(Content warning: This story contains references to abductions and allusions to date rape)

I’m sitting at the bar, enjoying a one-girl’s-night-out margarita, when I hear it. The siren song that had tempted me into so much trouble over the years.

“Oh my god! Alex! I didn’t realize it was that time of the month already!”

I smile and turned to face my ex-girlfriend, ex-boyfriend and current best female friend all rolled up into the same person, Teri. “You know me - moon’s out, tits out.” I push my chest out in emphasis, then look over her outfit - a short blue skirt and a matching low-cut top. I’ve seen her in this top before, and it’s tighter on her than usual. “Uh, Teri, speaking of tits out…”

She laughs. “You like? Work was awful, and I decided I didn’t want to pay for drinks tonight. But hanging with you sounds like an even better plan; I’ll grab us a table.”

We take a seat and Teri orders her own margarita before catching me up on her work. During the day, Teri is Terry, a legal advocate for transgender issues both mundane and magical, including shapeshifters like her, werewomen like me, forcibly changed people with “stable” forms, and everyday “normie” transgender men and women. He uses his Terry identity for this work because the law field, even in transgender issues - maybe especially in transgender issues - is extremely misogynistic and queerphobic, and presenting as a straight cisgender man opens doors that would otherwise be closed. Like many shapeshifters over 25, Teri has a small set of “default” shapes and legal identities for each, including both male and female identities, but given how rarely I see Terry out of work, I think we’d see much less of him if his work wasn’t so unfairly gendered. This particular day, Terry had been working on a new project. There’s been a series of abductions of people in our community, mostly shapeshifters, weres, and other people with what we call “unstable” forms, and Terry was working with the authorities - who usually don’t get told who we are to prevent discrimination - to distinguish “our” victims from others in order to discern any patterns that might help them catch the abductors.

I met Teri when she was younger and still experimenting with shapes - I dated Terry on a three-days-per-month basis, Teri on a twenty-seven-day-per-month basis, and a now-abandoned androgynous persona named Tori for what was supposed to be a full-time basis but actually only lasted three weeks before we called it off. In the end, we both just needed different things out of our lives at that point - Terry’s parents had tried to discourage him from embracing his nature, so he needed a fluid college experience, where I, forced into changing every month, was struggling to establish and maintain stability and structure. We remained friends throughout college and beyond, even as our career paths betrayed those collegiate urges. Terry ended up seeking the structure of law to help his community even as Teri benefitted from the opportunities created by that work, and I learned to embrace my natural fluidity’s strength in a career as a romance novelist.

And, of course, as soon as Teri pays lip service to Terry’s workplace woes, she finds the chance to focus on my professional and personal challenges as a romance novelist who hasn’t gotten laid in over a year.

“Didn’t you go on a date just yesterday? With someone you said had ‘voluminous assets’?” Teri prods, leaning forward to display her uncharacteristically significant volume. “How did that go?”

I sigh. “She was just another fucking chaser, Ter. They’re everywhere.” I lower my voice in a mockery of my date’s attempt to sound sultry. “‘I want an experience only you can give me: getting fucked by a man who knows firsthand how a woman wants to be touched.’” As Teri tries and fails to stifle a giggle, I roll my eyes. “None of these normie posers ever stop to think that maybe I, too, prefer to experience my sexual delights from people who have a broad scope of experience, if not scale.”

Teri gapes. “Are you saying you’ve still never fucked a normie?”

I hold my hand up in a mock salute. “Gold Star Tiger, right here. It’s easy when your choices are either to find someone in community or lie about yourself.”

Teri finishes her drink and orders a martini. “Where are you even finding all these chasers, anyway? Some kind of fucked up speed dating service?”

“Worse, some kind of fucked up dating app.” I show Teri my phone, opened to the Gendr app, which shows me all the magically sex-changed people within 25 miles desperate for a shag, as well as the traditionally TG people and normies who want to shag them.

“Lexi, nooooooo,” Teri begs. “Tell me you haven’t gotten this hard up.”

“I’m only hard twenty-seven days of the month. The other three I’m just that thirsty,” I respond.

At Teri’s request, I show her the app’s various filters and flip my profile to my “lunar” settings. You can choose all the usual dating app settings - your gender, preferred gender to match, likes, dislikes, relationship interest, etc - but also some options unique to our community, like whether you have a “stable” and “unstable” shape, whether you’re transformed, transgender, or “normie”, and if you’re considered “unstable”, like Teri and I, the degree to which your preferences and interests change between shapes.

After showing her the functions, I hit “match”, and we both burst out laughing at the first result. “Holy fuck, this is just like a regular dating app,” Teri cries. “The first match is always some shirtless motorcycle dude!” So it is. I feel a little for the guy - according to his profile, he was caught up in a body swap - but I definitely don’t feel for him in that way.

I swipe, this time matching with Loretta, a very attractive woman in a tailored business suit. I start reading, but Teri reaches over me and swipes. “Trust me on this one, you do not want to give Lori a piece of you. Genetic researcher.” I shrug, and we move on.

The third profile is from a man who, despite the app not offering it as an option, self-identifies in his profile as a chaser. He thinks that if he can find a woman who was magically transitioned, she’ll both play video games with him and fuck him. Yeah, you unoriginal bastard, you and every other jackass who learned about us from the Internet thinks that, I think as I swipe past.

The last profile we find worth mentioning is one of my exes, a wereman who works at this bar, mostly as Marti the bartender, but for three days a month as Marty the bouncer. We dated briefly since our monthly cycles always kept one of us a man and one a woman. This is a very bad reason to date someone, but she’s a good enough gal and sometimes a good enough guy.

We spent another fifteen minutes swiping through Gendr profiles, including the profile of my date from last night, who I report as falsely identifying. We don’t find anyone who either of us finds interesting - for our current shapes or our other ones. I tell her about the other dates I’d found through the app - a Swap who was trying to get used to her new body, a Shifter who ghosted me after setting up a meeting, another weregirl who just wanted someone like him to talk to. Teri half-listens, then perks up when the music changes. “Hey, Alex, they’re playing our song! We need to get in on this action!” She drags me, only half-objecting, to the dance floor, but only after I finish my margarita.

When Teri’s right, she’s right. Dancing with her is exactly the distraction I need from my dating woes, even if her too-large breasts are distracting me from the distraction. We quickly lose ourselves in our own unique musical tangle bred from romance and friendship spanning twenty years and a wide variety of gender and identity pairings, ours and others.

As I take a moment in our harmonic coupling grind my ass against my friend, I hear a familiar deep voice in my ear. “If you really need a good night, I’m sure you could convince Terry to make an appearance.” I turn around, startled, to see Teri and only Teri. I lose my temper a little and shout at her. “Damnit, Teri! You know I hate it when you do that!” I walk over to our table, grab my martini, and take a sip. Teri gives me space to collect my thoughts. It still gives me the creeps after all these years for Teri to switch voices like that. Teri and Terry may be the same person, but my reactions to them are not, and she needs to remember and respect that.

I don’t feel like dancing anymore. I go to the bar to cash out my tab. I review the bill before paying - I’ve been burned more than once by a bartender trying to pull one over on the drunk girl - and as I take a sip of my martini, I notice that it isn’t on the bill.

Because I didn’t order a martini. The drink I left on the table was a margarita, and I’d finished it.

My head starts to spin as I consider my fuck-up and start to panic. After spending most of the last month as a man, I briefly forgot Rule One about socially drinking as a woman - Never Drink Anything You Didn’t Get Yourself. Where did this drink come from? What’s in it? I don’t know!

The bartender notices my distress and calls over a bouncer. Thankfully, my wereman ex Marty’s working tonight, and he comes over. He tests the drink, which is negative for any drugs, and helps me out of the bar so I can get away from the noise and catch my breath.

I collect myself and head back inside to settle my bill. Once I pay, I find myself enveloped in a rib-crushing hug from a six-foot, six inch woman made of pure muscle who barely fits into her short blue skirt and matching low-cut top. It’s Teri in her guise as Trudy, which I haven’t seen since someone got too handsy with her during a cosplay event at a local convention a couple years ago. “Ouch… need… breath…” is all I’m able to get out before Trudy lets me go. She’s holding her purse and my own, and her eyes are teary.

“Lexi, where did you go? I could tell you were upset and gave you space, but then you and my martini were gone, your purse was still on the table, and…” she sniffs. “I was so afraid I’d be putting your name on my list at work tomorrow.”

It’s my turn to get teary and hug Trudy. She’s really upset - she never refers to an identity she isn’t currently wearing in the first person. “It’s okay. I’m okay. I picked up your drink by accident and panicked, but I’m fine now. I think it’s time for me to go home, though. Walk me there?” She nods.

As we walk, Trudy tells me more about Terry’s current project. They’ve been comparing the financial activity of the abductees, and noticed that a significant number of them had spent time at that bar. That’s originally why Teri was there tonight, and why she was more well-endowed than usual - she was hoping to get the attention of the abductors. “Then, of course, I saw you sitting all alone with a margarita, and decided a girls’ night might be something we both needed.”

I nodded, noticing that the conversation was calming Trudy down; she was slowly reverting to Teri (without the, er, enhanced features). “But how would that have worked? Your marks are specifically looking for Unstables, and you just looked like a normie big-boobed bimbo.”

Teri shrugs. “That’s what we’re trying to figure out still - they must have a way to identify Unstables. They’re not going to take a blood test in a bar, and we don’t typically lead off with ‘hey, did you know I’m a shapeshifter?’”

“Hang on.” I have a thought. I pull out my phone and open the Gendr app. I look through my old matches and find the shifter who ghosted me. I show Teri the profiles. “Do you have her on Terry’s list?”

Teri’s eyes widen. “Yeah, that’s one of the victims. Is that the one who ghosted you?” I nod. She pulls out her phone, dials a number, and talks in Terry’s voice. “I think we’ve got a new lead. See if you can get any information about the victims’ use of a dating app called Gendr.” She pauses. “Yeah, that’s G-E-N-D-R, like ‘gender’ but with no second E.” Another pause. “I didn’t think of that kind of connection, either, but a friend was telling me about the app and we put two and two together.” A third pause. “Thanks, I’ll follow up tomorrow.” She hangs up and talks to me with Teri’s voice. “Hopefully that puts us in the right direction.” She fidgets with her jewelry. “You might want to avoid new matches for a while, though, sorry.”

“Yeah, probably.” I’m still looking at my phone, in the “old matches” section of the app. I open a profile and read it. “You might want to get them to look at this Loretta person, too. She’s basically asking to hear from Unstables in her profile.” I take a screenshot and send it to Teri’s phone. She nods, and promises to look at it later.

We don’t talk much for the rest of the walk home, although I notice Teri fidgeting with her bracelet and rings more and more. It’s a sign that she has something she needs to say, but doesn’t know how to say it. Usually, when she’s in this state, it’s best to give her the chance to think it over, although I’m anxious about what she could be thinking. Is it something about the abductions? About my gaffe with the drink? When we get to my building, she stops and grabs my arm. “Lexi, we need to talk. Okay, maybe I need to talk and I need you to listen.”

I stop. She takes a deep breath and continues. “I know why we broke up. I know they were good reasons at the time. But I also know that I never stopped caring for you.” Her fidgeting is getting more intense. “I didn’t say anything while you were dating around and I wasn’t because I figured I’d already had my chances as Teri, Terry, and Tori, and you deserved a chance with someone else. I tried dating other people myself, but they only reminded me of you. And then, when people like us started going missing, all I could do was worry about you.

“I know this is the worst possible time to bring this up, but tonight, when I thought you were gone and I was going to have to add you to Terry’s list of the missing… I wouldn’t have been able to handle that. It takes a lot to bring Trudy out, but being scared for you did it.”

The streetlights reflect off Teri’s tears, giving her the appearance of crying glitter. She continues. “I know I don’t deserve another chance. But I also know I’m not the same person - same people - I was in college. I’d like to give us another chance, because I can’t bear the thought of losing you again.”

Now tears are flowing down my face. I wonder if I look glittery to her. She keeps fidgeting with her bracelet as she waits for my answer. I reach out, take her hands off her jewelry and place them in mine. “I’d like that.” I lead her into my building.

Tomorrow, Terry will need to follow up about Loretta and Gendr. But tonight, Teri is mine, and I intend to take advantage of the time we have. Maybe I'll even let Terry join in.