Chapter 1: Pt. 1 – Jacks’ Big Confession

Lacy sighed as she dropped her keys into the bowl by the door. She was just so damn tired. She dragged her ass over to the fridge and pulled out some glass bottle that was cold in her hand. She twisted off the cap, trying to shoot it into the trash can across the room. It hit the rim and plinked down next to it.

 

“Figures,” she said as she took a sip, hoping that the cold of the beer could wake her up in time for the alcohol to take the edge off.

 

She didn’t know what she wanted to do. She didn’t want to sleep. Who got home only to go straight to bed? Lacy didn’t have the energy to do anything else though.

 

Her watch buzzed, and she checked her phone. Jacks? Her boyfriend had sent a picture.

 

“So I wanna chat, but first… Guess what this is?”

 

“Shit if I know. Looks like a cube with some fur on it.”

 

“Wanna see it in person?”

 

“I don’t know babe, I just got home and I want to space out.”

 

“There’s other stuff I wanna talk about too. I can bring you food.”

 

Lacy wanted food, and glanced back at the fridge. She had enough for a smoothie, but nothing worthy of the title “dinner”.

 

“If you bring food you can show me the furry cube.”

 

“Sweet, see you in a minute.”

 

Lacy sighed again. She liked Jacks. The two of them had met at a work function. He was a dev, she was in the art department. They’d spent one booze-infused night together and when they woke up they found that they got along pretty well. Lacy’s taste in men was specific. Some of her friends thought it was prohibitively specific. Jacks was the first person she’d dated since a weird fling in high school. She didn’t know what it was about the scrawny fantasy-book nerd that drew her in.

 

Lacy found herself about to fall asleep on her recliner and decided instead to pick up the clothes off of the floor of her studio apartment. Her place was always messy, but it wasn’t huge messes. She struggled to pick things up. Having others over, even Jacks, was the push she needed to do a short stint of tidying.

 

Lacy plopped back into her recliner as her watch buzzed again. Jacks was at the gate, and Lacy buzzed him in.

 

She kissed him as he came in, but his attention was obviously elsewhere.

 

“Okay food first.”

 

Jacks wordlessly dropped a greasy paper bag on Lacy’s coffee table. She raised an eyebrow as he sat 

 on her couch, struggling to keep his hands from being to fidgety while still refusing to speak. She reached into the bag to pull out a burger, then a handful of fries she stacked onto the burger.

 

She motioned the bag towards Jacks.

 

“I already ate.”

 

“Oh. I didn’t mean to make you go that out of your way if you weren’t going to grab anything.”

 

“No, it's fine.”

 

Was it fine? Lacy was unsure. She’d never seen Jacks so nervous.

 

Lacy bit down into her burger. It tasted like a burger. Jacks maintained this new uncomfortable eye contact.

 

“Okay, what’s going on?”

 

“I don’t want to interrupt.”

 

“Well, I don’t want to eat with you staring at me like this.”

 

“Oh. Yeah, that makes sense. Sorry.”

 

“Don’t apologize. You’re just freaking me out a little. The furry cube covered in meth or something?”

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Jack’s laser-focused facade finally broke, if but for a minute. He smirked. “If only.”

 

Lacy put her burger down. “Okay, tell me whatever it is that you’re dying to tell me.”

 

“You sure? I can wait.”

 

“Yeah, but if your waiting looks like this, then I don’t know if I can.”

 

Jacks got up from the recliner over next to her on the couch.

 

“So this is gonna be a really really big rollercoaster, but it’s all going somewhere, I promise.”

 

“Okay… is everything alright?”

 

“It will be.” Lacy raised another eyebrow at the particularly foreboding phrase.

 

Jacks took Lacy’s hands in his.

 

“Oh wow. This is serious.”

 

“Yeah. Kind of is, I guess.”

 

They both sat in silence for a moment while Jacks obviously worked up the courage to say whatever he was going to say.

 

“Lace, I think you and I are an odd couple.”

 

“Oh my god, are you breaking up with me?”

 

“No! No no no no. Literally the opposite.”

 

“Holy shit!” She took her hands out of his. “Are you proposing!?”

 

“No! No.” She calmed down. “I could see how ‘the opposite’ of breaking up could be seen as a proposal, but no. Not what I meant.”

 

“Then what the hell is going on?”

 

“I think I’m trans.”

 

Lacy was silent.

 

“Well, I know I’m trans, I guess.”

 

Lacy didn’t know any trans people except some cousin in California she’d not seen in a decade. However, that didn’t mean she was some bigot asshole. She looked at Jacks.

 

The glasses framed his face making his eyes look bigger. She’d never seen him grow even a hair on his chin because he was almost compulsively clean-shaven. He was always softspoken. Come to think of it, those were all things that had drawn Lacy to Jacks in the first place.

 

“Oh,” was all she had the presence of mind to say. “Cool.”

 

She saw the relief on Jacks’ face.

 

“And Lacy… Fuck, how do I say this as nicely as possible?”

 

Oh, so this was building towards a breakup after all.

 

“I think you’re trans too.”

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