by Witt, L. A.
Get it together, Alex. Just jump in with both feet and get it over with.
I took a quick drink of water, cleared my throat, and logged on.
It rang. I closed my eyes. And I answered.
“Technical support, Alex Nichols speaking.”
That stopped every conversation within a three-cube radius. Well, for a few seconds.
“. . . No. Fucking. Way . . .”
“. . . dude, I so told you . . .”
“. . . wait, you mean you knew about . . .”
“. . . come on, don’t tell me you didn’t . . .”
I covered one ear with my hand, blocking out the whispers so I could focus on the customer speaking into my other ear. It helped, and I made it through without too much difficulty. It was a relatively easy call anyway, which was always welcome first thing in the morning. Just a faulty power supply that could be easily swapped out. And it was always nice when the person didn’t ask to speak to one of the “other”—translation: male—technicians.
Oh, right. Because I am one of the “other” technicians.
As soon as I hung up, the phone rang again. Calls usually came in waves like that. For an hour or so, it would be one after another, every rep glued to his or her headset. Then, nothing for twenty minutes, forty minutes, an hour. Those lulls were the periods when we’d take care of emails, reports, and whatever other tasks the powers that be thought tech support should be saddled with. That was also when the gossip mill worked double time. When conversations didn’t have to be rushed and condensed into those brief periods when customers were on hold. Today, with every passing call, I dreaded that lull.
It came, though.
I’d barely taken off my headset before Glenn, one of the techs from a few desks over, materialized in the entrance to my cubicle. A phony smile was plastered across his face.
“Hey, um, Alex?” He cocked his head and furrowed his brow a little.
“Yes?”
His eyebrows jumped and his jaw dropped. Always a subtle one, Glenn.
Yes, it’s me, asshole.
He quickly cleared his throat. “Uh, so where’ve you been? We’ve all been worried about you the last few days.”
I’m sure. Something tells me you just drew the short straw to come over here and confirm it’s really me. “Been out sick.”
He watched me for a moment, probably wondering if I’d elaborate. When I didn’t, he fidgeted, resting a hand on the corner of my cubicle in a pathetic attempt to look casual. “Well, glad to have you back.”
“Thanks.”
He made a quick escape, and I tried to get back to work.
“Alex?” A voice turned my head. Rick Soliday from engineering stood right where Glenn had just minutes before.
“What’s up, Rick?” I asked.
His eyes widened slightly, as if he’d tried to contain his reaction but didn’t quite succeed. More subtle than Glenn, though, I’d give him that.
Rick cleared his throat. “I, um, I just came down to give you the updated troubleshooting procedure for the six hundred series.” He handed me a few copies of the manual.
“Thanks,” I said. “By the way, you can just send this stuff through inter-office mail. You don’t have to walk it all the way down here.”
“Oh, no, it’s okay.” A hint of a smirk tugged at his mouth. “I was wandering this way anyway, so . . .”
Sure he was. Apparently word was getting around, via email or phone most likely.
“As long as you didn’t have to make a special trip,” I muttered, trying not to let my irritation show. He finally left, and I had no doubt the next spectator would be along soon. I was right. For the better part of the morning, a steady stream of people found bullshit reasons to drop by my desk. Of course there were plenty who were fine with it, acknowledging the “situation” with little more than a fleeting look of surprise or a startled pause on the phone before returning to business as usual. All it took to cancel out a dozen of those, though, was one of the not-so-subtle jackasses like Rick or Glenn. The only thing missing was a damned carnival barker.
“Step right up, see the fourth-floor freak show! What once was a woman is now a man, have a peek, have a look!”
I shuddered.
My phone rang, and I could tell by the ringtone it was an internal call. I cringed, wondering if it was someone else who already knew or someone who was about to find out. One glance at the caller ID eased the tension in my stomach, though. Ken Randall and I had been friends since I started here, and he was the only one who, prior to today, knew what I was.
I pushed the button to answer the call. “Hey, Ken.”
“Oh, crap, so people weren’t kidding.”
I scowled at no one in particular. “Already worked its way up to your floor?”
“Ya think? The rumor mill is on fire with this one.” He paused. “So what’s going on?”
“Long story. By the way, sorry I had to bail on you and Luann tonight.”
“Oh, don’t worry about it. Sounds like you have a lot going on. Lu’s sister said she’ll watch the kids, so we’re covered.”
“That’s good. I didn’t want to leave you high and dry.”
“You’re fine. So, are you . . .” He hesitated. “Are you permanently male?”
I lowered my voice. “Possibly. I don’t know yet.”
“Did you get that implant thing?”
“Unfortunately.”
“Shit.”
“Tell me about it. Listen, I’ve got to get back to my calls. I’ll fill you in on everything later.”
“All right. Luann and I are praying for you.”
“Thanks, man.” I hung up, feeling a lot better after hearing from Ken. I rarely found comfort in someone as religious as him, but like my aunt in California, he was compassionate and nonjudgmental, especially when it came to shifters. His beliefs were about as different as could be from the fucked-up cult my parents belonged to, and religious or not, it always helped to have an ally or two in situations like this. Maybe I’d get through the day after all, just knowing someone had my back.
One of the prerequisites to working in technical support was a heroin-like caffeine addiction. We may as well have had coffee IVs hooked right into our aortas for all we as a department consumed. Throw in my hangover from last night, and I was sucking the stuff down so fast, it was no surprise when it finally caught up with me.
I logged off the phones, took off my headset, and left my cubicle. Nerves coiled in the pit of my stomach as I walked down the hall. In most public places, it was a habit to pause and make sure I was going into the right restroom, that my body matched the stick figure on the door. I’d worked here long enough that I’d stopped thinking about it, so one of my nagging fears now that I was here in my male form was that I’d forget. Go left instead of right. Walk past the wrong stick figure.
The other nagging fear was the very act of going into the right one. My coworkers weren’t the most progressive group of people on the planet. It still bothered some of the guys that Lane from shipping used the men’s room like they did. God forbid a gay guy had to take a piss.
With that in mind, I deliberately made the trek to the opposite side of my floor. This particular department had been eradicated in the last round of layoffs, and all that remained was a ghost town of cubicles. That and a couple of restrooms few people bothered using. Rumor had it they served the same purpose as out of the way supply closets, empty offices, and, if a pair was particularly daring, unoccupied conference rooms. At least if I ran into a couple in here, they’d be as likely to pretend they hadn’t seen me as I was them.
Thank God, the men’s room was deserted. It stayed that way right up until I went to the sink to wash my hands.
The door opened. I looked in the mirror, and my blood turned to ice water.
In walked Joe Gorton and Zach Holloway, the last two coworkers with whom I’d wanted to cross paths anytime soon. If my boss was in the top five people I didn’t want knowing
about me, these two were in the top three.
Every company had a Joe and a Zach. They were the guys every female coworker avoided at company parties, and I’d have bet money the freaks, geeks, and queers at their respective high schools had spent a great deal of time looking over their shoulders in the halls. They were a pair of schoolyard bullies who’d never grown up, plain and simple. The two of them were sleaze in neckties, and they had just enough charm to repeatedly persuade an HR director of their innocence.
Being stuck in an elevator with Zach a few months ago had been bad enough. Having Joe corner me at the bar at the Christmas party was irritating and a little unnerving.
Having the two of them between me and the men’s room door? Being outnumbered and male in their presence?
Fuck.
I pretended not to notice them.
“That is some crazy shit, man,” Zach said to Joe.
“I know, isn’t it?”
They stopped in front of the door, and they were either oblivious to me or pretending to be. Considering they’d conveniently shown up in the most out of the way restroom in the building while I was in here and were casually blocking my only escape, I’d have put money on the latter.
“I’m telling you,” Joe said. “This year’s Christmas party? Any chick is getting a package check before she comes home with me.”
“Don’t want any Crying Game action?”
“Oh, fuck, are you kidding?” Joe made a gagging sound.
Zach laughed. “I don’t know if a package check would do much good, though. I heard when they switch, it all switches. Junk and all.”
“Yeah, that’s what I’ve heard, too.” Joe shuddered. “Well, let’s put it this way. I better not fuck a woman and wake up next to a dude, or I’m not going to be happy.”
I refused to look at their reflections or my own as I turned off the faucet and reached for a paper towel. I felt like a deer standing too close to a couple of wolves, moving as slowly and quietly as possible. No sudden movements, no drawing attention to myself.
They were well aware of me, though. They had to be. Why else would they be blocking the door while they carried on their passive-aggressive conversation?
I gritted my teeth, debating whether to just wait until they got out of the way or engage them and ask them to move.
“Fucking disgusting, though,” Joe went on. “Can’t believe someone would pass themselves off as a chick, then turn around and be one of those. What the fuck?”
“Well, like you said.” Zach clapped him on the shoulder. “Package checks, just to be safe.”
“No shit.” Joe stepped away from the door and started toward one of the urinals. “And God help a bitch if she turns out to be a guy.”
Zach laughed, and I made the mistake of looking in the mirror just in time to meet his eyes before he followed Joe. We held eye contact for a couple of seconds, and I swore he couldn’t have looked more menacing if he’d been smacking his palm with a baseball bat.
As soon as I had a clear path for the door, I got the hell out of there. The door didn’t shut in time to mask the roar of laughter, and I shivered as I started down the hall.
God help a bitch if she turns out to be a guy.
I shivered again. Fucker was probably just embarrassed to figure out he’d been hitting on a shifter at the Christmas party. He’d been laying it on thick all night long, thinking I was single because Damon, who’d been down with the flu, wasn’t there with me. Everyone saw it, everyone knew what he’d been doing, and now everyone knew the woman who’d been in his sights was a shifter.
Needless to say, Joe wasn’t happy.
I told myself he’d never do anything dangerous. This wouldn’t go any further than passive-aggressive swipes, dirty looks, and his brand of obnoxious, if subtle, hostility. Anything to make sure, at every available opportunity, that I knew he found me repulsive.
And people wondered why so few shifters came out.
I kept my eyes down and walked back to my desk as fast as I could, willing my skin not to turn inside out. In theory, I should have run straight to HR, but there was no point. No one had ever gotten an accusation of sexual harassment to stick to one of those assholes. Though retaliation was illegal as all hell, there were ways, and Zach and Joe always found them. I didn’t know if one of them was banging the HR director, or if they’d just mastered the art of sweet-talking their way out of things, but every woman who’d ever gone toe-to-toe with one or both of them eventually regretted it.
It was their word against mine. I didn’t stand a chance.
So, I returned to my desk, put on my headset, and pretended I wasn’t in a cubicle-littered circle of hell.
After another rush of calls, my direct extension rang.
“Technical support, Alex Nichols speaking.”
“Alex, this is Detective Reilly.”
I sat up straighter, keeping an eye out for eavesdroppers. “Yes?”
“I just wanted to let you know your parents and the pastor-slash-surgeon are now in custody. They’ll be arraigned first thing in the morning.”
Relief and guilt swept through me. “Do I need to be there tomorrow?”
“No, but the DA will be in touch with you to discuss the psych eval and your testimony.”
I swallowed hard. Jesus. Testifying against my parents. No matter what they’d done to me over the years, they were my parents. Well, my mother was. Gary could rot in hell.
“What about my sister?” I asked. “She wasn’t there, was she?”
“No, she was in school when the officers picked up your mother, and your stepfather was arrested at his office.”
“Does she know yet?”
“A social worker is on her way to the school,” Detective Reilly said. “She’ll be informed of the arrest and taken into foster care.”
I still didn’t know how to feel. Candace probably loathed my very name right now. Our parents were in jail. Her entire life had been upended. So had mine.
And there would be a trial. That I was not looking forward to.
It was only eight thirty, and Alex was originally supposed to tend bar until eleven. He’d gone into work tonight to make up for one of the nights he’d missed over the weekend, but then he called to say he was cutting out early. When he walked into the diner up the street from the Welcome Mat, I didn’t have to ask how he’d gotten out of his shift.
Shuffling through the door, eyes down and shoulders sagging, he didn’t look like he could last another hour, never mind another three. He dropped into the booth across from me, acknowledging me with a quiet “hello” and a weak smile. When the waitress came up to the table, he just ordered a cup of coffee.
“Not hungry?” I asked.
“Not really, no.”
Shit. I recognized that look, that body language, even if it was in a different body. Normally, he was famished after working both jobs. When he looked like this and wasn’t hungry, it wasn’t a good sign.
“Long day?” I asked.
He groaned. “I don’t think I have ever felt dirtier in my life.”
“Really?”
He nodded and avoided my eyes. “Nothing quite like being parked right in the middle of a grapevine that’s got your name all over it.”
“Ouch.”
“Yeah.”
“Anything you can do about it? Go to HR? Something like that?”
He laughed humorlessly. “What good would that do? There’s nothing that says someone can’t be uncomfortable with something. Even if that ‘something’ happens to be another coworker.”
“I seem to recall there are rules against making your coworkers uncomfortable.”
“If it were that black and white, I’d be fired for making the entire department uncomfortable.” He sighed. “The thing is, it’s not like I can prove anything. I mean, a guy from engineering comes down to hand me something he could have just emailed me. Can I prove he just wanted an excuse to rubberneck for a minute?”
“I guess
you can’t.”
“Or when a couple of sleazebags in the men’s room are talking about making sure they do package checks on women at the company Christmas party so they don’t—” His voice cracked, and he paused to take a deep breath. Then he cleared his throat and said, “So they don’t get any Crying Game surprises in bed?”
“You’re kidding.”
“Nope. They weren’t talking to me, but come on. One of the guys was the one who was hitting on me at the company party, so it’s not too hard to put two and two together. Except it’s not like I can make a big deal out of something I just overheard, you know? They weren’t saying anything to me, and I can’t prove it was about me.”
“I don’t know,” I said. “There was a big to-do at my office a few months ago after a woman overheard a couple of guys comparing notes about some actress’s breasts. She nailed them for sexual harassment, and they were in some hot water over it. Wasn’t about her, but it made her uncomfortable, so . . .”
Alex shrugged, his shoulder moving like that subtle gesture took every bit of energy he had left. “But what would it solve? Short of having everyone in the building fired who knew me as a woman, there’s no way I can just sweep what I am under the rug. People know. The cat’s out of the bag. And whether I like it or not, there are people who can’t stand shifters.”
“You still have to work in that environment, though.”
“I’ll get used to it,” he said. “It’ll settle down around the office, people will get over it, and it won’t be as big a deal.”
I wasn’t sure which of us he was trying to convince.
The waitress brought his coffee, and after she’d gone, he wrapped his hands around it. Without looking at me, without really looking at anything, he said, “The detective called. They arrested my parents today.”
“That’s—that’s a good thing, right?”
“I don’t know.” His eyes were distant, his tone flat. “I really can’t decide if it is or not.”
“Any word on your sister?”
He shook his head and dropped his blank gaze. “She’s probably in a foster home by now, and I gave social services the names and numbers of some relatives in California.”