicole and spiked the wrong drink. Bottom line; I got drugged and was very stupid with my words.”
Nicole stood abruptly with a panicked look on her face. “I’ve, uh, gotta go potty.” She left the library table as quick as she could, not that I blamed her.
We both watched her leave, and then Shausty turned back to me. “They workin’ it out, you said?”
“Yeah.”
She regarded me for a moment, before leaning back in her seat. “S’good. I’m glad we have a chance to talk here, ’cause you an’ me got some straightening out of our own to do.”
I blinked. This came out of left field. “We do?”
Shausty slowly nodded and crossed her arms. “Mm-hmm. We do.”
I resisted the urge to scrub my hands over my face. Then I remembered that I wasn’t wearing makeup, and went ahead and did it anyway. “You are going to have to help me out here Shausty. I have, like, literally no idea what you’re talking about.”
The side of her mouth quirked while she thought it over. “Alright. So, ’bout a month ago, my girl Andrea gets interested in this guy. Now, this is a big fuckin’ deal, cause Andrea has had no interest in anyone before at all. It ain’t like my girl ain’t had dudes creepin’ up on her before. Or females, for that matter. She has. Turned ’em all away.”
“Now, I don’t mean no disrespect, but you ain’t exactly my type, so I didn’t see whatever it was she saw in you. Alls I know is that she drags me an’ Nicole up to you when you was like brand fuckin’ new here to ask yo’ name, and then we was eatin’ wit’ you every day at lunch. Since it meant so damn much to her, I did my best to be nice and friendly. And then, over the next few weeks, I found out that even though you was shy, that you damn fun to talk to.” Her mouth quirked into a brief teasing grin. “Messin’ wit’ you is a riot.”
“I didn’t see anything real though, until after y’all got together. See, Andrea was so into you that when you said you had a date and got that big ass hickey, my heart broke for her. The only guy she’s ever liked and that happens?” she shook her head. “Then, surprise! The date was with Andrea. And my girl was happy.”
Shausty unfolded her arms and leaned over the table. “See, this is where it gets important. None of us ever knew Andrea wasn’t ever happy, cause none of us ever seen her when she was. An’ then, at the homecoming dance, I started to see why she was into you. Andrea ain’t never had so much fun as she did dancin’ wit’ you.”
“So I says to myself, ‘This dude’s gotta be somethin’ special. If he can make my best friend that damn happy, and for the first time? I gotta bridge that gap and get tight wit’ him, ’cause he must be all that’. But this guy, you, be keepin’ me at arms length. So what is it, Kevin? Is it ’cause I’m black? ‘Cause I ain’t about to apologize for that.”
I shifted uncomfortably while I thought. Was I keeping distance from her? I came to the realization that yes, I probably was, and it sure wasn’t because she was black.
“If I’ve been distant,” I began slowly, feeling out my thought. “Or, like, keeping my walls up with you, I’m sorry. I sure haven’t been doing it on purpose. But if I have, it isn’t because you’re black, Shausty. It’s because you’re cool.
Shausty blinked. “Say what?”
“I’ve never met anyone as cool as you are,” I admitted. “You like, pretty much ooze charisma. There isn’t ever a situation where you are uncomfortable or awkward. You can talk to anyone, at anytime, about anything.”
I spread my arms wide, showing her my hooded sweatshirt with the Green Lantern emblem in the center. “Take a good, long look at me, Shausty. Now imagine how I’ve been treated by not only everyone who was cool, but everyone who was even trying to be cool… that I’ve ever met.”