While Doreen tries to deflect Celia, I look at the text she sent me, and I stop breathing for a few seconds. It’s a screenshot of my Facebook page, complete with a picture of boy-me. It definitely looks like I did when I first met Celia at the library. She’s circled the word “male” next to my gender and captioned it “Please tell me there’s a reasonable explanation for this.”

I can tell from Doreen’s side of the conversation that things are not going well for me. She says, “Okay. Okay, I’ll let them know. They’ll get back to you as soon as they can.” She hangs up.

I give Doreen a look. “Singular they?”

She throws her hands into the air. “Following her lead. You were right. She found your social media - all male-coded, of course - and from there she went to Google and whatever other librarian databases she has access to and she found a bunch of references to a man with your name and age, but no women. She thinks you’re playing some kind of game with her.”

I laugh. “That’s rich, after the game she played last night.”

Doreen shakes her head. “You know there’s a difference between playing a game with what you know and deceiving someone about who you are. She’s hurt. I could tell she’d been crying. I think she really needs to speak to you.” She looks me in the eye, then looks away. “I think you need to decide before you call her whether it’s more important to you to have control over when you tell her or to keep her. I don’t think you can have both anymore, and I don’t think you can wait until she can hear it from a familiar voice. I know that isn’t fair.”

—————————————----------------------------------------------------------------------

She’s right. I need to choose, I can’t wait, and it isn’t fair. This sucks, but the longer I wait, the longer we’re both going to hurt over it, regardless of what happens.

“Are you calling her?”

“I need a minute to decide what I’m going to say. And I really appreciate your help, but I think I need to make this call alone.”

“Do you need me to go outside or go home?”

“Outside, I think… thanks.”

Doreen gives me a kiss on the cheek and waves her phone at me. “Good luck, loverboy. Text me when my exile is over.” She leaves me alone with my thoughts, but mainly with my fears.

—————————————----------------------------------------------------------------------

I text Celia. “Are you able to talk now?”

My phone rings. I answer it. “Hey.” My voice, the one that I’ve had my entire life except for two days in the last week, feels fake, like I’m lying even while I’m trying to be fully honest.

Celia’s voice is strained. I can tell she’s barely holding on. “What’s going on with you?” she whispers. “When I met you in the library, I thought you were transitioning one way or the other, then you came to our date a 1 on the futch scale, and now you could sing Johnny Cash at karaoke. You’re showing me - and I think Doreen - a woman, and the rest of the world a man.

“I promise I can handle a lot of weird gender shit - I’ve been through and dated my fair share - but I also promise I can’t handle dishonesty.”

I take a deep breath. “Do you remember last night, when you said that if you can’t be your whole self with someone, you shouldn’t settle for being less than that on their behalf?”

“Yeah?”

“I’m more complicated than that, and it’s not my choice. I’m still trying to be my whole self with myself, and tried to find a way to settle for less than that because I really like that part of myself when I’m with you, and I thought you liked it too.”

“I’m going to be honest, I’m not following.”

“I’m going to tell you the whole truth, and nothing but the truth, and I don’t know if it’s going to hurt either or both of us, but it’s going to hurt less than saying this at any point other than now.”

“That’s a little scary, but okay…”

“When I woke up on Saturday, I was a woman.”

“Okay? I don’t think that’s news, that’s the day we met?”

“Hang on, that’s not all.” I take a deep breath. I’ve gone too far from shore to swim back, but it doesn’t make pushing forward any easier. “When I went to bed on Friday, I was a man. When I woke up on Sunday, I was a man. Thursday afternoon, I turned back into a woman, and as of a couple hours ago, I’m back to being a man. What you saw on Facebook and Google is what I assumed you’d have seen every day of my life until a week ago, and now, I don’t know which of me you’ll see or when.”

I pause to give Celia a chance to answer. At first, all I hear is a soft “fuuuuck me”. Then she speaks up. “Okay, Facebook-man. Where are the dresses from last night?”

“Um. Here? At least the second dress is here; I don’t know what Doreen did with the one Chuck and I soaked. We need to talk about him at some point too.”

“Okay, I want proof of life. For both of you.”

“For both of us? What do you think I did to Chuck?”

“No, not you and Chuck. Both of you. The Internet’s lost boy and my hot mess. I’m giving you five minutes to send me a selfie of you, boy-shaped, in the dress from last night.”

“Um, okay, I can do that. Are we going to stay on the line while I change, or… ?”

“I have to get back to work. I’ll keep an eye out for the selfie, and if it shows up in time, we can talk about Chuck and why you told me you’d be at work today too.” She hangs up.

“Fuck!” How can this woman never miss anything and why do I find it so fucking hot even when she’s kicking me in the balls?

————————----------------------------------------------------------------------------------

I get much closer to Celia’s deadline than I’d like. I’d thrown my dress in the hamper, but Doreen had apparently taken it out while I was in my feeding frenzy and laid it out on the bed. I take off my sweatshirt and notice, with some amusement, that I’m still wearing the bra I put on this morning when I was a woman. I start to take it off, then decide I don’t have time and throw the dress on over it. I grab my phone, angle the selfie to show as much of my flat chest under the dress and bra as possible, and send it to Celia with a kiss emoji.

She replies with a thumbs-up and nothing else. I choose to believe she’s too busy at work and text Doreen to inform her that her banishment has been rescinded.

She comes in, takes one look at me, and bursts out laughing. “Dude, what the fuck kind of kink did she want you to satisfy before she forgave you?” She pulls her phone out and takes a picture, still laughing.

I groan. “Is that for blackmail?”

“No, for me.” She taps an icon on her phone. “And… on the contact card!”

“Doreen! You didn’t!”

“I’m not telling,” she sings at me, “and you’ll never know.”

I reach to try to take her phone, but mine interrupts me by buzzing. It’s a text from Celia. “Great view, sexpot. We still need to talk; I’ll call you after work. You have some reading to do.”

I let out the breath I didn’t realize I was holding. Doreen, trying and failing to read over my shoulder, asks me if things are good. I smile. “I think they will be.”

“Great, so I’m gonna bounce and get your employment papers ready?”

“Not quite.” I toss her Orlando and start taking my dress off. “You have one final act of penance from last week.”

Doreen’s eyes widen. “Oh no.”

I smile. “Oh yes.”

———————————---------------------------------------------------------------------------

“You made Doreen take this picture? That’s fantastic. I love it. I think I’m going to print it out as a poster and put it over my bed for when my nights get lonely. Or whenever I want to laugh my ass off at you.”

“Oh, thanks, send me from flattered to frightened in less than five seconds.”

“I have to know, whose idea was it to put you in a skirt and put the book over your boobless nipples? I was expecting a book-blocked dick pic.”

“Mine. You must earn the book-blocked dick pic, my dear.”

“So about Chuck. Let me guess, he knows you as a boy, and you panicked on the date before you realized he wouldn’t recognize you?”

“It’s worse than that - he did recognize me, and now I have to explain away my hyperactive ‘lesbian cousin’ who threw water on him and then on herself.”

Celia laughs. “Now, sir, for the final challenge, worth all the points: Why did you lie to me about working today?”

I blush, which thankfully Celia can’t see over the phone. “Last night was equal parts euphoria and terror for me. I had no idea what kind of clock my ‘girl time’ was on, and I was smitten with you. If we had gone somewhere else after the bookstore, I would have let you do whatever you wanted with me - and the last thing I wanted was for a penis to play peekaboo while I was in a compromising position.”

“Oof, yeah I guess I can see why you weren’t entirely forthcoming about that. But tell me more about this ‘whatever I wanted to do with you’, it sounds exciting.”

“That’s what I thought, too, but it ended up being me wearing a skirt in my comfy chair reading Virginia Woolf.”

“You’re not still wearing the skirt?”

“The feeling of the breeze on my boy parts is just so wonderful, why would I change?”

“Because you want to go out for drinks tonight? Or to the book fair tomorrow?”

“Maybe I’ll be able to get away with a skirt then, who knows?”

Celia laughs again. “Well, I’m going to let you get to your drinking. Just don’t stay out so late you oversleep tomorrow.”

“Fine, MOM.”

-----------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------

Celia’s off the phone, and Doreen’s gone home. I’m in my apartment on my own. That means I have time to test something that… needs testing.

I head to the bathroom, thinking about the last couple days. About Celia asking me what Doreen wouldn’t do. About her perfume. Her rigged games. Our kiss. Everything else I wanted to do last night. And, of course, the picture I got this morning.

I look down and notice that I’m standing firmly at attention.

Test passed; I now know it’s not just girl-me who’s a huge slut for Celia.