Friday I’m off work.

Yes, this means I lied to Celia. No, it’s not a good idea, but hopefully before she figures it out I can find a way to say “sorry I lied, but I was scared you’d find out that I randomly change sex bits at inconvenient or embarrassing times” in a manner that doesn’t make her hate me or scared of me.

The day off is a blessing - even more than usual - because when I wake up, I’m still a girl, and I haven’t figured out how to square that circle with a job that expects me to be a boy. My phone is abuzz with text notifications: multiples from Celia and Doreen, and one from Chuck. I leave them unread while I use the bathroom and look in the mirror. My hair is a mess, but I kinda like it? I grab my phone to snap a selfie, then get dressed. I still only have comfy boy clothes and the outfits from Doreen, and I don’t want to give her the satisfaction of picking out girl clothes for me (that I happen to like) without my consent, so “comfy enby” it is this morning.

Downstairs, I make myself a cup of coffee and start reviewing texts.

I check Doreen’s texts first, because I have a pretty good idea what they’ll say. I’m right; it’s four texts asking for details about the date. I need to talk to someone about last night, but I’m still upset about feeling very set up by Doreen. She gets “No details for you until we talk about what details you ALREADY KNEW” and an angry face emoji.

I’m a little worried about what I’m going to see from Chuck, so Celia is next. Her first text is from last night. She’s thanking me for a wonderful time last night and for the chance to go on a date with such a hottie. I’m flattered, but I also feel awful because I didn’t think to text her after the date.

Celia’s second text is from later in the night and reads: “Ooh, I’ve heard a lot about this book, but I haven’t read it yet. I’m going to get started now. Am I dressed appropriately?” This is accompanied by a picture of Celia, in bed, covered to her waist by a bedsheet and wearing nothing except a copy of A Psalm For The Wild-Built by Becky Chambers, open and strategically placed over her breasts. For the first time ever, I think that the extra price I paid for a hardcover book over a paperback or digital copy was worth it.

I send a reply to her first text: “The best part about being a hot mess is that you get to be hot! I had a great time with you last night, and I can’t wait to see you tomorrow!” I attach the bedhead selfie from this morning. I can probably keep that look with a little bit of mousse, right? I guess it’s something I can ask Doreen about when I’m ready to talk to her again.

I can’t reasonably put off Chuck’s text any longer. “Hey, man, do you happen to have a MPDG lesbian cousin? A girl who looked a little like you was in the restaurant last night. Catch up with you at NFD’s tonight!”

I stare at my phone. Surely I didn’t slide that far into a stereotype on my second day as a woman? I reflect and decide that Chuck’s off base. I was a little high on Celia vibes last night, and that may have made me excitable. And obviously I’m not going to deny I was a girl last night and am still one today. But I’m nowhere near slight or short or cutesy enough for Chuck to fairly characterize me as a manic pixie dream girl.

His second acronym worries me more. Friday means Non-Football Drinks night at the bar. There’s no chance I can go in my current state - nobody would expect me to be a woman except Doreen, and my voice alone would stop me from trying to go incognito as a man. If I don’t change back, I’ll have to fake sick.

But that’s a problem for future me. Present me has a book to read and coffee to drink.

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I head to my room and grab Orlando. I settle into my reading chair when my phone buzzes with a text from Celia. I start to open it, and my phone rings. Doreen.

“Hello?”

“Yes, I overstepped, and yes, I didn’t respect any kind of boundaries, and yes, I probably should have let you figure this out for yourself. But I hadn’t seen you even be interested in anyone since I’ve known you, and I didn’t want you to lose a chance with someone I thought you clicked with because the circumstances were extremely weird. I’m sorry.”

I take a deep breath. “Okay. What I need to hear from you that I didn’t hear is that you’re done overstepping and you’re going to let Celia and me figure this out on our own unless you’re explicitly asked for help.”

“You’re hearing it from me now.”

“Fine. So what do you already know?”

“I really only know about plans? Dinner obviously - and I’m sorry, I forgot Chuck works there too - the book blind date, and the Two Truths and a Lie setup.”

I laugh. “Setup is right. I told her two truths she already knew, and she gave me the wrong answer on purpose.”

Doreen gives a low whistle. “Damn, that’s devious.”

“See? This is exactly why she doesn’t need your help! I have a hard enough time keeping up already! I’m in so far over my head that I’m stuck reading Virginia Woolf and am in possession of a picture of Celia wearing nothing but A Psalm for the Wild-Built!”

“… is that a euphemism for something?”

“NO! I have a picture of a woman I have been on one date with wearing a hardcover book over her nipples and nothing else!”

“You say that like it’s a bad thing? At least you got your value out of the price of hardcover.”

“Honestly, Doreen, that might be the worst part? It isn’t a bad thing. All this stuff Celia’s doing that I’d have run screaming from in any other relationship, I find irresistibly attractive now. And I have no idea whether it’s because I, personally, am that much into Celia, or if girl-me is just a huge slut!”

“Not that there’s anything wrong with it?” Doreen asks.

“Nothing at all, for other people. But in my thirty boy-years on this Earth, this has not been me, and I’m not sure why it suddenly is now!” I take a breath; this was an admission that I hadn’t expected to make, and frankly, hadn’t even thought of until it came out. “Can we talk more during lunch? I’m starting to get hungry.”

Doreen takes longer to answer than I’d like. “How hungry are you? Are you… like… four helpings of Thai food hungry?”

Damnit, she’s right.

“Uh… yeah. I think I might need you to pick something up and bring it over instead.”

“Sure thing, girlfriend; grabbing a big batch of Chinese food. Be there as soon as I can.” Doreen hangs up before I have a chance to reply.

I look at my phone. “Damnit, Doreen, my body’s making me weird enough that you don’t need to contribute to the weird.” I see the notification from Celia’s text message and open it.

“Hey, babe, I know you’re at work, but when you get a chance, can you call me? My inner librarian got the best of me this morning, and I was on Facebook, and… This is a weird thing to text. Can you just call me?”

Fuck. I did not think of this at all. This is going to suck. Thankfully, Celia thinks I’m at work, so I have time to plan.

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When Doreen arrives with food, I’m frantically refreshing my social media, my throat’s starting to tickle, and I’m starting to hyperventilate. Doreen immediately comes over.

“I know, you’re a little stressed because it’s time, I figured it out when you started asking about lunch.”

“I’m a little stressed because I think Celia Googled me and found a whole Internet full of boy-me stuff.” My voice cracks, but I can’t tell yet if it’s from emotion or from my latest sex-shift.

I spend most of my change back to boy mode mindlessly eating Chinese food.

I eat a lot of Chinese food.

Among the things distracting me from the sheer quantity of food I’m eating:

-What’s the rhyme or reason behind these changes?

-How am I going to go on the book expo date if I’m a man?

-How am I going to call Celia back if I’m a man?

-How did I go from “what if I start being a woman” to “what if I stop being a woman” in like two days?

-Looks like I can go to Non-Football Drinks now, and have Chuck interrogate me about my “lesbian cousin”, me.

-What am I going to do about a mid-day change if I’m at work? Or if I’m a woman at the start of my work day?

-Is Celia even going to like boy-me as much as girl-me?

-How much does Celia already know about boy-me?

-How did I let myself get talked into reading Virginia Woolf?

Doreen demonstrates incredibly good judgment by not saying a word until I’ve finished eating. When I finish, she says, with hopefully forced cheerfulness, “Okay, so which crisis do you want to tackle first?”

“I think first I want to tackle the crisis of ‘why are you treating me like a personal project and being extra supportive during the weirdest thing that has happened to either of us?’ Like, you’re here in the middle of a Friday, when most people would be at work, you’ve bought me massive amounts of food and plenty of clothes - don’t lie, I know those outfits never fit you in the first place - and just been beyond generous.”

“Oh wow, I didn’t think we’d go for the Doreen questions first.” She sighs. “Okay, I’m telling you this with the understanding that you will not tell anyone else, and you will not ask any follow up questions, because I don’t want to answer them and may never be ready to answer them.

“I’m able to be here for you like this because I’m extremely, unfathomably wealthy - I don’t have a job and will never need to have a job. I want to be here for you like this because you - boy-you more so than girl-you - remind me of someone who I should have been there for and couldn’t, and it hurt us both. That’s all you’re getting. Next topic.”

That clearly isn’t everything, but it gives me enough answers to know that I should think about those girl clothes as a gift rather than a transaction. “Okay, I think I want to tackle Chuck next, since it’s probably the easiest. He sort-of recognized me at the restaurant and thinks I’m my own lesbian cousin. He’s going to ask about it tonight, and he’s going to be a frat boy about it.”

Doreen rolls her eyes and sticks her tongue out. “Yeah, Chuck definitely has a ‘lesbians are hot’ thing going on, and I only avoid it because he’s scared of me. You can tell him you’re your lesbian cousin, and he’ll ask you for details about her/you. You can tell him you don’t know what he’s talking about, and he’ll tell you details about her/you. They’re both a little icky, but I think your only non-icky choice is to skip NFDs, and I’ll cover for you if you do that.”

“That’s a decision I can make later. I think the questions about my changes are probably more urgent.”

“The Celia ones or the non-Celia ones?”

I sigh and rub my eyes. “Is every woman in my life quicker on the uptake than I am? The non-Celia ones first, I think.” My phone buzzes as if to argue with me. Another text from Celia. I don’t look at it and file it under “handle a little later.”

Doreen laughs. “First of all, yes. We are all quicker on the uptake than you. Second, I don’t think the non-Celia questions are as much of a crisis as you do.”

One by one, Doreen and I go through my concerns about how my unscheduled sex changes could interrupt my non-romantic life:

-Work: Doreen says she’ll hire me to do nothing, or if I prefer, to do something. She gives me a look that tells me falls under the “don’t ask about Doreen’s money” rule, and I don’t argue.

-Social events: This one’s harder. Doreen’s theory is that I can slowly “come out” to our group of friends, starting with the least likely to freak out and slowly widening the circle until the people who know and are cool with it can embarrass the people who aren’t into submission. I don’t know about this, partly because our friend group includes people who are nosy as shit and likely to ask some extremely personal and uncomfortable questions when they find out. Doreen knows who I’m talking about, but neither of us assign a name to the creepy-ass characterization. (No, it isn’t Chuck.)

-Changes in public: Given that my transitions so far have been slow, subtle, and preceded by hunger, we think we can get ahead of it by having spare clothes handy and relying on the nearly identical sizes of boy-me and girl-me as a backup plan.

-Driver’s license and other legal documents: Deferred due to a lack of plan that doesn’t involve bribery or forgery.

-Virginia Woolf: I’m going to suck it up and read the book.

-Planning for changes: Doreen plays around with a spreadsheet while we talk about what’s been going on right before or right after each of my changes. It’s not a great data set, because I was asleep for half of them, and Doreen admits this kind of thing isn’t her strength. She suggests we try to bring in Jeff, a friend from NFDs who works in sports data. I don’t object to Jeff in principle; I’m just not ready to bring someone new into the circle yet.

Our argument about Jeff is interrupted by Doreen’s phone ringing. She looks at the caller ID, then shows it to me before answering.

“Hey, Celia, what’s up?”