by Alyson Belle
“I do,” I answered with a chuckle. “Your name was supposed to be Robert, right?”
“Yup. A regular ol’ Robbie. And yours was supposed to be Jessica.” She leaned forward, her big eyes looking so beautiful that close to mine. “How does that sound? Jess for short?”
My heart skipped a beat again and I nodded, swallowing a bit too hard. “Uh-huh.”
“Alright! Then, Jess, it is!” She nodded and seemed very satisfied with herself. “I have to say, it really fits. I think I’m pretty good at this.”
“You are.”
She beamed at me, and I was reminded of old times when things were simpler and I hadn’t been magically transformed into another body. Relief flooded through me once again.
“You seem less nervous now,” Lyla remarked.
“That’s because I am,” I answered honestly. “Before I was terrified out of my mind. But I don’t know… just being with you makes it all feel better.”
She placed her hand over her heart. “Aww, that’s so sweet! I tell you what.” She took both of my hands again and looked me deep in the eyes in a way that made my whole body feel melty. My heart fluttered and I felt hot all over. Did Lyla have any idea what that did to me? Probably not. She never had, because I’d never told her the truth about my feelings. “Why don’t we go thrift shopping and find out what kind of clothes that my new best girl friend likes?”
I licked my lips nervously, thinking of intentionally going out there looking like I did. Panic surged again. What if I did something wrong? What if I embarrassed myself? What was I supposed to do when I had to use the bathroom? But another glance at Lyla’s excited face pretty much decided it for me. She was so thrilled to do this with me. How could I deny her? Besides, I felt safe enough with her to let her guide me through all this, and I didn’t want to miss out on any time together.
“Alright,” I said with a nod. “I guess I do have to get some clothes that fit this body if you don’t like any of the ones I have, don’t I? Time for a second-hand shopping spree.”
Lyla winked at me. “It’s what you like, silly. Not what I like.”
But she didn’t realize just how wrong she was about that.
* * *
The first thing I noticed about the thrift store was the distinct smell. It was somewhere between freshly laundered and a plethora of mothballs, and it tugged at my nose and made me a bit uncomfortable. But Lyla didn’t seem to smell anything of the sort and practically skipped along as we walked to the women’s section, rattling off all the things she hoped we’d find.
“Thankfully you’re not too tall,” she said as we approached a rack full of pants. “If there’s one thing I’ve learned in my short life it’s that tall girls don’t give up their clothes until they’re rags.”
“Yeah, it’s weird being this short now.”
Lyla snorted at me, looking up from our inch gap even with her wearing such high heels. “You are not short.”
“Well, not to you, tiny,” I teased. She’d always been short, even compared to other girls.
She playfully joshed my arm. “Don’t be cocky now. That’s very unbecoming of a lady.”
“Oh, is it?” I asked with mock sincerity. “Because I seem to remember someone climbing on top of the school roof to proclaim that she was the best when she beat out her mortal nemesis for lead in the school play.”
“So I have a flair for the dramatic,” she shot back with a teasing smile, tossing her multi-hued hair over her shoulder. “You’ve never complained about it before.”
“That’s true,” I agreed, feeling myself smiling like a complete goof. “I definitely haven’t.”
“Exactly. Now, watch and learn.”
Like a whirling dervish, she attacked the racks with a determined sort of ferocity that was borderline alarming. One after another, she tossed different articles of clothing into my arms, from pants to shirts to dresses, as she led me throughout the store with the focused precision of a soldier on a top secret mission.
It didn’t take long for my arms to become uncomfortably full, and I heaved out a gasp of protest. “Hey, uh, can we put some of these down?”
“What, tired already?” she teased.
“I’m not exactly as great as I used to be when it comes to heavy weights right now.”
“Fair enough.” Lyla looked over our hoard appraisingly and nodded in approval. “We can take a dressing room break now.”
“A break?” I squeaked. “You mean there’s gonna be more after this?”
“Well, that depends on what you like and what fits that cute bod of yours.”
“Oh.”
She led me to the back where there were three stalls set up. She took the clothes from my arms and placed them on a bench before ushering me inside.
“I’ll hand things to you one at a time.”
“Why?”
She pointed to a sign that said only three items at a time. “It’s just easier this way. Now, if it fits, I want you to step out and show me.”
“Okay.”
She handed me a pink, stretchy-looking dress and then pushed me inside. I found myself standing under the ugly yellow lights staring at an unfamiliar mess of fabric. I clutched at it nervously, feeling the stretchy material flex beneath my fingers.
Something about standing in a dressing room holding a women’s garment in my hand made the whole situation uncomfortably real. This was something for a woman. I was a woman. This fabric was going on my actual body. I shook my head and took a deep breath.
Too fucking weird. Here goes nothing.
I set the dress to the side and went about removing my outfit I’d appeared in at the airport. The jeans were straight-forward enough, but they clung to me tightly as I tried to pull them down my thick, soft thighs. With a bit of determined wiggling, I managed to get them in a pool on the ground and then I moved on to my peasant shirt.
That came off easily. Thankfully, the loose, flowy fabric offered no resistance as I pulled it over my body and dropped it on the floor below. I eyed the dress nervously.
But just as I was ready to plow ahead with this weird endeavor, I caught sight of myself in the mirror, standing there in just my underwear. The strange view of this gorgeous, stunning creature who mimicked my every move was so alien to me, but it definitely wasn’t unpleasant. I could see now that Lyla had been right. I was hot. My hands started to wander over myself, exploring my nearly-nude body with a cautious reverence.
This was the first time I’d seen myself so naked since I’d awoken the plane, and I was absolutely stunned. My fingers trailed over my soft skin, surprising me with how silky and pliant it was. My breasts sat high on my chest, their pleasant weight making the bottom of my bra press into me. There were small lines across my hips from where my too-tight jeans had clung to my body, and my fingers brushed over the slight indentations like a holy script.
Was this what it was like to be a woman? I’d always been comfortable in my male body my entire life, but now I wondered if I’d actually been given the short end of the stick. There was just something so inherently… magical about my softness, my form, that I wanted to stare at it forever.
“Hey, I don’t hear anything going on in there. You okay?”
Lyla’s voice cut through my reverie and I started. “Yeah, sorry. Just distracted.”
“It’s alright. Shopping is all about the experience.”
“Well, I’m about to experience this dress then, I guess.”
I picked the pink thing up from where I had left it, lifting it over my head and pulling it on. However, while my upper body went through the bottom hole and made its way upwards, my arms couldn’t find a way out and blocked any further progress.
I fished around, trying to figure out what went where, but I just ended up getting more tangled in the stretchy fabric. Even my head couldn’t find an exit and I felt my cheeks beginning to blaze red.
“Uh… Lyla?”
“Yeah To-, I mean Jess?”
&n
bsp; “I think I’m stuck.”
“You’re stuck?”
“Yeah. I’m stuck.”
“How?”
“I don’t know how I just know that I am.”
“Huh, that’s the theme of your life lately, isn’t it?”
“Very astute observation. I’m still stuck in this dress.”
“Did you lock the door behind you?”
I paused for a moment and realized that I had out of habit. “Uh… what if that answer was a yes?”
Instead of being angry, she just laughed. “Alright. Stand back from the door. I’m going to slide under.”
“Slide under?”
But then I heard scuffling at my feet and I backed up until my spine was flush to a wall. Looking down my body, I saw the back of Lyla’s head as she slid under the small gap beneath the door.
“Oh my God, you’re really climbing under.”
“Yeah, what did you think I meant?” She asked, popping up to her feet in front of me and out of my view. “Ah, I see what happened. Hold on a minute, I’ll have you out of here in a jiffy.”
I felt her arms move and then suddenly light was coming into my dark prison of a dress. Her long, delicate fingers wrapped around my wrist, pulling one arm one way, then the other arm another, before finally tugging on the fabric before my head poked through. My cheeks burned hotter as I tried to ignore how good it felt for her warm fingers to slide across my body.
“It’s got body cage straps around the collar to make it fancy,” she explained, manipulating the fabric so it settled the rest of the way around me. “I forgot that you might not understand how that worked.” She trailed off as she finished, and I noticed how her fingers lingered on the seams of the collar just above my bust.
“Wow. You look amazing,” she murmured, stepping back slightly to admire me.
“I do?” I asked, feeling myself flush again.
“Yeah. See for yourself.”
She stepped to my side and guided me into a position where I could look into the mirror unobstructed, although her hand stayed firmly planted at the small of my back, right above my ass. Just that little point of contact made my chest squeeze. It felt like a live current was going through me, and I swallowed nervously.
“What do you think?” she prompted.
Oh, right. I was supposed to be looking at myself, not thinking about her hand sliding lower… My eyes finally flicked to the mirror, and when they did my jaw dropped open wide.
I was smoking.
While I hadn’t been really that ugly since puberty, I’d never thought much of my attractiveness beyond that. I knew I was somewhere in the middle of the road, with a boy next door sort of simplicity.
But now… now I was a grade-A bombshell. Or at least I felt like one. The dusky pink fabric clung to my body in all the right ways, hugging curves that hadn’t existed the day before. My breasts were way bigger than I had thought they were in that loose peasant blouse, and I started to wonder what it would feel like to—
“Well, are you gonna just stand there silently or say something?”
“Wow,” I whispered, feeling tears prick at the corner of my eyes.
Wait, why was I being so emotional about just a silly piece of fabric? But of course, Lyla didn’t miss the warble in my voice, and she threw her arms around me and hugged me tight.
“Oh, sweetie. It’s a lot to process, I know. We can stop and go home if you want.”
“No!” I objected, perhaps a bit too adamantly, while I blinked furiously. “No. No. It’s fine. I like this.” She had no idea just how much I liked this.
“I’m glad. Because I’m having an absolute blast.”
“Me too.”
And that wasn’t a lie. There, in her arms, I felt more comfortable and safe than I had in months. With Lyla, there was happiness. There was joy. She didn’t care if I was Jess, or Tom, or the abominable snow man. She just cared about me.
I could certainly get used to that.
Chapter 4
“Are you sure this is a good idea?” I asked dubiously, looking down at the pretty outfit that Lyla had put together for me.
“Hey, what did I tell you about moving your head without telling me?”
“Sorry,” I said, straightening my head while she went back to lining my lips.
While I had seen both Lyla and Stacey get ready multiple times over the years, I had never really thought about all the work that went into fully applying their faces. But now I was getting a first-hand experience while Lyla dutifully did me up in her classic style.
It had started with a primer, which apparently was what people put on before their makeup. Yeah, there was makeup before the makeup. My mind was blown.
Then had been the foundation, then some contour, then powder to set it. It was mildly uncomfortable, but it did allow me moment after moment of very close face time with Lyla. It would have been so easy to just bend forward and kiss her, but of course, I didn’t, as much as I might want to. I had to remind myself that no matter how attracted to her I was, Lyla wasn’t romantically interested in me. For her, I’d always be just a friend.
I had thought the worst of it was over when she set me to bake, but then she started a whole new process.
My eyes.
I remembered how I’d sprained my ankle once when I was eleven and had fallen off of my skateboard the wrong way. It had been one of the more painful experiences of my life, but I would gladly go through that again rather than have her apply eyeliner to me ever again.
She assured me that I would get used to it, but I didn’t believe her. It was the weirdest, itchiest, most uncomfortable sensation I’d ever experienced. I did not enjoy it in the least. But then after that came eyeshadow, and cream stuff for something called a cut crease, and then the glitter.
She was on my lashes now, and they might have been just as bad as the eyeliner. But eventually, she stood back and nodded at me with approval.
“There. You’re perfect.”
“Perfect?” I echoed. “That’s some heavy praise.”
“I know. And I’m just that good. Now, don’t you worry about tonight. It’s gonna be great, I promise. Drunk people are a whole lot less observant, so no one will notice if you’re a little bit off. It’s a great way to start your introduction into the world as a total babe.”
“So, you think I’m a total babe then?” I teased, leaning forward and fluttering my long lashes at her.
To my surprise, she bent over so that her hands were resting on my thighs and our faces were less than a breath away from each other. “Yeah, I do. Got a problem with that?”
I barely restrained myself from releasing a muted squeak. From anyone else, it might have been a threat, but her cheeky smile let me know that she was just giving my energy right back to me. I could have been mistaken… but I was pretty sure that we were flirting. Wasn’t that what this was? It had been a long time, but this was how I generally remembered it back in the early days of Stacey and me. Lyla had never acted quite like this with me before, and it made my whole body feel funny… in a good way. I didn’t trust myself to move with her face so close to mine, so I just smiled back at her and hoped she couldn’t hear how loudly my heart was pounding.
Just a friend, just a friend, just a friend, I reminded myself, calming slightly. She’s not into you! You can’t ever really be with her. Don’t mistake affection for romance.
“Now, are you ready to go out there and enjoy this new body?” Lyla asked.
I tilted my head back and allowed myself a laugh. “When you say it like that, it sounds downright creepy.”
To be perfectly honest, I would rather stick around and cuddle with her like we had the previous night. At first, I had been nervous about just clambering into Lyla’s bed and acting like I belonged there, but she insisted that no guest of hers was taking the couch, and besides that, we were both girls now, right? I couldn’t argue with that logic. It had been so nice sleeping all curled up next to this beautiful woma
n—even in college we’d rarely fallen asleep like that, and only then accidentally after a long night of heavy drinking—and not waking up the next morning with annoyingly insistent morning wood I would have had when I had been Tom had been downright convenient. I got to pretend the whole thing was completely innocent, no matter how many dirty thoughts had flitted through my head.
Nope, no boners to speak of—only the excitement of laying next to the girl I had loved for so many years, feeling her heart beat against mine. And the comfort of being so close to someone who supported me through anything; Even mystical, body-transforming stuff that happened at ten thousand feet in the air.
“Sorry, I didn’t exactly do my pre-reading on how to treat your lifelong friend who suddenly turns into a mega-hottie,” Lyla teased. “I’ll get right on that.”
“Please, you and I both know that you never did the pre-readings in college.”
“Guilty as charged.” She disappeared for a moment only to come back with a pair of sparkly flats. Were all flats glittery or was my luck just decidedly reflective? “I was gonna put you in a pair of baby heels, but I figured even those would be too much.”
“Your mercy is appreciated.”
“Well, I don’t want you to die.” She stood up on her tiptoes, giving me a dastardly look. “But next time, prepare yourself! You’ll need to figure out heels sooner or later if you’re stuck like that.”
“That’s if I survive this time.”
“True. The world of a woman is a strange one.” She waited for me to finish putting on the shoes and grab the purse we had bought before grabbing my hand once more. And just like every other time, what felt like lightning lanced up my back, and I flushed. “Now come on! Our night awaits!”
For someone who was once again wearing super tall, stylized platforms, she was quite fast. I found myself struggling to keep up in my tight ‘wrap dress’, feeling a couple of times like I was going to face plant as we cruised across the paved, grungy, NYC sidewalk. But I made it to our cab without incident, breathed a prayer of thanks, and soon we were headed for the club that Lyla had chosen for my first night out as her hot new lady-friend.