I Love You Just the Way You Are (Book 1- Rock Canyon Series)

Chapter 1 - Maddie

Chapter One – Maddie

"Maddie you're a natural! Two weeks into this job and you're already making little hearts with the milk foam... though I'm not quite sure why you only do that with plant milk," my boss Mark said, looking at me sideways.

"Oh, that's easy," I shot back, pouring the final drink of a large online order. "If you're a kind and thoughtful enough person to drink non-dairy, you get a heart in your drink. If you're unthinking and ignorant and order regular milk, no heart." I spun around, smug smile in tow, and began rinsing out the metal frothing pot for what felt like the 100th time this shift.

I had scored a summer job at my favorite place in the world: La Pintoresca Café. Or "The Quaint Café" as it would be called in English. But most people here in Rock Canyon just called it The Resca. I had been a loyal customer here since I was a little kid. It was the first place I thought of when my therapist suggested that I pick up a part-time job to help me become comfortable presenting as female.

And since my therapist was the gatekeeper to my goddess injections, I immediately put in for a job at The Resca. And it's a good thing that my application was accepted; it was the only place I had applied.

I had always loved walking into the heavenly smells of freshly roasted coffee beans mingling with the café's unbeatable French bread. And even though as a customer I'd get here at a more respectable time than 6am, I learned to fall in love with the morning shift. It wasn't too bad, especially once I got settled in for the day and started speed-loading soy lattes.

My hands were always jittery by 9 without fail. I could thank the free coffee for employees' policy that I thoroughly abused. But while the coffee was free, unfortunately there wasn't a free bread for employees' policy. Or, at least, it wasn't official. Mark usually let me have some anyway. I'd wash away the jitters with a few pieces on my break in my favorite corner booth, enjoying the rich desert sunlight pouring in the floor-to-ceiling glass windows, the old pine floor bathed in a never-ending ethereal glow.

As I returned the frothing pot to its station, where it would stay for all of two seconds, I could feel my boss Mark staring a hole into the back of my head. I turned to face him, a cheeky little grin washing over my face. He blinked a few times, his furrow melting away into an amused annoyance. He chuckled and shook his head.

"Well, I guess it's okay if you only want to spruce up the plant milk orders. Who am I to stop you? I just hope no one else has picked up on your little quirk. Last thing we need is a Karen complaining about something else." He shook his head again, his forehead wrinkling as he looked at me from underneath his eyelids. "You're an intense little thing though, you know that?"

I lifted my head and stuck out my tongue, letting my lips go fat in a goofy grin.

I had grown closer to Mark since I started working at The Resca. He had worked or managed the café ever since I could remember. I'd always looked up to him as a visible example of the world not ending when a person was openly queer. For years I had secretly wanted to talk to him about my struggles with gender identity and sexual orientation but held off until last winter when I was released from in-patient psychological care.

After my... let's call it an accident... and subsequent vacation to the psych ward, it was starkly obvious to me that I would need to start living my truth if I was to live at all. So, I confided all my secrets in Mark in the hopes that he would understand.

He more than understood. His strength and wisdom were far greater than I had imagined, and I was able to lean into him in a way that I had not been able to lean into anyone else. Mark had come out in high school in the mid-2000s when it was even worse than it is today. He knew exactly the road I was going to have to travel–potholes, bumps and sharp turns included. But to look at Mark, you wouldn't know he had struggled. All I saw was a happy, healthy, and well-adjusted adult. I wanted to get where he was, and I was willing to go through whatever it took.