She's A Lady

16a

Erin

The move was chaotic. Seeing as how I let Max mastermind everything, I don't know why I thought it would go smoothly. It was like being hit with tidal wave after tidal wave. A car full of boxes at a time was how my stuff was moved over. The small moving van was the last to arrive and most of that furniture was thrown in a spare bedroom on top of the furniture already there. We argued a little over my comfy chair, but it eventually replaced the stiffer one in the front room. Provided I used the couch with him when we read together.

My side tables replaced the rickety ones in one of the spare rooms, since they were nicer than those ones but not as nice as the ones in the master bedroom already. My desk was a piece of junk though so we decided to share the one he had and just put my filing cabinet in the room. It was a push-pull operation that lasted a week and still resulted in my shoes ending up in a spare bedroom closet. I was promised space for them in the next month, because the shelving he ordered was late shipping.

I moved most of my things into the drawers he cleared in the master bathroom, but sometimes still snuck down the hall for extra space. Elbow room is a luxury you don't realise you will miss until it's gone. Oh, and the seat cover being down when you have to go to the bathroom really bad. Amongst other things. It was a good thing we had been practising this whole living together thing before we committed to doing it. Once you have nowhere to escape to, well let's say things get really real.

Work was going much smoother now. I was settled into my routine, and my workers were beginning to get familiar with what I wanted, when. They were hard workers and well mannered, so I had no problems. Even with the craziness of my lawsuit things went smoothly. The people who had a problem with me kept it to themselves and I kept to myself. I won't say I didn't catch a few silent looks, but the company had made it clear where they stood on the matter so those people kept their mouths shut at work.

The first time I got a message from my folks, I rolled my eyes. It was my mother telling me she was so worried about me and letting me know that they were fine, even though their name was all over the news thanks to my incident with Bill. I felt that tightening in my chest that I got when they pretended to be all caring, but really just wanted to guilt trip me for making them uncomfortable. I don't care how many times it happened, I never got used to it. It was like getting gum on your shoe. You could scrape and scrape, but you never really felt like you got all the sticky dirt off you.

I didn't call them back. Not because I am not a good child, but because I didn't want to give them more chance to make me feel awful. Damien caught on that something was up right away, but I shrugged it off and smiled. He probably didn't believe me. I didn't believe me. I just tried to ignore it and get on with my life. I complained to Max over an ice cream, soaked myself in cuddles with Damien and buried my nose in papers at work. It sort of worked.

The second message, now that had me steaming mad. It was my mother, yet again, upset that I hadn't called to talk to them in ages. She told me all her friends were asking her questions and she didn't know what to tell them, so I needed to stop sulking and call her back. She complained that it was very hard on her, having to deal with my problems like this, and she could use a little support. Yeah. Thanks for that. I deleted the message and contemplated blocking their number. Then I remembered the last time I got a new cell phone and they had a fit in the middle of the hallway to my apartment because I forgot to give them my new number.

I told Damien that my parents had called me and he took me out to Sam's, no questions asked. He was being really great about my piss-poor attitude considering we hadn't even been together a year. I probably should have done something about the situation, but honestly it was just so exhausting and frustrating dealing with my parents. My mother was passive-aggressive, self centered, and never wanted to say it to your face. My father was confrontational and religious to the maximum but wouldn't say anything over the phone. Now add a trans-female child that was straight according to their identity but not their parents' perception and you had a recipe for disaster.