Chapter 1: A Beginner's Guide to Work-Life Balance (beta))

Hello, lovelies! This whacky little side-project will probably go down as the trashiest thing I've ever written (so far). Hope you enjoy it!

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Love During Robot Fighting Time by Helena_Heissner (itch.io)

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***

Brian

I puckered up in the bathroom mirror, applying a waxy coat of crimson lipstick to my lips, the finishing touch on the masterpiece of my fully made-up face. Not a blemish or hair in sight, save for the crowning glory of auburn waves cascading down my back and the thin arches I’d gradually sculpted my eyebrows into. I tugged up my push-up bra ever-so-slightly, letting my bountiful chest jiggle a bit and smirking in spite of myself. I smoothed my dress, a sexy blue number with a high hemline and a plunging neckline that complimented my dark red hair and alabaster skin beautifully. I fastened the diamond studs into my ears, checked my pearly-whites for lipstick stains, took a quick selfie and uploaded it to my socials with #datenight as the caption. Now, you may be wondering, how does a completely heterosexual, cisgender man wind up in this situation, dressed to the nines and waiting for a man to take him out for a night on the town? Well, I promise you, there’s a perfectly normal, heterosexual, cisgender explanation for all of this. Let me take you back in time a year.

I’m a businessman, a greaser of palms, a mover and shaker, someone who specializes in closing deals and making sure the breadline stays long. My company -- a major one that you’ve no doubt heard of -- will often send me traveling from my home city of Boston to various locales throughout the U S of A, and occasionally abroad as well. As a result, I’m not home too terribly often, but even a jetsetter like yours truly needs a place to call their own. And they need someone who will keep the place orderly while they're gone, a true neat-freak who doesn't mind having the place to themselves for extended periods. 

Enter Kyle Duggan. We met at Harvard. You know the type: football player in the business school with me, hoped to own his own gym someday, smarter than he looked, stand-up guy with abs you could grind meat on and arms that could lift up three girls at once. Had no trouble attracting the ladies with his All-American good looks and endearing, quiet charisma. He and I hadn’t been terribly close while undergrads together, but we took a plethora of classes together in grad school and, as our final years of higher education came to a close, found we were both looking for living arrangements in our beloved home city of Beantown. He always had a girl, some gorgeous beacon of femininity who clung to him like the Adonis he was. As you can imagine, he was entirely okay with me not being around too much, and only having one person to clean up after made his life all the easier. Every time I came home from one of my trips, our loft was so clean you could have filmed a commercial in it. And every time I came home, I found one of Kyle’s latest conquests sauntering around our place in varying states of undress. 

So you can imagine, dear reader, my surprise–nay, my UTTER BAFFLEMENT AND CONCERN – when I returned home from my latest voyage one Thursday night in the cold, bleak New England winter to find Kyle and I’s shared apartment in such a state of disarray one might suppose it had been robbed by clowns on acid while a tornado blew through it and several hot-dog eating contests had occurred simultaneously. 

Kyle, that hulking tower of golden-haired muscle, jaw chiseled and ever-smoldering eyes bluer than the ocean on a clear day, sat naked on the couch, sobbing his eyes out amidst a swollen river of pizza boxes and empty beer bottles, his eight-pack abs and nine-inch hog (we’d measured each other once, long story) on full display. 

“Um… What’s going on?” I said, tilting my head to the side as I stepped in and stripped off my hideously uncomfortable loafers. 

“Hey, dude!” Kyle said, rivers of tears flooding out his eyes. I tried to focus on his face, but it wasn’t exactly easy. I’d always envied Kyle’s action-figure bod -- it was much more impressive than my short, emaciated frame. It was hard not to get mesmerized when it was all in plain view like that.

I groaned. “I thought I told you not to call me that.”

“Oh, right, sorry, my bad,” he sobbed. “I’m just a little out of it because… Because…”

I goose-stepped around the garden of debris and sat down on the couch. “Because?”

“Sarah dumped me!” he wailed. 

“Oh,” I said, my face scrunching up, my eyes narrowing, my tone flattening. “Is that all?”

“Is that all?!”

I bandied my hands about. “I mean… Which one was Sarah again?”

“Dude!”

I glared. 

“Sorry. Brian.”

I groaned internally. I usually went by my last name -- O’Neil -- but this beautiful disaster had always found that too stiff. Far too casual for his own good, this one was. 

Kyle continued, “I mean… You honestly hadn’t seen too much of her, so fair enough. She and I were dating for the past year, exclusively for the past six months. And tonight, I-I-I did something crazy.”

I leaned forward, pinching the bridge of my nose and wincing. “What did you do?”

“I asked her to marry me.”

My jaw hit the floor and, as long as I’m speaking hyperbolically, it also went straight through it and tore through the roof of every apartment below us until it plummeted directly into the Earth itself. “You did what now?”

“I know, I know, I should have bought a ring first--”

“You proposed to a girl who you’ve only been seriously dating for six months, and you didn’t even buy a ring first?!” I said, rising to my feet and throwing my hands up into the air. 

“And then she dumped me.”

I wanted to tell him ‘of course she did, you idiot’, but looking at him there, drowning in a sea of his tears and filth, I just didn’t have the heart. I sighed heavily, then reached with my free hand for his shoulder. I somehow wound up at his cheek instead. I leaned into it, though, took both his cheeks in my hands, and said, “Are you okay?”

“Do I look okay?”

“Yeah, that was a dumb question, nevermind,” I said. “When did all this go down?”

“Two weeks ago.”

“Two weeks?! Why didn’t you tell me?”

“You weren’t home,” he said. 

“Right. But you could have called or texted--”

“You don’t like it when I bother you at work,” he said. “You’ve told me this multiple times.”

“And I forgot to tell you when I was coming home, so you didn’t clean, right,” I said.

“I mean… That was just because I was sad,” he said. 

“Yes, of course,” I said. “But you’re not gonna be sad tomorrow, right? You’ll clean this place up tomorrow?”

“Dude?! I’m grieving a serious relationship here!” Kyle snapped. 

I held my palms out and backed up. “Right, right, of course. You, uh, grieve. Is there anything I can get you? To, uh, speed the process along?”

That was when his blue eyes, normally so terribly kind, became the regular kind of terrible instead. His harsh azure glare made my knees buckle. “Brian. For fuck’s sake. I’m going through a crisis right now. I am not in the mood to deal with you being your usual anal-retentive self.”

“Anal-retentive?!” I said, aghast.

“Yes, anal-retentive!” he said, standing up, towering over me by a full foot, a literal mountain of muscle casting a shadow over my puny, pallid ass. “Amongst other descriptors I’d apply to you, like smug, infuriating, posturing, pretentious, self-absorbed, and malnourished!”

“You are way out of line here, Duggan,” I said, gritting my teeth and doing my best not to flinch. 

“You want the place clean, do it your damn self,” Kyle said, storming off and giving me a clear view of his bare ass in the process. He slammed the door to his room, leaving me alone amidst the garbage dump that our living room had become. 

Needless to say, I didn’t clean the place my damn self. I went to bed and stewed in my unyielding rage. Anal-retentive, smug, infuriating, MALNOURISHED?! HOW DARE HE?! What gave him the fucking right to talk to ME like that. I paid two-thirds of our rent and let him make my home into his own personal love-nest six days out of every seven. And he had the gall to talk to me like that when he wasn’t holding up his end of the bargain?! I mean, SURE, we’d never formally agreed that he’d handle all the cleaning, but it was an unspoken understanding between MEN who respected each other. Was his unuttered word worthless?!

I barely slept that night, and pointedly didn’t speak to him as I navigated my way out of the trash heap and went to the office. It was an enormous skyscraper in downtown Boston, though as something of a modern-day traveling salesman and deal-closer, I wasn’t actually there that often. I fully expected to receive my newest assignment to fly off somewhere else as soon as I walked into my boss’ office, to find the flight details already in the inbox of my work email instructing me to have a bag packed for tomorrow morning. 

Unfortunately… 

“What do you mean you don’t have anywhere for me to go?” I said, my hands planting on my hips reflexively. 

“Did I stutter?” said my boss, Mrs. Violetta Andrade, a tall, statuesque Puerto Rican woman in her late forties, tastefully adorned by a sleeveless, knee-length violet dress, lips and nails painted fever-red, lines on her olive-skinned face and threads of silver in her raven hair only serving to make her look more distinguished. She’d been Mr. Santiago when I first started working here five years prior, but that hadn’t lasted long, and the sheer amount of power and charisma she’d begun exuding since starting her transition had only made her more formidable in the business world. And that had only grown exponentially more so in the three years since she’d met and married her husband. She cocked a wry grin in my direction and continued in her mesmerizing contralto, “O’Neil, you’re aware that you accrue vacation time by working here, yes?”

“I’m aware--”

“Do you know how much paid vacation time you’ve accumulated in the five years since I first started you in the mail room?”

“Is this a trick question?”

“Yes, yes it is. You’ve quite literally never taken a paid vacation. Not even the week off we give everyone for Christmas -- you spend the entire time flying around Thailand or Japan or the Philippines closing international deals for us. You could literally take a year off and not lose any money.”

“I’m sorry, Ma’am, are you telling me you want me to not come into work?”

“I’m saying I’m worried about you,” she said, pointing to the chair in front of her desk that I hadn’t remembered to sit down in. I was just awkwardly standing in front of the door with my hands fiddling together behind my back. “Frankly, we’re all worried about you.”

“Who’s ‘we’, in this situation,” I said, reluctantly sitting in the pleather chair that was far too big for me. Everything was too big for a scrawny little shrimp like me. I was just grateful Mrs. Andrade wasn’t standing up: at six foot one, she already towered over me without heels. I don’t think I’d seen her in flats ONCE since she’d begun transitioning. I don’t think I’d seen her in anything less than stilettos!

“Well, my boss, on the tenth floor, for one thing,” she said. “And her boss on the eleventh floor. And his boss on the twelfth floor. Not to mention every single one of your fellows on this floor. And my husband.”

“Carlos is worried about me?” I said, the horror of causing that sweet, sweet man any duress slapping me across the face. 

“Yes,” Mrs. Andrade said. “As such, I would like to ask you, as a personal favor, to take a vacation. Two weeks. Fully paid. And you can use your frequent flier miles and hotel points to stay wherever you want. Or you can just stay here, spend some time with your friends--”

“What friends?” I laughed. 

She stared at me, mouth opened, eyes wide. 

“What?” I said. 

“You… You have no friends?”

“I mean, I have work friends,” I said. “Also, I was being self-deprecating.”

“I know you were, but that doesn’t make it less disturbing,” Mrs. Andrade said. “Don’t you have a roommate? Spend some time with him. Or, I dunno, go on dates. I can recommend you some singles bars if you want--”

“That’s… That’s alright, ma’am,” I said, suddenly feeling profoundly uncomfortable with the direction this conversation had taken. “So, uh, I guess I’ll just… Go, then.”

“I think you’d best,” Mrs. Andrade said. “I can also recommend you a therapist if you--”

“That’s quite alright,” I said, standing up in a sudden, jerking motion, my joints creaking as I rose. I winced at the sound of it. I knew I wasn’t in the best shape, I knew I spent the overwhelming majority of my days sitting in chairs of various levels of comfort, but that was… THAT WAS…

Maybe I did need a vacation. 

“I’ll see you in two weeks, then,” Mrs. Andrade said, waving as I left her office. 

I dragged myself out of the building and started walking down the streets of Back Bay, the frigid mid-winter air running through me like water through a filter. I didn’t actually own a car. I didn’t actually own… Much of anything, come to think of it. I was always traveling. The main items that belonged to me were my duffel bag and suitcase and a few identical gray suits. What the hell was I supposed to do now? Go home to the disaster area that awaited me? Deal with Kyle loudly hating my guts for a reason I couldn’t even deny the validity of? He was the closest thing I had to a friend, and I barely ever interacted with him. Going home right now… Felt wrong. 

I had to make it up to the guy. 

And I wanted a clean apartment.

How could I accomplish both? 

An idea whip-cracked inside my mind, something completely deranged, yet no doubt effective. If there was one thing I knew about Kyle, it was that he was always happier when he was attached. Women were his greatest motivation in life: they pushed him to succeed, physically, academically, financially. Without one, he was lost. And especially if this Sarah girl had truly meant so much to him, he was beyond lost. I could try to set him up with someone… No, no I couldn’t. The only women I knew besides my sisters (all of whom were married) were the ones I worked with, and they were all either also married or not nearly hot enough for him. Or both.

I stopped where I stood on the sidewalk, blinked a few dozen times, and grinned as the deliciously mischievous idea solidified. I bit my thumb as I started chuckling, chortling, CACKLING. A homeless man panhandling on the corner stared at me with concern, then tossed me a quarter and said to seek help. I rolled my eyes and tossed it back to him, then took off my suit jacket and threw it at him. 

I shivered in the cold as I hiked to the nearest Hilton and checked myself in for a two-week stay using the points I’d garnered for work. I would be going back to my apartment soon, very soon, but I needed a base of operation for my plan. As soon as I was in my room, I opened up my laptop and created an email address under a new name. I thought long and hard about it… For about six and a half minutes, before deciding on Rose Underhill. Underhill was my mom’s maiden name, and Rose was what they would have named me if I’d been a girl like all my older siblings. 

If I couldn’t find a girl to fix Kyle, I’d become that girl and do it myself. It was the perfect plan; my sisters used to dress me in their clothes when I was little (and by little, I mean well into my teens) and tell me how pretty I looked. And given I hadn’t gained any weight or height since I was fifteen, and I took good care of my hair and skin, I saw no reason this couldn’t work. 

I registered an account for Rose on a dating app, then double-checked to make sure Kyle still had an account… YUP. 

I was in business. 

But first, I needed a proper profile. And to do that, I needed to fix myself up. 

A few trips to the mall let me acquire some revealing dresses, underwear, a red wig, breast forms, and makeup. I spent the better part of twenty-four hours practicing my makeup in the hotel room’s mirror, tears of frustration and grimaces of rage contorting my visage. Finally, after the sun had set and risen and set once again, I was ready. My face looked…

My face looked…

REALLY GOOD! LIKE, HOLY SHIT, IT HAD NEVER LOOKED THAT GOOD! Like, what the fuck? Did I make a convincing girl? The lipstick made my mouth red and inviting, while the mascara made my blue eyes pop and caused me to get lost in the sight of them. The foundation, the palest shade I could find, smoothed out the rough edges and red blemishes of my face, and the eyeshadow cast a smokey look over my lids that made the bags underneath seem a lot less noticeable. 

I drummed my fingers together and grinned. All according to plan. It made sense -- this was who I was. I threw myself into whatever I was doing, whatever task before me. There was no such thing as a sisyphean task if you pushed the proverbial boulder hard enough.

I packed in the breast forms, squeezed into a pink dress, fastened my collar-length wig, and then took a dozen or so photos of myself and uploaded them to my profile. I kept Kyle’s profile open, then I swiped right. 

After that, it was a waiting game. 

I stared at myself in the mirror, admiring my handiwork. I hated to sing my own praises… Actually, no, I didn’t hate it all. I loved it. I looked SMOKING HOT. My skin was flawless, my hair luxurious, my lithe frame finally appealing instead of depressing thanks to the padding on my breasts and hips. I had to admit, I made a pretty hot girl. 

After a few hours, I got a ping from the dating app, and found that Kyle had indeed matched with me. Perfect! Now I could go home and reap the benefits -- Kyle would scrub the place clean thinking he had a hot date in the next couple days. I didn’t even have to stay here -- I could just flirt with him on my phone, get him to think he was getting messaged from across town so he’d start getting ready for the incoming sex-fest. 

I could take off this ridiculous get-up now if I wanted to. 

The only problem was, I didn’t want to. 

It was absurd -- I was a man, after all. I shouldn’t WANT to dress like this. But something about all the hard work I’d done, the entire morning and afternoon I’d poured into getting myself to look like this, that made me want to keep it on. To revel in the fruits of my labor for a few more hours, at least. It made sense -- I’d always been a workaholic. I didn’t just want to throw away everything I’d done. Perhaps I could--

My phone pinged again. Kyle wanted to meet up. He wanted to meet at a bar TONIGHT!

Holy shit, he moved fast. Then again, why wouldn’t he? He was trying to rebound. And it was in my interest to make sure he did. Besides, as long as I maintained my cover, this would help me. 

He sent me an address -- a dive bar he liked to frequent when he was cruising for hookups, at which I’d never had any luck erstwhile. Perhaps my luck was about to change, however. 

I gave myself a once-over in the mirror, primping a bit and running a hairbrush through my wig. It was nuts, how much it felt like actual hair. It was even more nuts how much I liked it. Should I grow my hair out? Lots of men had long hair nowadays, and male-pattern baldness wasn’t an issue on either side of my family, so it wasn’t like I was liable to lose it as soon as I got it as long as I wanted. I brushed an errant lock behind my ear, watched my reflection sprout a goofy grin. Maybe it was weird, but…

But I’d worked hard. And I was allowed to be proud of myself for working hard. 

I called a rideshare and made my way to my proverbial date with destiny. It certainly wasn’t a date with Kyle, that was for sure. 

The bar was an Irish pub with a flag in the window and leprechaun paintings all over the wall. I couldn’t help but smirk -- the only way out was through when it came to stereotypes, I suppose. Beautiful women sat at the bar nursing fruity cocktails, while guys lined the walls scoping out the menu for the night. And they all stared at me as I made my grand entrance, doing my best to sway my enhanced hips back and forth as I stepped forward in my white flats. I’d forgone high heels-- didn’t seem like a risk worth taking just yet. I gulped as I saw a plethora of men checking me out, the reality of what I was doing finally sinking in. And with some of the looks I was getting veering more than slightly into the realm of the predatory… Oh God, I hoped Kyle actually showed up for this. 

I positioned myself at the bar, sitting down with as much grace as I could muster, and the bartender, a scrawny middle-aged guy with a half-smirk half-scowl plastered onto his face, looked at me expectantly. 

It was then that I realized a flaw in my plan. A weak spot in the armor of my carefully constructed facade of femininity. Something that would give me away and open me up to ridicule, if not an outright hate-crime. 

My voice. 

My deep, deep, baritone man-voice. 

FUCK. 

I gulped, and the bartender rapidly lost his patience with me. Finally, I looked at the woman next to me, a short and curvy black girl with a gorgeous mane of natural hair and enormous hoop earrings, nursing what looked like a Shirley Temple with what smelled like vodka in it. I pointed at it, and the bartender shrugged and got to work preparing it for me. Finally, the fruity drink was placed before me, and I gingerly took a sip. 

My eyes went wide and my smile exploded at the sweet but bright flavor of it. I’d never been much for girly drinks, but hey, when in Rome. 

“Why hello there,” an unfamiliar voice cut through the noise around the bar. I turned and found a medium-height brown-haired young man, probably a college student with a fake ID, standing before me, leaning against the bar. “You here alone?”

I opened my mouth, but still couldn’t stomach the idea of my hideous voice escaping the well-fortified prison of my throat. So instead I simply shook my head. I mean, technically I WAS here alone, but I was waiting for someone --

“Then where is he?” this little boy wearing his daddy’s clothes said. “Must not be great company, leaving a sexy piece of ass like you all alone. Maybe you should swap dance partners for someone a little more… Attentive.” 

He raised his eyebrows a few times, and did what was probably supposed to be a smolder. 

Perhaps the alcohol was already hitting me -- I hadn’t eaten much that day -- but I couldn’t stop myself from laughing. I covered my mouth and swallowed the sound, but my facial muscles betrayed me as I did all the movements of someone who found what she’d just seen unbelievably amusing. 

That was when I was met by a crack across my face. “Don’t you fuckin’ laugh when a man is talking to you, bitch! What the hell is your fucking problem!?”

My eyes went wide as the sting registered on my skin. Did this little ASSHOLE JUST FUCKING SLAP ME!? I looked around, desperate for some help, for some confirmation that what had just happened had in point of fact happened, but everyone -- the girl next to me, the bartender, all the other guys who’d been checking me out -- were blatantly ignoring what was happening. 

What the fuck?!

“Hey, still talking to you, bitch,” the boy said. “Maybe your date wouldn’t have ditched you if you weren’t so stuck up. You know something, you’re lucky I’m even talking to a freakshow like you --”

Then I smiled, because an enormous body of pure muscle and rage had appeared like a ninja out of the shadows behind him. Kyle put one hand on the boy’s shoulder, then used his other to turn the kid’s head around and said, “Isn’t it past your bedtime, kiddo?”

“Hey, fuck off, I’m busy working on this chick here,” the boy said with incredulous irritation. 

“The lady doesn’t seem interested in your jailbait-lookin’ ass,” Kyle snarled. 

“The lady ain’t even a--”

Kyle picked him up. Literally lifted him by the lapel and threw him across the room towards the door. The kid landed on his face with a loud thud and a pitiful whimper, two of his teeth sitting with him in the doorway alongside a small puddle of blood. “FUCK!” the boy, now down his two front teeth, screamed. “You asshole!”

Kyle just glared at him, and the boy sneered once more, a lot less intimidating with the gaps in his pearly whites. The boy scampered off, muttering to himself as he left, and Kyle turned around and faced the bartender. “Marty,” Kyle said. 

“Kyle,” the bartender replied. “Your usual fee for taking out the trash?”

“Yes, please. And get this lady another of whatever she’s having, on me,” he said, gesturing to my non-virgin Shirley Temple. 

I stared at Kyle, awestruck and impressed, while a warm resonance hummed inside my chest and stomach. That was…that was…THAT WAS SO FUCKING COOL HOLY SHIT! Had Kyle always been this cool?! I mean, he was a football player, and now he was a football coach, so yeah, he’d probably always been this cool, but I’d never really gotten to see it in action before. Never seen the evidence firsthand, only the after effects of the beautiful women who threw themselves at him in response to his effortless machismo. 

Part of me wondered how necessary what I was doing even was. It wasn’t as if Kyle would have that much trouble rebounding with some other, hotter girl than me. Not that I was really a girl, even if the thought of some other… Some real girl fulfilling his needs made me want to throw up my dukes and break my perfectly manicured nails defending the claim I’d staked out. 

Yeesh, I should’ve been an actor. I had no idea when I’d gotten this method.

“It’s good to see you,” Kyle said. “Though I have to admit, I was surprised when you said you wanted to meet at a bar, of all places.”

I opened my mouth to say something, but the words didn’t manifest. Shit, I knew my voice would be a dead giveaway. I couldn’t go through with shattering the illusion, not when I was so close to getting what I wanted out of all this. 

So instead, I widened my eyes, gave a dopey smile, and shrugged. Yes, that’s it, play dumb. Guys like dumb girls, didn’t they? Yeah, that sounded right. 

“You seem nervous,” Kyle said, raising an eyebrow. “Is that why you’re not talking?”

I nodded and did my best to keep smiling. Guys were always telling women to smile more, so it stood to reason that Kyle would like it if I did that. Besides, I’d seen my smile in the mirror earlier that night, and it had finally looked natural and not-forced after I’d finished getting myself all prettied up. 

The bartender put another of my girl drinks in front of me, while Kyle’s own Old Fashioned was slid to him from down the bar. 

“Alright, fair enough,” Kyle said, taking a sip of his drink, his own smile coming in as the taste reached him. He always loved his Old Fashioneds. That much I knew for sure. He was a connoisseur of cocktails, this man was. “Look, I know that things are…complicated. For a lot of reasons. And it’s why you’re acting the way you’re acting. I get it. Things are tough out there for girls like you.”

… Girls like me?

Wait. WAIT. Did he think I was trans? He thought I was a trans girl. Fuck, fuck, fuck, the illusion was already shattered. A prickling trail of despair ran down from my throat to deep into my gut, like a parade of porcupines prancing about my insides. 

“Just to be clear, is Rose what you want me to call you?” Kyle said. 

Yeah, he thought I was trans. But would that be a deterrent? It wasn’t like he recognized Brian -- me, I mean me, it’s not like he recognized ME under all this. He would say something if he did. And besides, Kyle was a progressive guy -- he talked about his gay aunts with great fondness, and he thought it was cool when I mentioned my boss’ transition. So instead, I nodded again, kept my teeth a-shining and not breaking off eye contact. Not that that was difficult: he was staring right at me, his baby blues locked onto me, easy to get lost in. 

“Cool,” Kyle said. He raised his glass and said, “To new beginnings.”

I clicked his glass with my own and took a long, hearty sip. 

“So, how are you doing? I know this must be scary for you, being out like this, finally being yourself,” he said. 

I mouthed, ‘it is,’ then shrugged again and gave a thumbs-up. 

“Cool,” he said. “And hey, I’m sorry about that chucklefuck, and I’m sorry for anything rude I’ve said or done--”

I put a hand on his bicep -- God, it was huge -- and shook my head. 

“So it’s okay?” he said. 

I nodded. 

“Okay,” he said. “So, if you’re not talking, what do you wanna do while we’re here?”

What did guys love more than anything? I thought about my dad, and about my male cousins, and about my male coworkers. I thought about the people I closed deals with, and the techniques I had cultivated to ingratiate myself to them over the years. Mostly, they loved to talk about what they loved, and they loved when people listened. So I parted back the curtain of red hair falling down my back and held my ear, gave a gentle grin, and mouthed, ‘whatever you want.’ 

“Okay,” Kyle said. Then he looked up at the hockey game on the bar’s television, and said, “You been following the Bruins this season?”

I shook my head. Then I grabbed a bar napkin and a pen from beside me, and scribbled down on it, ‘How are they doing?’

He smiled, and he started telling me about it. 

And I just… Listened. 

It was kinda nice. I felt like I was in my element, and he never stopped looking right at me, never stopped smiling, never stopped making me feel like I was the center of the room, the only girl in the entire bar. 

Not that I’m a girl. 

You know what I mean. 

As the game ended and the night wound down and our drinks were pounded back, he said, “I’d invite you back to the apartment, but it’s a pigsty right now, and I know how you feel about that. So lemme take care of it, and you can come by in the next day or two. You got a hotel room?”

I nodded, the swishy feeling of the alcohol making my head spin like I was on a tilt-a-whirl. I giggled, the sounds coming out high and squeaky in a way that pleased me. He handed me his phone and said, “Put in the address, I’ll see you off. And we’ll talk again soon, okay?”

‘Okay,’ I mouthed. 

Like a gentleman, he put his coat on me as we went outside. He waved me good-bye as the car got there and I let out a wistful, inebriated sigh as I climbed into the car and watched him watch me drive away. 

He’d clean the place and I could go home tomorrow, or at least before the end of the week. My plan was working perfectly. 

That was when it occurred to me that he’d be expecting me to still look like this when I got there. 

That was also when I thought, ‘What did he mean when he said about ‘anything rude he’d done?’ And about ‘knowing how I feel about that?’’