Beginner's Guide to Gold Digging: Chapter 4

A Beginner’s Guide to Childhood Friends

Crispin

Lily and I sat next to each other in Rose and Kyle’s living room. The place was homey: the walls were plastered with photos of the two of them, the dishwasher was running, a muted baseball game played on the television, coffee brewed in a percolator, and our hosts wore pajamas. For Kyle, that meant a pair of checkered black and yellow pajama pants and no shirt, and for Rose that meant a baggy Harvard tee she’d owned since college. It, uh… Looked better on her now. Holy shit, my friend has nice legs- No, no Crispin! Bad! Thou shall not covet another’s wife… Fiance… Same rules apply!

Oh, and did I mention that Rose was pointing and laughing at me? Feel I should mention that at least once. Kyle, for his part, looked like he was struggling mightily not to do so himself. 

Lily sat there with her hands white-knuckling her knees, face scrunched-up with a scowl but not actually saying anything. 

I sighed. “Are you done?”

Rose paused, took a deep breath, grabbed a glass of water off the table, and drank it down. And then she resumed pointing and laughing. 

“Has she always been like this?” Lily asked. 

“No, no, this is new,” I said. 

“Not to me it isn’t,” Kyle grinned. 

“How do we make it stop?” Lily pleaded. 

“There’s no stopping the gremlin once she gets gremlin-ing,” Kyle chuckled. 

It was astonishing how much my old friend had changed over the years. While the Rose I’d met freshman year of high school had been laconic and withdrawn, especially after her dad (or I suppose her mom, given what she’d told me) had passed away, this woman in front of me, in addition to having become devastatingly hot, exploded with emotion in her every intonation and mannerism. It was like I’d seen the negative of a photo before the positive: I recognized her, but she was completely different. And also, yeah, she was living as a girl now. A really pretty one- BAD!

Finally, Rose’s laughter faded once more. We’d come over at ten in the morning at Lily’s insistence (said she needed Rose’s help with something, then failed to explain what) and upon arrival we’d explained our present circumstances to Rose and Kyle. At which point… Yeah. 

You get the idea. 

“Okay, okay, I’ll stop now,” Rose said, brushing her bangs out of her face. “Now. What’s actually going on?”

“How do you mean?” I said. “We just told you-”

“Wait, you were being serious?” Rose asked, leaning forward, eyes widening. “You two are actually fake engaged? For serious?”

“You say ‘for serious’ now?” I asked. 

“Yes, we’re ‘for serious,’” Lily said, still grimacing. “And I-”

Rose held up a hand to cut her off. “Kyle, darling, I’m going to need to speak to Crispin in private for a few minutes. Would you and Lily mind running to our coffee shop and grabbing a few breakfast burritos for us and our guests?”

“I don’t mind one bit, Briar Rose,” Kyle said. “Let me put a shirt on first.”

“Oh thank God,” Lily muttered. 

They were out the door a few minutes later, leaving me alone with Rose. 

“Okay, explain,” Rose said as soon as the lock clicked shut. 

“I already-”

“Cris,” Rose said flatly. 

“Briar Rose-”

“Nuh-uh, only Kyle gets to call me that.”

“Fair enough,” I said. “Um… But yeah, you know the whole story-”

“I know the whole story except for the part you’re very clearly leaving out,” Rose said. 

I scratched at the side of my head. “And what part is that?”

“The part where you said Lily’s name ‘at random.’ And by that I mean it definitely wasn’t random in the slightest.”

“That’s ridiculous. Of course it was random. I’m just trying to get my dad off my back.”

“I believe that,” Rose nodded. “But I also know you have no filter whatsoever, so if you were really just sick of your dad trying to maneuver you into a quasi-arranged marriage, you would have told him that. The only reason you would have said the name of anyone specific is if she was on your mind. A lot.”

“I mean, yeah, Lily is on my mind a lot. We work together-”

“Not what I meant.”

“Then what did you mean?”

Rose leaned forward, a truly spectacular shit-eating grin on her face. “That she’s on your mind while you-”

“No, no do not say it!”

“While you-”

“For the love of all that is pure do not say it!”

“Okay fine, I won’t say it,” Rose laughed. And then she pantomimed jerking off. “You know, when you do that.”

“Jesus, Rose! You can’t… We can’t talk about that stuff!”

“Why not? We use to all the time,” Rose said, raising an eyebrow. 

“Yeah, but it’s different now.”

“Why?”

I gestured at her everything. 

Rose rolled her eyes. “Lame.”

“What do you mean-”

“Cris, I’m still me,” Rose said. “I’m still the same person you made sex jokes in front of all the time, still the same person who you told in excruciating detail about every girl you hooked up with, still the same person who helped you through it when you got your heart ripped out in twelfth grade. Now, you wanna be friends again, I wanna be friends again. Yes, we’re both grown up now, and yes, I have boobs now, but we’re still the same people.”

I winced. Dammit. “Yeah, yeah, you got me. I’m sorry.”

“Good,” she smiled brightly. “Now come on. Be honest with me. Why did you say Lily’s name? If you seriously just happened to have been thinking about her while you were talking with your dad, I’ll believe you. But if there was any other reason-”

“I like her,” I said, holding a hand over my eyes. “I like her a lot.”

“I knew it,” Rose said, and when I peered through my fingers I saw that she was fist-pumping. God, she really was a gremlin. “Have you told her this?”

“Of course not,” I said. “She’s gay. She only agreed to do all this because I can cover a bunch of expenses for her.”

“Hmm. Interesting. So, just to be clear: you’re not remotely operating under the delusion you’re going to ‘fix’ this girl, right?”

“Obviously not,” I said, eyes narrowing.

“Good. I didn’t think so, but I had to be sure,” Rose said. “So, in that case, I should probably ask: are you okay?”

“What do you mean?”

“So, uh, when you crush, you crush hard. Or at least that was true back in the day. The summer when you had a thing for my sister Ruth comes to mind. How about now?”

I thought about Lily, and how I’d woken up on her couch that morning to find her making breakfast for us. I thought about how distraught she’d looked when she noticed the storm had fucked up her vegetable garden, or when she saw her trans pride flag had been destroyed along with the rest of the garage. I thought about how much I wanted to put my arms around her and hold her close and tell her it would be okay, that I would fix everything. I thought about how much I wanted to fix everything for her… And then I remembered what a bad idea that was, how badly she’d taken it when I’d done my little white-knighting attempt, and it felt like a belt tightened around my heart and threatened to pop the thing like a blister. 

“Yes,” I whispered. 

She leaned forward and put a hand on my shoulder. “I’m sorry.”

“For what?”

“It’s never fun, when you like someone and you know they’ll never like you back.”

“Speaking from experience?”

“Once or twice,” she said with a shrug and a coy smile. 

“Look, me feeling sorry for myself doesn’t actually help us here,” I said. “Yes, this is the closest I’ll ever get to dating her, but that’s fine. I’ll be fine. We’ll do this and things will go back to normal, and in a few months we won’t be seeing each other for work anymore and I won’t be around her nearly as much and this stupid crush will fade away. I’ll be fine.”

“Uh-huh,” Rose said, frowning. 

“You don’t believe me,” I said. 

“Not at all,” Rose said, smiling. 

I groaned. 

The tumblers in the lock began clicking, and the door opened to reveal Rose’s fiance and mine (sigh) re-entering the apartment. Kyle held a brown bag that smelled like delicious breakfast burritos in his hands. “Everything cool?” Kyle asked. 

“All good,” Rose said. 

“Yeah,” I said weakly. 

“Cool,” Kyle said, depositing the brown bag on the coffee table, tearing it open and retrieving three breakfast burritos… All of which he kept to himself. “Anyone want coffee?”

“Yes, please,” I said, the vice-grip around my heart growing tighter when Lily sat next to me. She was drumming her fingers on her legs and sucking in her cheeks and looked like she was trying to make herself look small. She looked nervous- why was she nervous? 

“So,” Lily said, looking straight at Rose. “There was something specific I actually wanted to talk to you about. I, uh, don’t really have a ton of female friends who live in the area- like, I have online friends, but that’s it.”

“Okay,” Rose nodded, crinkling her brow. 

“So, what I’m saying is, you’re… You know, like this,” Lily said, also gesturing at Rose’s everything while Kyle brought over four mugs of coffee. 

“Like what?”

“You know- girly and shit.”

“Um… Yeah,” Rose said as I took a drink. “I am. What’s that got to do with-”

“I need you to give me a makeover!” Lily exclaimed, bunching her fists together and clamping her eyes shut. 

I spat out my drink. Yes, really. It was reflexive. I did an honest-to-God spit-take. Kyle, fortunately, caught it all in a bowl. Had he been carrying that bowl before? Where did that bowl come from?

Everyone stared at me. “Thanks,” I said. 

“Welcome,” Kyle grinned. “Never do that again in my home.”

“Right.”

“Anyway,” Rose said. “Uh, I guess I can help with that. Why do you need one, exactly?”

“Because I have to look a certain way to meet Cris’ family,” Lily said. 

“No you don’t,” I said, tilting my head. “I just figured you’d wear what you always wear.”

“I can’t.”

“Why not?” I said. “It’ll help sell the bit to my family-”

“No, it’ll make them think you pulled a random trans girl out of a TCG tournament and hired her to con your family,” Lily said. 

“I’m actually with Crispin on this one,” Rose said. “If the point is to get his dad to think you’re a bad match for someone like him-”

“You don’t understand,” Lily said, closing her eyes again. 

“Then help us to,” I said gently. 

She breathed in deep through her nose. “I just… There’s this angry, festering feeling in my stomach that flares up when I think about the idea of meeting them dressed like this. I need them to think I’m actually in love with you, right? Then I should want to make a good first impression. That means I need formalwear.”

“You can always wear a suit-”

“No!” she snapped. Then she took another breath. “Sorry, I just… I know that there’s women’s versions of what you’re suggesting, but that feels even worse. Like… Like…”

“Like a gnawing feeling deep inside of you threatening to hollow you out until you’re nothing but a lifeless, joyless husk?” Rose said. 

Lily snapped her fingers. “Yes, exactly. So, I need a dress. And makeup! But I don’t own either of those things.”

“We’re gonna need to unpack all that later, but sure. Girl-time it is. Kyle, Cris, you’re on bag-carrying duty.”

“Awwww,” I whined. 

Kyle clapped me on the shoulder. “Best get used to this part, guy.”

“Somehow I doubt that I have to,” I said. But even as I did, I couldn’t help but notice the bashful, oddly eager expression on Lily’s face.