Bruce & Carrie & Travis & Annika

***

The romance between Francine and Taylor was conducted fairly quietly given the degree to which they had become friends. After Carrie's shy return one evening four weeks after her sudden departure Jacqueline had noticed that Francine had become very protective of the enigmatic Asian. Travis helped her move when she needed him; he accompanied her to her cousin's wedding in Miami and she returned the favour at his father's funeral where she sat with Jill and her new companion, and Travis' children at his invitation. There had been quiet cups of coffee to which no one else was invited, dinner, theatre and dancing. Jacqueline had found out about the theatre and dancing only after she had actually seen them together on the town a couple of evenings when she was out and about herself. She suspected that there may even have been a threesome with Jill once, but she could not be sure about this since the whispers and veiled grins that the couple exchanged were not enough to go by definitively. She had noted the fact that Carrie, as a far more confident Taylor, and Francine, were often to be seen chatting quietly to each other, and that they had inside jokes that no one else understood. Incredibly, their affair had apparently gone on for months before she had seen them together!

They were so discrete about it that no one else seemed to notice, though they were otherwise engaged, and Jacqueline realised that she had become aware of the fact that Francine and Taylor had become a couple only because she was an experienced novelist and social activist and so was accustomed to watching the people and situations around her. She had been conducting research with a view to writing a romance novel set in Jamaica's transsexual community for months, and her companions in the support group had been as interesting as she could have hoped -- even that beady little man whom she had had to torpedo, was fodder for her mill.

Through Carrie she had got the self-doubt; through Travis as Francine and Carrie as Taylor, the happily ever after that everyone wanted; through the sex-starved Bruce and Annika dyad she had got the lust that she needed to make hers a truly complex and poignant tale. She hoped that things would only get better as they helped each other through the next few years. She had cast herself in the role of mysterious outsider and hoped to serve as the protagonist of her saga. Life was good.

***

It was a year to the day since Carrie had returned to the group as a fully-functioning, well-adjusted member. Travis had invited everyone to celebratory drinks at their usual jazz club. He had come to the meeting that night as Travis, a bit of a surprise to everyone who had come to accept him as Francine. He proposed to Carrie that night at the group meeting, just as Gustav had done to Bettinia three months earlier, after Annika's bitter divorce had been granted by the courts. Seeing him get down on one knee before a shocked Taylor, and everyone else for that matter, except Jacqueline, had been priceless. She had broken character for the first time in a year and squealed her consent in the manner of the Carrie of old.

Travis swept her into his arms and kissed her in a way that made Jacqueline's clit jump. She wondered how soon it would be before they saw Francine again. Travis was a man in a hurry and she expected to hear wedding bells very soon. The beady little man stared, open-mouthed, and Jacqueline reflected that she had just found someone new to study for her next novel: a tale of industrial espionage set in the Jamaican transsexual community.

"Hello Ralph," she said to him. "Would you care to dance?"