Orchid - A Midspring Night's Dream

//Author's Note: Imagine, if you will, that you've had a bad day. A really bad day. You had to get out of your apartment just to have something to do, so you hopped in your car and drove. You got it in your head that you wanted to go to the store, grab a Dr. Pepper, and then... but you got so in your head that you drove right past the 7-11. You were halfway back to work, because that was really the only place you ever drove, before you realized what you were doing, and you were so disgusted with yourself that you just turned around and went home. Just like that you missed your chance, and you never even knew it was there. You missed your fate.

Fate caught up five years and three thousand miles later.//

The man sat at the bar, staring down into his drink. His vision wobbled, and even his blinks felt slow. He knew that the key to feeling better wasn't at the bottom of the glass, but he got there anyway and didn't regret it. Anything to numb the pain would help. His phone buzzed in his pocket and, being the good person he was, and even though he didn't want to, he pulled it out and unlocked it. He checked the message. He made a face.

It was later than he realized.

"One more?" The bartender was tall, with a tawny mane of red hair framing her face.

He didn't even look up. He just nodded, and whispered, "Thank you," when she poured in a shot of rum and filled the rest with Coke from the hose.

"Getcha somethin' to eat? Some pretzels?"

He just shook his head. "Thank you, though."

She grunted and rapped her knuckles on the bar, as a sort of affirmative response of understanding, and walked out and around. He followed her in the corner of his eye, because there was very little else to look at, but he already knew where she was going; there was only one other patron left in the bar, and the bartender had spent a lot of time over there over the last few hours.

He took another sip, and felt his shoulders slump as the thoughts he was running from started to catch up.

"Okay," the bartender said, in an upraised-voice sort of way.

He took another sip as he turned.

The bartender made an exaggerated wave of her arms, and pointed at the door. "I know it's only one, and we're usually open for another hour, but I'm locking the door." She gave the arm bar a push, and the door opened. "You can still get out, but you won't be able to get back in, okay? If you forget something, you'll have to come back tomorrow for it."

The man blinked at her, and then followed the bartender's gaze as the redhead stared into the darkened corner where the other patron sat. That girl hadn't moved all night, except to go to the bathroom once.

"Ordinarily, I'd happily stay down here for as long as you two wanted to stay, but my girlfriend is upstairs and she's horny." She gave a kind of sorry-not-sorry shrug, paired with a lopsided smile, as she moved back across the room. "Help yourselves to a few more drinks, if you want. If you want to leave some cash, that'd be appreciated, but it's not like either one of you really drankthatmuch."

He had never had anything like this happen to him, and he couldn't think of anything to say as the bartender headed down a hall in the back and...

"Wow," he said, mostly to himself. "She really just left."

The patron in the corner made a small sound. The man turned and looked at her, but there wasn't much to see in the shadow so he turned back around and minded his drink. Which is to say, he stared at it. Intently. The ice clinked in the glass, having melted enough to shift and jostle. Collapsing under its own weight.

He whispered, "I can relate," and then snickered.

The first he knew that something had changed was when the girl sat down next to him at the bar. He was surprised by this, because he hadn't heard her coming, but his deep well of manners refused to let him do more than glance briefly, tip his glass to her, and lean against the bar with his eyes forward.

The phone in his pocket buzzed again. Those same manners kicked in as he pulled out his phone, unlocked the screen, and read the message. This one had a picture attached, so he had to stare at it for a minute before the swirling circle resolved into anything.

"She sent you a picture of herself at the office?" the girl next to him said. "At one in the fucking morning? Do you normally make her check in like that?"

The man shook his head quietly, locked his phone again with a twitch of his thumb, and jammed it back into his pocket. He didn't trust his voice to come out steady, so he didn't say anything.

She was staring at him. He could see that out of the corner of his eye. Something told him he needed to explain, but he didn't want to. The pressure of the quiet kept building, so he picked up his cup and drained it to give his mouth something else to do.

"I broke up with my boyfriend," she said, finally. "Sorry. I don't know why I said that. I just... I saw that picture, and it seemed like that was the kind of thing someone would send because they thought the other person thinks that they're cheating... and if you didn't ask her to check in... then she's probably cheating on you right now. And you know that. And that's why you're sitting here drinking. Huh."

The man slumped forward a little. His lips were a tight line from one cheek to the other.

She said, "Sorry. I didn't mean to pry." Then she rolled her head around, and said, "I don't. I just... sometimes I start talking, and my brain doesn't know where it's going, and before I know it I've put my foot in it."

"You weren't wrong," the man said, softly. "No need to be sorry for speakin' truth." He turned his head slightly, and got his first good look at her all night.

She was maybe twenty five, which put her just under a decade his junior, with hair like a cherry blossom tree. Her huge eyes were red rimmed. She had on a quilted satin jacket, white in the main with pink flourishes at the collar and cuffs, and then jean cutoff shorts below that.

In a fit of inspiration or mania, he couldn't say which, he said, "We were at dinner with friends tonight, and ran into a coworker of hers. They left together after she got a call. I didn't think anything of it, except that...just as she was heading out the door I caught her eye, and she looked..." The man's head hung forward. "She looked guilty. She looksrightat me and bolts, and I've been getting these... thesestatus reporttexts all night." He didn't realize, until he went to take a breath, that his chest was shaking.

She reached over, to gently place her hand over the back of his, and he felt a shock. A tiny jolt of electricity. She twitched too, but that didn't stop her from pushing through and holding his hand.

Her hand was tiny and cold, and he felt like he should be holding her hand if only to warm it up, but the apathy had him and all he could do was nod bleakly. "Her name is Jennifer," he said, after clearing his throat roughly. "We've been together for... almost six years now."

"Fuckher," the girl said. She squeezed his hand, very softly, and put her hands back around her own glass. Hers was still mostly full, with a cherry skewered by a toothpick laying across the top of it. Then she added, "No, seriously. Fuck her. I don't care what her name is. I hope I never meet her. I'm Eve."

The man turned slightly, nodded, and said, "Gill."

"Nice to meet you, Gill." When he grunted in response, she said, "You know that... who sings that song. Sheryl Crow? The one about wanting to have some fun?"

"All I wanna do," Gill supplied.

The girl licked her lips. "Do you want to be my Billy?"

"I don't think I'll be a whole lot of fun tonight," he said. "I can't make my brain stop thinking about... like... all the times she worked late? Missed dinner? Changed plans?"

"Think it's been goin' on for a while?" she asked.

"I think I've beenlying to myselffor a while," he said, looking down. "It doesn't feel good."

"So," the girl said, sitting up a little straighter, "she's not the one for you. Now we'rebothmoving on tonight. That sounds like as good a reason as any to make this a celebration."

Gill shook his head. "I moved out here with her. Her job, she... they moved their headquarters out here to Portland, and I thought... I can work on cars anywhere." Then, he added, "I'm a mechanic."

"That explains the arms," she said. Then she squinted, leaning forward onto the bar to look at him, and said, "Don't I know you from somewhere?"

Gill stopped to really look at her. There was something passingly familiar about her, but he couldn't place it.

"Sorry," she said, seemingly, suddenly, very aware of how hard she was staring at him, and she blushed as she sat back. "I promise, I'm not hitting on you. I just... for a second, I swore..." She trailed off and shook her head.

There was a thump above them, and the distantly muffled sound of two women laughing, that made both Gill and Eve look up and blush. The bridge of Eve's nose was particularly reddenned.

"Good for them," Gill said, raising his empty glass. Suddenly aware of it, Gill got to his feet and started walking. He grabbed his brand of rum from the shelf behind the counter, and started setting himself up. "I know you're still..." He gestured toward her full cup. "Can I make you another while I'm up?"

Eve looked down at the cup in her hands, pushed it forward, and said, "Can I just have a water?"

"One water," Gill replied, as he peered at the fountain dispenser. He found a clean glass, scooped it full of ice, and set it down in front of her.

Just before he took her other drink, Eve grabbed the cherry off the top and popped it in her mouth. He liked the way that she smiled when she chewed, so he picked up the little bowl of cherries that was behind the counter and set it in front of her.

"Thank you," she said, giving him a curious look.

When Gill sat down, he felt lighter.

"You don't sound surprised. Like, about any of it."

"We've been fighting a lot," Gill said, slowly. "She says I just go along with everything, and I don't have any opinions, and I'm just this shell, but I'm not. I supported her... when she wanted to move out here for her career. That doesn't... That doesn't mean I don't want things. That doesn't mean I don't have thoughts.I have thoughts."

"Do you think I'm pretty?"

The deep well of Gill's manners, instilled in him long ago by his grandmother, burbled, and he said, "It doesn't matter what I think. What matters is that you believe it. The best part of all of us is what comes from the inside."

Eve laughed. She had a rough laugh, gravel-ly. She also, he realized, had kind of a rough voice, but it suited her. "Do you remember, um, inGhostbusters, at the end, when Hot God Mommy was likeAre you a God?And Peter saidNo."

Gill rolled his eyes. "It was Ray, but yeah. Okay."

She leaned in, giving him a reproachful look, and said, "When a girl asks you if she's pretty,you say yes."

Gill licked his lips, and he realized he was about to correct her again, with some combo explanation that hinged on 1) his opinion not mattering, and 2) him not mattering. These were two points with which he'd had a long and complicated history, and he fell silent as he grappled with them briefly.

"I'm sorry," she said, eventually, breaking the silence. "I'm... it's been a long day, and I thought I saw an opportunity to get you to feel better about yourself, and let you have an opinion, and make me feel better about myself in the process."

Gill blinked. "You don't think you're pretty?"

Eve stared forward, and raised her glass of water to her lips for a sip that took longer than it should have. "I've had a rough few months for my self esteem." she said, eventually.

"You don't have to talk about it," he said. Then, feeling struck again by intuition, he added, "I mean, youcantalk about it. I'll listen. I just... I mean you don't have to explain yourself. You can just be." Then, under his breath, he added, "God, what am I talking about?"

She said, "I had to have surgery a few months ago. For my..." She sat back a little, and laid her hand over the lower right side of her abdomen. "My appendix got inflamed. The doctor told me I was going to need surgery, but I, um..." She trailed off, and looked over at him from the corner of her eye. "I had to stop taking...blockers." After she said it, she turned a little more, and studied his expression.

Gill was pretty sure he didn't have an expression, because he was pretty sure he didn't understand what she was saying.

Then she said, "Hormone blockers."

"Okay," Gill said, frowning.

"Fortestosterone."

She was still staring at him, waiting for him to have a reaction, but Gill just shrugged. "You had to stop taking blockers for surgery."

She furrowed her brow, and said, hesitantly, "Yeah. They... there's a clotting risk." She squinted at him again, and continued more forcefully, saying, "I'mtrans."

To which Gill replied, "Okay?"

This seemed to stymy her more. "I keep waiting for you to have an'Oh'moment."

Gill licked his lips, and said, for her benefit, "Ohhh."

This time, she nearly tied her brows in a knot.

"You had to stop taking blockers, because of clots."

"So I could have surgery," she said, disbelievingly. "The doctor wanted to wait a couple months, if the pain wasn't too bad, so I could get it out of my system."

"Okay."

"Three months before the procedure, and then three months to recover, and in that six month window..." She took a deep breath. "Puberty caught up to me."

Gill squinted at her. She was obviously being obtuse. And then she squirmed, knees and thighs trying to push through each other, and Gill said, "Ohhhhh."

"That's the one I was looking for," she said, sullenly. "A little late, but here we are."

"Your..." Gill pointed down between his legs.

Without looking at him, and ostensibly without knowing where he pointed or what he was referring to, Eve said, "It'd always been cute, and little, and I barely even needed to tuck it. It was barely there, and then, all of a sudden it was like, like an inch a week! For months!"

She was very definitelynot looking at him, so Gill sat forward and did the same. He nodded, and said, "I'm sorry."

Eve made an exasperated sound. "I didn't want that.This."

Gill trid to do some mental arithmetic. "And your boyfriend. Ex-boyfriend," he added, hurriedly. "He was... jealous?"

"No!" she said, laughing bitterly. "He loved it. He wanted me to stay off the blockers even longer, see if it got any bigger. Meanwhile, every time I look in a mirror, it's like...actual body horror.I had to push back getting bottom surgery because of my appendix, and then every time I brought it up he'd try to talk me out of the whole thing."

She looked down and shook her head.

"Kept trying to go down on me," she said, softly. "Talk me into...usingit on him. Like, ew." She shivered, visibly, and shook her head. "No. No thank you. Finally, today,he straight up asked me to keep it."

"He wanted you to be something you're not," Gill said. Each word felt perfect as they left his lips, and, next to him, Eve sounded poleaxed.

Eventually, she said, "Yeah," so quietly he almost didn't hear it.

Gill nodded. "Lot of that going around."

"It's not like I didn't tell him," Eve said, gathering like a stormcloud. "I told him, like...veryearly on, and we talked about it a lot. I thought he understood, but—"

"But now it seems like maybe she wanted something differentall along," Gill said, heavily, "and it was tempting to want to be that just to keep having someone to hold you at night, but all the while you feel like you're losing yourself."

"Yeah," she said, and it sounded like she deflated as she said it.

"And she's getting mad at you, because it's such a small change. Why can't you just do this one thing? Don't you love me?"

She said, "Yeah," voice cracking. "My sister, she's... she's trans too. She kept hers. Even she was sorta likeit's not so bad." She laughed, and it sounded miserable. "I love her, and she meant well, butfuck off!"

Gill turned and looked at her, and it was hard to see someone wear their pain so close to the surface. Eve sniffed and averted her eyes, and the deep well of Gill's manners took over. He reached across the bar for a napkin, and offered it to her.

"Thanks," she murmured.

"You broke up with him tonight?"

She looked down, eyes searching, and nodded after a second.

"You stood up for yourself. That makes you, like, the strongest woman I've met in a while."

Eve snorted, and then dabbed at her eye with the napkin. "I don't know. Did you see that bartender? She was..." The small, pink-haired girl tried to flex her arm muscles, and Gill laughed. "What?"

"No, you're right. She was," Gill said, nodding and smiling, "and I bet her girlfriend is very proud."

"Sounds like it," Eve said, out of the side of her mouth as she smirked. "Can you hear them up there?"

Gill hadn't, and he looked up and tried to focus. Once he heard it, though, he couldn't not hear it, and the change in his expression made Eve's cry-laugh turn into a laugh-laugh. He asked, "Do you think she cares if we can hear them?"

"Helen? No. If they care at all, then they're probably trying to be loud."

"You know them?"

Eve shrugged slightly. "I've been here a few times. They're friendly."

"I'd never been. I was just wandering down the street, and this place was open."

Eve reached over, grabbed his drink, and downed it while giving him a sideways glance that hinted at a kind of impishness heretofore unseen. When she put down the glass, she said, "Would you like to dance?" and then, before he could answer, got to her feet.

"Does this place have a jukebox?" Gill said, as he turned on his stool.

"They mostly do live bands," she replied. Then, before he realized what she was doing, she set her phone down on the counter and moved away.

His first instinct was to follow her, as she moved out into an open space with her arms extended toward him, but he couldn't help glancing back over his shoulder toward her phone as it started to play. He didn't recognize the band, and he didn't recognize the singer. He didn't recognize the sound either, but that didn't matter.

There was something about her. He couldn't place it. He couldn't quantify it. He couldn't fight it either. She drew him out of his shell. He had told Eve about fights that he and Jennifer had. He'd never told anyone else that they were less than perfect, or that she wasn't his ideal woman, but this strange, hypercomet of a human being was about to get him to dance.

Gill was going to dance.

"Side to side," she said, stepping back and forth, and having somehow intuited his reluctance. "Just do what I do."

After a heavier rock and roll intro the song settled into a kind of latin rock with a swing to it, and Gill found that it was pretty easy to keep his hips and feet moving. He was also pretty sure that she could do more, if she wanted, but she stayed right there with him. They circled each other for a little while, moving an inch closer here and an inch closer there...

... and then, when the chorus kicked in, and the timing was just right, Eve raised her arms over her head and did this kind of twirl thing that brought her backside right up against him. It was flawless, effortless, and then... he was touching her. She was pressed against him, and they were moving together, and it felt good.

It felt right. It felt right in a way being with Jennifer never had. He'd always had to force it with her, and fight for everything. It had gotten to the point that he'd convinced himself that it had to be hard to be worth it. This was easy. Eve was so much shorter than him, and their bodies fit seamlessly, as if he'd been molded for her all along. This whole time. He wrapped his arms around her middle, and then she laid her hands over the backs of his, and...