NOVEL NEXT Chapter 9 – I’d say The Other L Word but one of them is Pan so
I sat there in stunned silence, trying to wrap my head around Emily’s slip of the tongue. “Y-You have a crush on me???” I asked, in the quietest voice I could muster. It took Emily a minute to put her hands down and nod. This girl, who I had known since first grade, who had stood by me through thick and thin, who always made sure I was okay, this girl that I felt as safe as humanly possible around even with my anxiety, had a crush on me. “How?” was my next question, and it made Emily stare in stunned confusion.
“How? How??? Daisy, you’re just…” She was smiling, head held in her hands, as she mouthed ‘impossible’. With a deep breath in, she straightened herself out. “I’ve known you for ten years now. Ten. Years. The crush didn’t suddenly manifest, trust me. It was a slow process. Remember how we first met?”
I nodded. “First r-recess of first grade, all the other kids didn’t bother w-with me because I was taking too long to talk with my anxious st-stutter. It’s still weird that it’s lessened now that I’m in girl mode. Anyways, all the other kids thought I was w-weird and left me be, but you--”
“For the record, I also thought you were weird, but in a good way,” Emily interrupted, but I wasn’t bothered. “I also thought you were a cute girl with weirdly short hair, which, turns out you are one, but that thought is what made me give you the time of day in the first place.”
“R-Really?” I couldn’t tell if that confession was more or less surprising that the one about her crush on me.
“Yeah. And like, I was six, you were six, sexuality wasn’t on my mind; I just thought girls were cute and that you should be nice to them, which for the record you should.” Emily shook her head. “But we’re getting off-track. So, first meeting, two tactless kids, one just moved into town, one who was too much of a tomboy for the other girls to hang with, you told me all about your Dad. I didn’t make the connection that your deadname was a boy’s name; god, I was a dumb kid.” She sighed, and I very audibly ‘eeeeeeh’ed, because Emily had not been a dumb kid. “I asked you what language they speak in Spain in third grade.”
“Blame our, our school system for that one, not yourself,” I pointed out, which earned me another headshake.
“Yeah, right. So, back to airing my dirty laundry. After we talked about your Dad, I had very strong ‘I must protect this girl’ feelings. And so I stuck by you. And over time, you got less and less anxious around me. That’s when I got to see the side of you you’re too scared to show.” Emily raised her hand ever so slightly, but put it back down right away. She was keeping her distance. It felt wrong, considering how casual and comfortable we usually were around each other. “You’re extremely gentle, to the point it might come off as condescending, but it’s because you know how being hurt feels. And you’re really, really kind and considerate.” Emily snorted, smiling. “I don’t think you even registered the hurt visible on your face as you got ready to throw Potato Bun, but I did. Just like I’ve always been there for you, to protect you from harm, to speak up for you, you’ve been there for me. You’ve been there for me as an anchor, someone I knew I could trust, that I could maybe one day come home to.” Her lips trembled. “And I was happy with what we had, with our close platonic relationship. We basically did all I would have wanted out of dating you, just without calling it that. But I just had to go and ruin it.” Emily’s eyes were wet with tears. “Just had to go and run my mouth, god I’m a dumbass.” She reached up to wipe away her tears, and I decided to strike in that moment. I pulled her in close, holding her tight, and rested my forehead against hers.
“No, Emily, shush, that’s my f-friend you’re being mean to; you b-better apologise, because you didn’t ruin a-anything. You just revealed your feelings, and, and now it’s up to me to respond.” I stroked her pixie cut hair as she smiled, tears still in her eyes.
“And how ARE you going to respond, Daisy?” Emily asked, and I just carried on comforting her, thinking. How could I respond to my closest friend of ten years? How could I respond considering the situation I found myself in? Three days ago, I’d thought I was a guy with a serious anxiety disorder. Now I knew I was a girl, a magical one at that, and had to consider all it meant, how my life would be going forward, all that I could and would face. With a deep breath in, I began.
“I don’t know how to be a g-girlfriend. I don’t even know how to be, be a girl, I’ve been sure I am one for like, eighteen hours to-tops? Everything is n-new and weird and confusing, but--”
“But?”
“I’m… more than open to trying to figure it out. Because you, you do make me feel safe, and protected, and cared a-about, Emily. I cannot imagine my life without you in it. I love you as a friend,” I positioned myself so I could look right in her face, “and I’m sure with time I can be in lesbians with you as a girlfriend.”
Emily chuckled, giving me a big smile. “I’m pan, for the record, but I’ll allow it.”
“Okay, okay, cool, I’m a g-girl with a girlfriend now, this is n-new, this is unexpected, didn’t think my week would g-go this way. Should we kiss now? I-I-I feel like we should kiss now. Like in stuff I read when these scenes ha-happen the two characters in question kiss but I don’t know if we should whether it’s too soon whether I’ll even l-like it help--” Emily grabbed my cheeks right as I said help, stopping my babbling immediately. Rubbing her thumbs on them, she kissed my forehead and then rested hers against it.
“We don’t have to do anything you don’t want to do, Daisy. We can just sit here, in each other’s arms, enjoying the moment.”
“Right, right, you’re right, we can just keep our previous dy-dynamic going and just admit that we are dating. Should I do so even in b-boy mode?” I had to ask, it was a reasonable question, I had no clue whether Emily would still like me after I transformed back for school, something I was not looking forward to. Then I realised I was being an idiot and she had developed a crush on me before I… hatched? Oh gosh, I could use the words now, the words that came up so often in the transformation stories I read. This was too good, being a girl was too good, I was a girl with a girlfriend, and that could go bad in so many ways. Maybe Emily would end up not liking me anymore. Maybe the constant switching would make my anxiety even worse. Maybe I’d end up getting outed by accident. Okay, Daisy, enjoy the high while you can, just have fun, and then when the time comes, crash and burn and go nonverbal from anxiety. Yeah, solid plan, I was going to do that.
“Yes, you should, because it will let me conveniently avoid deadnaming you in a bunch of situations by using pet names. I’ll just have to introduce you as my partner until you come out.” Emily ruffled my hair, sighing. “You’ve mostly lost your stutter but you can still catastrophise, huh? Still weird that you did.”
“Yeah, I don’t know why, m-maybe it’s because I like this voice?... Oh. Oh that’s it, isn’t it. I like this voice, it’s c-comfortable, it’s easy to use, while the other voice takes too, too much to talk in. That’s why sign language was so much easier to do, because I didn’t have to use the v-voice while signing.” I groaned, and leaned back on the couch. “I’m gonna go back to stuttering when I switch to boy mode, aren’t I. Oh, that’ll be a pain. Being in b-boy mode is going to be a pain.”
“Sounds like it’ll be. But I’m gonna be at school tomorrow too, and I’ll make sure you feel fine.”
“Right, thanks, Emily. So, what now?”
“I dunno, what do you want to do?”
I fidgeted, bashfully looking down at the floor, a blush creeping up my face. “I’m still interested in the kissing option.” Emily smirked in response.
“Well, come here and get one.”
So I did. It was short, it was nervous, it was slightly awkward, but it was my first kiss and possibly Emily’s too, and I was glad to have gotten it.
I was sure I’d go for cheek and forehead ones more often though. They just felt cuter. Which is why I gave Emily a cheek one right after the lips one. If I was going to be blushing, I’d make her blush too. And with that out of the way, we decided to spend the rest of our day off just goofing around inside.
For the record, I made us lunch, my cooking surpassing Emily’s mom’s by a wide margin, although that wasn’t a high bar to clear to be fair. My Smash Bros skills, however, were nowhere near close to surpassing Emily’s experience. Which was fine; her dance after each win was too endearing, and I was still having fun with the game. We even had Potato Bun join in a couple times.
I was kind of feeling bad for her, to be fair; she felt like a clueless rookie on the team that didn’t know what she was doing, or that what she was doing was dangerous and harmful. I figured I’d try actually befriending her to teach her some manners. With any luck, she’d unionise the rest of the Buns into a strike to stop recruiting Magical Girls the way they had been doing up until now. I had a long road ahead of me if I wanted to try that, but I’d get to do it as a girlfriend, and that brought the biggest smile to my face. All I had to do now was steel myself for school.
