The salesperson told me that it would unlock the real me. It turned me into a woman.
I hate shopping for clothes. I don’t like the way they feel on me, the way they make me feel like I’m awkward and out of place.
But this tank top, it made me into someone beautiful. It made me, for the first time, feel like I was who I was meant to be. It made me terrified, because one rip and there is no going back.
That was the warning the salesperson told me. One rip in this shirt and I’ll be her forever. One rip and I’ll stay a woman.
But when my best friend catches me, the way he looks at me makes me think that wouldn’t be so bad. The way he wants me makes me feel like maybe I could stay. The way he touches me makes a fire burn in my belly.
I’m a woman now but do I want to be one forever?
I’m a woman now and one little tear will make me her forever.
Excerpt
How could I tell him the reason? How could I tell him and he wouldn’t find it weird?
That this shirt made me feel like I was myself for the very first time in my life. That I felt perfect, like all the pieces had fit into place. That maybe I was actually a woman, that I’d always been one but had only been trapped in the wrong body all along.
No. No that wasn’t something I could say.
“I don’t know. It’s something new. I guess I’m just feeling it out.”
“Feeling it out,” he repeated, “How does it feel?”
“How does it feel to what? To be a ‘smoking hot woman’?”
Mitch blushed as I repeated his words back to him, “I did call you that, didn’t I?”
“You did,” I needled him, “And I think you meant it too, bud. Didn’t you?”
“Well,” he said, “I mean…”
“Come on,” I teased him, turning in my seat and pressing a little closer to him, “You do think I’m smoking hot, don’t you? And I do think I’m a woman.”
“You think?” he asked, “Only think?”
“Well I didn’t get much of a chance to test the waters,” I admitted, sitting back and pressing my hands into my stomach, “I certainly feel like a woman. I think that I’m a woman. But I haven’t really checked, you know.”
My hands crawled up my body, cresting over my breasts through the tanktop and squeezing them a little, “These feel real, like a real womans. And when I squeeze my thighs together I feel something missing and something new in its place and that makes me think that I’m a woman. That I’m a real woman.
“But I’m all biased. And frankly I don’t have the right perspective. I think maybe I need an outside opinion.”
Quickly I snapped out my hand and grasped his. I pulled it to me, specifically I pulled it to my breast, squeezing it in and filling his palm with me.
“What do you think, Mitch?” I asked him, my voice husky, “Do I feel like a real woman to you?”
“Eddie,” he said cautiously.
“Edie, I think,” I replied, “I think I want you to call me Edie. And I think I want you to kiss me right now.”