Can Dreams Come True?…Part 8

*Before…

“Are you going to do something stupid like hurt yourself?”
I turn to look at him and he lets me and I look in his eyes and he’s looking in mine and there’s this whole thing of he knows, he knows that I was in that place where there was a chance that I just might. I mean I’m a real coward when it comes to that stuff but still…it was there and he knew it and he stopped it.
He stopped me.
I nod and put my head on his chest right there on his solar plexus.
“Okay…let’s get out of here and warmed up.”
“Okay….and Ryan…”
“Yeah Josie?”
“I’m sorry.”
“I knew you were even as you were saying it…we’re good.”
He gets us out of the shower and I look at him and he’s looking at me and he’s shivering and he looks as close to being like seriously chilled as I’ve seen someone that wasn’t hypothermic.
I…I want…oh gods my want’s started this whole stupid thing!
And that’s when he tucks my soaked hair out of my face with his hands and cups my cheeks and he kisses me!

*And Now…

It’s completely unexpected.

Ripping my breath away, making my heart race I haven’t been touched and kissed since I started transition, awhile before that actually…it’s been just so lonely.

Deeply hard to handle lonely….not a good mix for depression.

And Ryan’s skins so soft and the shape of his face, the eyes especially wet it sort of reveals things…like there’s a difference in how eyelashes look wet and still yet they’re a he? Yeah he, as much as he looks… looks like a girl they don’t. There’s this inside getting out male energy there, it makes the difference, it comes out with how he just is.

He…he doesn’t kiss like a girl either, I know because that’s about the only kind of kissing that I’ve done and this….this is different.

The way his hands are holding and cradling my face.

The way that his thumbs have slid and pushed my wet hair back and tucked behind my ears.

The strength in the way that he kisses…the one definitely doing the kissing, being strong and gentle but wanting…wanting me?

But no one wants me.

It gets a little too real and more tears start spilling out and I whine moan a little as the rest of me starts feeing things.

Ryan breaks the kiss.

I’m breathing hard and he’s blurry until he wipes the tears from my eyes.

He’s got this sad smile but a sad for me smile?

I duck my head and blush, shake and shiver some and he…he just sort of takes over.

I hate this, need it, hate it, love it.

I’m so sick of being a human train wreck.

He gets some towels and walks me out to the living room and we’re both shivering and he’s shivering worse than me since I’m, well minus his usual clothes I likely have twenty or thirty pounds on him.

Not that I want the weight and the muscle even as much as I’ve lost.

He looks at me though like he doesn’t notice, doesn’t see it.

“I’m sorry.”

I’m sorry I really am and there’s the whole thing too…that we stopped kissing.

Part of me really, really didn’t want to stop kissing.

“It’s okay.”

(Sniffle) “No it’s not.”

“Yeah, it is. I was the other person involved, I kinda ought to know.”

“Ryan…I just…”

He looks at me.

I start to cry again. (Sob-sniffle.) “Dammit I hate crying, why the fuck do I have to cry so much!”

He walks over to me and moves down a little so he can look me in the face. “How bad does it hurt?”

It’s good that he’s taller than me right?

(Angry-sniffle.) “It always hurts! That’s the damned problem!”

“Well knowing what the problem is, is the first step they say.”

Just…He’s so open and earnest and he’s looking at me so expectantly and I don’t know what to and then the says just out of the blue. “Ba-dum-dish…” like the drum comedy thing when it’s a bad pun or joke and they do it anyway or because of that. It’s just sort of…it’s cutely funny in the face of me and my bullshit that he makes me kind of smile.

“You…you’re such a goof.”

“I can do more, dance, juggle, jazz hands.” And of course he’s miming jazz-hands and I can’t help but to smile some more.

It feels strange to smile y’know it does. Like my body has forgotten how to do it and Ryan reaches out and cups my cheek. “See…you’re not crying now.”

(Sniffle.) “No…But.”

“I actually like your butt, what I’ve seen of it.”

“W…what?”

“Uhm…Josie it might come to you as a bit of a shock but people actually like you.”

“But…” I clamp my hand over my mouth. Ryan grins.

“I like you, there’s just something about you that sits right with me in my bones.”

I move my hand. “Your bones?” I feel my well practiced Spock eyebrow rise.

“Yeah, I felt a connection there. I want to be your friend Josie, and the fact that you’re cute has me thought about more.”

“I’m not cute.”

He has this serious smile. “That’s actually not your call.”

Blink, blink…

Do I say it?

Do I open my mouth and actually say it?

Ryan moves into the kitchen and he’s looking around and gets some tea and the kettle and gets it on. He’s looking at me through the door. “Is tea okay?”

“Yes…” (Sniffle.) “Tea would be nice.”

He looks at me again. “Cookie?”

(Sniffle.) “No thank you, I’m trying to avoid sweets.”

“Avoid-avoid or broke avoid?”

(Sniffle-laugh.) “ Both…are you asking because of the laundry thing?”

He looks at me and smile blushes. “I’m that obvious huh?”

“I’d likely do the same thing honestly. But I’d have looked and been worried.”

“Bills?”

“Bills, Rent, Student Loans, Meds, Hormones, Utilities….”

“So definitely not counting food then.”

I gesture at the kitchen as I come into it still wet sniffling. “Pretty much the opposite of this, heck of a diet plan though.”

He smiles. “There’s more than enough at here with the canned stuff and the freezers.”

“You don’t have to feed me.”

“I know but like I said I hate stuff going to waste, and I’m not likely going to go through a lot of it myself.”

“I like your cooking, it’s different than what I grew up on. My family is pretty middle classed and very white.”

He nods. “Home’s different, Springhill had a lot of black people with the coal mines and lots of poor like Irish and the Scottish and things intermingled and that included the food. Most of the stuff though was things from my grandmother who was very much part of that generation and we ate a lot of stuff there.”

“I like you too.” There, there I said it, I got it out.

Ryan turns and looks at me and there’s this shy smile there on their face. “Even though I’m not a “Guy” or because I’m not a “Guy.” He does the air quotes thing and I bite my lip.

“Both, Neither? I barely know who I am or how I feel sexually, it’s been tossed around in my head so much between how things used to be and how things are changing and then there’s the hormones and just it’s…I don’t know…But I liked you before I knew…I still like you after…I…and I…I mean in the really in like with you way.”

“Good…and I’m in like with you too Josie.” He’s making tea and then passes me a cup of it in a real tea cup.

No, no I don’t have proper tea cups.

I don’t have much of anything that girl like or woman like except some of the things in my bedroom and my bathroom.

I take a sip and hold it close to me for the heat and he’s sort of doing the same watching me watching him.

Him but a her… Tall and blonde like I said with a sort of unisex hair cut on the long side but it fits, no piercings and just a damp t-shirt and he has small breasts, perky but they’re nice but at the same time that build. Lots of hard work, muscle and some shoulder and a little hip but tall too like I said close to six foot.

Robyn…Ryan might have been a girl jock in school, they might have done a lot to fit in really. I mean if there’s one thing being in transition teaches you a lot of the time is there’s a lot of social bullshit pressure to conform. I’m not comfortable, not myself as who I was, I can see Ryan the same way here looking at him.

Non-binary they call it these days, not comfortable in the gender that everyone says you should be but not dysphonic enough to get surgery and that’s actually okay. A lot of trans women don’t get bottom surgery for a lot of reasons.

I’m sort of one of them.

I mean my GID has flare days and other times just being Josie is enough…depends a lot on my depression and those kind of days too.

“Josie, you want to go out?”

“Huh?” Blink, blink… “Like…?”

“Out, out of here, go for a drive, see some things…go on a date.”

“A date…with me?”

“Yes please.”

Oh…that, that yes please…Never, no one has ever…it.

Just two words said with real earnest just…I had no idea that two words could actually feel that good…

“Okay…uhm how should I dress?”

“How ever you want.”

“Ryan…” I say it frustrated.

“Josie, I’m asking you out, so how about part of all of that is you dressing and looking the way that you want to….the way that you rally want to, whatever that is.”

“I…that’s so not…”

He nods. “Well maybe us being very not is a good thing?”

I nod. “Give me some time?”

He walks over and kisses my cheek. “I’ll get ready too, I need to dry off and clean the car.”

“Uhm…now?”

He smile blushes. “If that’s okay, I’ve been kind of thinking about this a lot lately.”

“You have?”

“Yeah…Josie, you’re worth thinking about.”

I…

I finish my tea and I set the cup down and I kiss him on the cheek.

“I’ll go get ready then.”

I head to my place still sort of shaky on the inside but a good shaky.

It feels like a good shaky, for whatever that’s worth.