Nothing But the Truth: Chapter 7

Author's Note: Hello! Happy Wednesday! Just wanted to mention that if you want to pick up my paranormal romance novella, "The Dancing Ghost", for a discounted rate, it's available as part of a trans fiction bundle on Itch!

STWL Presents: Costumes and Masks by Cassie Sandwich and 7 others - itch.io

The Dancing Ghost by Helena Stacy

Hope you like it! It's a good fit for spooky season!

***

Love Can Save Me Now

Alicia

I laid in bed, staring at my dorm-room ceiling

When I’d seen Randall and the bleach blonde walking outside the shop yesterday, hand in hand, heading directly for the restaurant Caden and I were supposed to go to, I’d freaked out. When my mom called me immediately afterwards, I freaked out even more. 

Maybe running wasn’t the appropriate response. But it was what I did. Hopped in a rideshare and turned off my phone, locking myself in my room and hiding under the covers. 

After two nights on Caden’s couch, my own bed felt weird. But after two panic attacks in as many days, I needed some familiarity. Even if that meant the objective discomfort of my university-allotted mattress. It was like sleeping on a yoga mat, but at least it was a hidey-hole away from the rest of the world… Somewhat. 

My roommate, a fellow trans girl by the name of Natasha Nwosu, was sprawled out on her bed with her latest conquest (another trans girl, this one with shaved sides and a blue dye-job) laying on top of her. They’d already finished up by the time I got back, and would probably start again as soon as I left. Natasha was a marathon runner, and the one time she and I had hooked up freshman year proved she applied that mentality to every aspect of her life. We’d decided pretty rapidly we were better as friends (she wasn’t looking for anything serious and I wasn’t into women romantically) and we’d managed to secure a dorm with a private bathroom for the two of us. Of course, that also meant I had to deal with all of her hookups. I didn’t mind that much (I wasn’t a prude or anything), but a little bit of actual solitude would have been nice last night. 

Our room was an especially large closet, in terms of dimensions. The brown carpet and white walls were covered with clothes and textbooks and posters, while a lone ceiling fan spun above us as a meager substitute for the air conditioning the school was too cheap to install in its dorms. Our beds were extended over dressers, while desks stood at the foot of them facing the window. Morning light trickled in, and I groaned as my own cowardice caught up to me. 

I don’t know why I’d bothered asking Caden to show me how to fight. I was a coward to my core. It was all I was capable of. I’d seen the woman who hated me, the woman I didn’t remember but who remembered me, the woman who didn’t care who I was but cared very much what I was, and even though following her and Randall would have probably been a boon to my investigation, I’d run away like a fucking coward. 

I couldn’t even talk to my own mother without quaking at this point. 

Pathetic. 

I reached for the top of my dresser and grabbed my cellphone. I turned it on, not blinking as it slowly powered up. 

No new calls or texts from my mom. As terrified as I was of her finding out about me being trans, she’d never been as pushy with me as she had been with my sisters, so at least that boundary was still intact. 

But I had multiple missed calls and texts from Caden. 

‘I’m not mad, just please let me know you’re safe,’ was the most recent one. 

He was… Dammit, he was concerned. And even if he was just using me, this clearly went beyond self-interest for him… No, no, that couldn’t be it. He was just trying to cover his own ass. Had to be. There was no way in hell he’d be this worked up over me. 

Right?

“Hey, Natasha?” I said, not averting my gaze from my phone, “If a guy says he’s more concerned for my well-being than angry about me standing him up, should I believe him?”

“I would not know, babe. I’m pretty sure we’ve been over that,” she replied. She probably hadn’t even opened her eyes. 

“What if a girl did that?”

“Absolutely,” Natasha replied. “But guys are liars, generally speaking. Except my dad, he’s awesome, but that’s it. The rest of them-”

“Message received,” I sighed. 

“He’s probably telling the truth,” the blue-haired white girl lying on top of Natasha said. Her accent was thick and very Ukranian, and her voice had that smoky contralto sound of someone who’d gotten very good at maintaining her girl-voice. “In my own experience, most guys who aren’t complete assholes have natural protector-complex about them when it comes to women in their lives. Which frequently causes its own problems, but still, is something that’s hard to fake. And at least according to my husband-”

“You have a husband?” I said, side-eyeing her as she used Natasha’s boobs as pillows.

“Tak. Name is Bohdan. He is resistance fighter warring against Russian scum. We have open marriage.”

“Huh,” I said. “Good for you guys?”

“Anyway, according to husband, it’s hard to turn off protector complex.”

“Damn, Anya, looking at you with deep insights before coffee,” Natasha cooed, running a hand through the white girl’s hair. 

I sighed deeply. Her words made sense. It definitely applied to the guys I’d dated last year. The one guy friend I’d had in high school who’d known about me being trans definitely didn’t know how to turn that off either. And that definitely hadn’t been fake, given how our final conversation had gone…

No, no time for that right now. I had more pressing things to worry about. 

I threw myself out of bed, landing on the messy floor and rolling around until my legs were awake enough to force myself to my feet. I hobbled into the shower, shaving everything, washing/conditioning my hair, exfoliating, all that good girly shit. I put on the nicest sundress I owned (a slinky black number with golden floral patterns) along with my one and only pair of stilettos, brushed my teeth and hair, considered putting on makeup before stopping myself, and waved good-bye to Natasha and Anya. 

I parsed through the crowd of parishioners leaving the chapel as Sunday morning service let out, and checked the coffee shop for any sign of Caden. 

“Oh hey, it’s you,” Caden’s coworker said from behind the counter. His nametag read ‘Nate’ and his long black hair was tied back underneath his hat. He also wore sunglasses indoors, and smelled like my sister Millie after a long day. “Alicia, right?”

“Yeah,” I said, standing in front of the register. 

“Everything alright?”

“Have you seen Caden? There’s something I wanted to talk to him about.”

“He’s off today,” Nate said. “You guys okay?”

“We’re… I don’t know what we are.”

“Ouch. That good, huh?”

“You could say that. How well do you know Caden?” I asked. 

“Uh… Well… I wouldn’t say we’re especially close,” Nate said, stroking his chin-stubble with his index-finger.

“Then what are you to each other?”

“He’s my best friend,” Nate shrugged.

“H… How is he your best friend if you aren’t especially close.”

“You don’t really know how guys work, do you?”

My eyes narrowed. “Oh gee, you’re right. How on earth would a trans girl know anything about how guys work?”

“Heh. Touche. Uh, look, he’s my best friend in the sense that he’s a friend and I tend to enjoy hanging out with him more than anyone else, but also we don’t really do the whole ‘deep talk’ thing. He’s my best friend in a ‘shoot the shit together while we’re working’ way. ”

I sighed. “Do you at least know where he’s likely to be on his day off?”

“Probably at home dissociating,” Nate said, and I could not tell whether that was sarcasm. “Listening to emo music and watching old boxing matches, if I had to guess.”

“Gotcha. Thank you.”

“Cool. So, are you gonna order something?”

A peace offering would probably do a world of good. “Yes. I’ll take a dozen blueberry muffins in a big box please.”

“Guess you do know how guys work,” Nate smirked. “Way to the heart, and all that.”

“That one isn’t nearly as gendered as people think, my dude,”  I rolled my eyes and poked my belly. “Trust me.”

“Heh. Fair enough.”

With my muffins secured inside a big cardboard box, I waved good-bye to Caden’s best friend (male friendships are the most confusing things on the planet, I swear) and trotted towards his house. By the time I reached his front door, my hands were trembling, and I deeply regretted wearing heels. But I’d come this far, and turning back now would just confirm that I really was a cowardly piece of shit. 

My shaking hand didn’t even reach the door before it tore open. Caden stood on the other side, bed-headed and wide-eyed and slack-jawed. 

I started, “Uh… Hi-”

He grabbed me and wrapped his arms around me before I could finish my sentence. He held me so tight I could feel his earthquake-like pulse inside his chest. His scent, his delicious fucking scent, was enough to calm the storm of nerves inside me.

“You’re okay,” he said, the relief pouring out of him like mist. It enveloped me, cooled me down when I was burning up with shame and fear. “Oh thank God, you’re okay.”

Hot wetness pooled behind my eyes and threatened to burst. Was I… Was I welling up? 

“Of course I’m okay,” I whispered. “And I’m sorry I freaked you out.”

He didn’t respond verbally. He just started stroking my hair and oh dear God, there was no way he was real, how could someone as affectionate and lovely as him want anything to do with me? Nobody had ever gotten this worked up over me before. 

“Can I come inside?” I asked. 

He nodded, and then we sat down at his kitchen table. He poured me a glass of water and a cup of coffee without my asking for either, and I sipped them intermittently. He took a blueberry muffin out of the box and started munching it furiously. It was gone in less than a minute, and he started work on another one just as quickly. 

“So,” I said, picking at my own muffin with a fork, “There’s something I wanted to talk to you about.”

“Same, actually,” Caden said after finishing his second muffin. 

Wait, what? “Oh? Uh… You go first, then.”

“Well… This is… It’s not great,” Caden said. “In fact, it’s pretty fucking terrible, and it’s going to change the way you look at me. And if, after hearing it, you decide you never wanna speak to me again as long as I live, I completely understand and do not judge in the slightest.”

“Okay,” I nodded slowly. Was he about to-

“I will happily accommodate whatever boundary you choose to set in wake of my words,” Caden said, refusing to blink, hands steady. 

Yeah, he was gonna come clean. Holy shit. 

This was… Unexpected, to say the least.

I reached across the table and squeezed his hand. “Then let’s have at it.”

“Okay, so, Randall? The guy from my frat?”

“Big Dog,” I said. 

Caden grimaced. “Yeah. That’s him. He’s the one who told me to go after you. But it wasn’t because he thought you were my type. It was part of a hazing ritual. He’s… How do I put this? He’s a psychotic control freak who gets off on humiliating people. And he’s having the pledges bring what he considers ‘low value women’ to a frat event in January so he can crown one of them as ‘queen of the uglies.’ His words, not mine. And he also told me that… That if I didn’t play along and do this to you, he’d go after you himself.”

I blinked rapidly, doing my best to appear surprised by all this. Some of the details were more than what I’d known, but it all squared with the texts I’d seen and the stuff I’d figured out through observing Big Dog in his natural environment. Still… This was supposed to be new information to me. So I nodded. “I see.”

“I know, it’s bad. And I told myself that I was protecting you by going along with it, but then last night when I couldn’t find you and I saw Randall and his girlfriend at the restaurant-”

“Wait, that bitch is his girlfriend?!” I said. I didn’t have to feign shock that time- I’d assumed they’d been on a date, but to find out they were genuinely involved put things in a new context. 

“Yeah. Dixie.”

“Her name… Is Dixie?”
“Deandra, actually. But Dixie is what… What her friends call her.”

“And you’re her… Friend?”

“No. It’s worse than that. I slept with her. More than once.”

“What?!”

“Yeah. I didn’t know she had a boyfriend,” Caden said. “Then it turned out said boyfriend was the guy running the frat I needed to get into, and… He didn’t take kindly to that. He made me rush again from scratch this year, and has been holding it over my head the entire time, threatening to ruin my life, threatening to ruin yours-”

“Why me specifically?” I said, leaning forward in my seat. 

“I don’t know,” Caden replied, staring intently at the floor. “I really have no clue. I don’t know why he singled out you. I don’t know why he wanted me to be the one to assign you to other than he thought it was funny.”

Now it was my turn to go slack-jawed. Caden just coming clean and laying all his cards on the table wasn’t something I’d been prepared for. Was he doing this because he had real feelings for me? Or was this some kind of desire for absolution? A confession of his sins to start him on the path to redemption? And what did I want to do with all this? It felt like it was my turn to come clean now, but… But I still needed more information. Plus, what if this was all some kind of elaborate ploy to win my trust by making him think he was on my side when he was actually-

“I need to say that I’m sorry for using you. It was… Evil. There’s no other word for it. Pure fucking evil,” Caden said, gripping the edge of the table with one hand and pinching the bridge of his nose with the other, and fucking hellfire he was so wounded, in so much pain, dealing with so much manipulation, and I wanted to believe him. Dammit, I wanted to believe him, and I wanted to take his pain away. “And I understand if you never forgive me. But when I saw you the other night, standing there outside that building, I just… I dunno. I felt something. I’ve never exactly been the romantic type, and we’ve only known each other a couple days, but when I’m around you I feel like I’m who I want to be. I’m sure that doesn’t make sense-”

“It makes perfect sense,” I said automatically, and it was the truth. This much I could give him. “I feel the same way.”

“Y-you do?”

“Yeah,” I nodded, still unsure exactly how much I wanted to tell him but absolutely sure I needed him to know at least this part. “I look at you, and I feel like me. That doesn’t happen much. Especially not for girls like me. But there’s this feeling inside me, telling me to trust you. To believe you when you say all this stuff. It’s telling me to stick close to you. To cling to you. And… I’ve never felt anything like it. It’s… I guess it’s what people mean when they say sometimes you just meet the right person and there’s a spark. I always thought people were making that shit up. But I guess it’s easy to think that when it’s never happened to you. And when it does… It’s really to walk away from it. It’s hard not to wanna see where it takes me.”

“What… What are you saying?” Caden said, locking eyes, oh those beautiful baby blues, with me and I wanted to pour my heart out and tell him everything but…

But he looked so hopeful. And what I was gonna tell him would hurt, when he was already hurting so badly. He was in an impossible situation, blackmail and obligation and adultery all tangled up in each other, and if I told him right now that I’d been going along with it for the sake of my career he might never believe a word I say ever again. He might not believe any of what I’d just said, that any of my feelings for him, were genuine. Especially after I’d already run off more than once, it would look way too convenient. 

I had to tell him about my article. I had to. 

But… One secret at a time. What we had was fragile, a candle in the wind- hell, a candle in a hurricane! As long as I told him about the article before I finished writing it, it was fine. I would tell him. Just not now. 

For now… 

I went over to him and sat in his lap, put my arms around his neck and brushed my nose against his. “I’m saying I wanna see where this goes. There’s something here. And yeah, how we met was… Unconventional… But that doesn’t have to mean anything. I wanna be with you. And I wanna help you.”

“Help me?”

“With the frat,” I said, wondering if he noticed my hands were trembling now, if he noticed that I’d stopped making direct eye contact, if he’d noticed how shaky my voice was or if he was too wrapped up in angst and shock to register it fully. “I’ll play along for now, help you get situated. And then, when the time comes, we’ll see what happens.”

“Just like that?”

“Just like that.”

“You make it sound so simple.”

“I like you, dickhead,” I said, kissing his cheek. “What could be complicated about that?”

Besides, you know, everything.

His lips crashed into mine, his tongue entering my mouth, his hands on my hips, his musk overwhelming my senses. I would tell him about my article. Soon. But right now, right now this could just be our moment. Something new was blooming, and perhaps it could be Caden Monroe’s salvation. And perhaps it could be to mine as well. 

I would tell him. 

Just not right now.