Searching For Normal Ch 15 - Preparations

For the second day in a row, I woke up in Sophie’s bed. For what it’s worth, I was right the first time, lazy mornings next to her only got better with repetition. With no tense anticipation, no awkward beating around the bush, I was able to simply bask in her glow. I could pull our bodies tightly together and breathe deep of all things her from the moment I woke up. Last night had been interesting to say the least, good interesting, though.

We had agreed to take things slow, move at a pace we were both comfortable with, but neither of us really knew what that meant. There was a lot of kissing, a lot of sweet talking, cuddling, some caresses that made me feel things I wasn’t quite sure I was ready to act on again, overall though it was just nice. We’d spent a long time talking about the trip, its logistics, its feasibility, where we actually wanted to go. Asia seemed to be the winner, unfortunately though I had a lot to do before I could travel looking like I did now.

Getting my identity and documentation all changed was going to be a hassle, luckily the prevalence of SRD has resulted in laws being passed which expedited the whole process. If a person affected by SRD genuinely wanted to for some reason, they could go through the time consuming process that had been in place for years to handle such things.

Alternatively, special offices had been set up in most major cities where, with the provision of medical documentation proving an SRD diagnosis and the testimony of a third party who could prove close relation to and verify the identity of the affected, official documentation could be changed in a manner of hours. Sadly, Sophie had her own million and a half things to take care of before we wound up actually making good on our vague plans, so I’d need someone else to help with that if I wanted it done sooner rather than later. That was future Avery’s problem though, current Avery was content to just enjoy the moment.

I shifted on to my side, taking in Sophie’s still sleeping form. God, she was amazing. The sort of beauty that sparked the urge to wax poetic, even in someone as unrefined and sullen as myself. High on her presence, abuzz with those good brain chemicals I found words I’d not find anywhere else. I found a drive and desire to express feelings in ways I hadn’t felt even in those early days with Julie, where things with her felt so right and things with me felt so indescribably wrong.

With a silly grin on my face I pulled out my phone and opened a notepad app, compiling thoughts, feelings as they came to me. It all felt rather silly, but why not? This was the new me, the sort of me that would, apparently, dive on a whim into raw unfiltered sentiment. The whole thing felt ridiculously gay, and honestly? That sounded pretty damn cool, actually. Getting to be a lesbian was almost as exciting as getting to be a girl. It was like yeah, I can be a girl, and also have other girls see me that way and want to be with me because of it? Where do I sign?

With that epiphany a whole Rube Goldberg of thoughts clicked into place at once. And a certain memory involving my high school friends being confused at the notion of me not liking porn with men involved suddenly revealed itself bathed in an entirely new light. Though, in hindsight the lesbian porn I’d been into at the time now felt pretty weird and gross. Also, more importantly, not super necessary given my current situation. Speaking of which, I had much more important feelings to explore about Sophie and the joys of my new self, not 15 year old me’s obliviousness. And if it just so happened that, whenever I wrote any of them down they sounded more like poetry than anything actually concrete then that was fine, it was kind of nice to have someone make me feel that way, to get me all sappy for once.

Some time later, probably not too long but long enough for me to have filled the crap out of my notepad app, I felt Sophie stirring next to me. I turned to my side and watched her eyes flutter open, unable to hide a bright smile simply at the act of watching her.

“Hey you, sleep okay?” Her sleepy voice was so cute, lacking that undercurrent of husky sultriness she liked to tease me with, it was raw and raspy, laced with soothing relaxation and comfort.

“I did, you?”

“Wonderfully.” She pulled me in tightly, nuzzling my cheek and kissing the top of my head, I couldn’t help elicit a contented sigh. “What are you working on?” Her gaze was fixed on my phone, still open to my notepad app; I blushed.

“Oh that? I dunno what to call it. A journal maybe? I just felt like writing my thoughts down, about me, about how things have been going, about us.” I found it hard to meet her gaze, emotional vulnerability was still a tough ship to pilot.

“Can I read it?” Sophie’s tone was gentle, curious. I nodded quietly, handing over my phone. We sat in a comfortable silence, her eyes flicking over the screen, finger occasionally slipping down to scroll. Every once in a while her gaze would shift to me and she would look any combination of sympathetic, understanding, surprised, flattered, flustered. “Avery, I had no idea you were so mushy. This is, well, it’s really cute.” I had to fight the urge to bury my head into her in embarrassment at her words.

“Can I have it back?” I asked quietly.

“Hmm, I don’t know, I’m really enjoying reading this. It’s like a window into that pretty head of yours.” Her tone grew low and flirty. If she was trying to evoke a response, she certainly achieved that goal as I found words weren’t a thing I could do for the moment. “Can I keep reading? I was just getting to the juicy part, you were talking about yesterday morning.”

“Fine.” I conceded, part of me did kind of want her to keep going, after all. Her face grew increasingly amused as her eyes traced my words.

“Trying awful hard here, aren’t we?” She cleared her throat and in a snooty tone began to narrate: “‘I was shipwrecked, strayed on stormy seas of Sophie, strained, slipping, squeezing sweet, sweat soaked, strips of skin, satiating streams of soft strokes subduing me. Stirring, sensual, spasms stapling me to stained sheets; swaying senseless in a seance of such sublime submission. Swept skyward to supreme summits of her celestial sovereignty, screaming psalms in ascendance.’ Babe, you’re adorable, but this is extra as fuck.”  I couldn’t help share a laugh with her.

“I just, the alliteration started unintentionally at first, then I got carried away.” A smile was blooming wider on my face now, it all was kind of ridiculous, but in the best ways.

“You’re precious.” She kissed the top of my head, a wry smile blooming on her lips. “Pretty, pleasant, palpably packed with promising pleasure-”

“Fuck off.” We both collapsed into a delighted fit of giggles, intermingled with kisses and tender caresses. After another period of silent, yearning gazes Sophie broke the moment with the reminder that responsibility was a thing.

“So, you wanted to try and get as much of your official documentation and such done as possible today, right? That way we can start actually thinking about an itinerary?” How rude, reminding me that eventually I’d have to actually leave bed. I shrugged my shoulders and exhaled an exasperated sigh.

“Fine,” I let the word hang in the air for a while, elongating the ‘i’ and huffing dramatically. Sophie chuckled in amusement and ruffled my hair. I paused for a moment, thinking it over, with Sophie busy and me still wanted a bit of space from my housemates, it seemed like Julie was, once again, my best bet. Hopefully she was actually in the mood to see me again. I sent her a text asking what she was up to today and enjoyed Sophie’s presence for a while longer while waiting for a reply. I was half asleep when the buzz of my phone rudely brought me back into reality.

“Not a lot, did a bit of job hunting this morning, but I don’t really have anything going on in general at the moment. Did you want to chat some more?” Suddenly I felt pretty guilty, without me around Julie didn’t have a lot of friends in the area, most of her cohort had all parted ways after college. With me and Sophie a thing now, and the whole dynamic with everyone back home a bit nebulous and unaddressed she was kind of left friendless. Which meant, obviously, I was going to be her friend, awkward history be damned.

“I kind of wanted your help with something, think you could be my third party testimony for an ID change downtown today? We can chat some more if you want, I can buy lunch too.” I didn’t have to wait long for a reply this time.

“Sure, time?”

“Give me a couple hours? Need to go home and get all the paperwork the doc gave me from my initial diagnosis. I’ll text you the address for the gov office in a min.” After another moment Julie replied with an affirmative, and with that the reminder of my morning was spent clinging to Sophie until the ticking clock forced me out of bed to get ready.

We were standing in her doorway, clutching one another’s hands in an elongated farewell when a slightly worried look crossed Sophie’s face.

“What’s wrong?” I touched her cheek, standing up on my tiptoes to kiss her lightly on the neck.

“I guess I’m still a little worried, you seem to be taking everything I said yesterday really seriously, and I don’t want my own desire to be with you get in the way of that.” Oh, how the turn tables.

“Hey, look, once we got all that uncomfortable stuff out of the way last night things got really, really lovely. We both got to take a little break from the outside world and now we’re going back to doing the things we have to do instead of want to. I think honestly this was pretty therapeutic for both of us.” Sophie didn’t seem to have anything to say in reply, but she gave a little nod and a grateful smile. We shared another kiss, and I headed off toward the bus stop.

The SRD licensing office, which was what I’d taken to calling it over the inscrutable name it officially had, was about as non-descript as possible. In every way what one would expect from a boring, old office space. Dark carpet, fluorescent lighting, some customer facing desks and a sprawling back area of cubicles and probably like, presentations about synergy or some shit. Though admittedly that probably wasn’t a good fit for a low-level government bureaucracy hell pit. The whole place was only operational about five hours a day, four days a week, which made sense, it’s not like there was a clamoring mass of SRD patients. It seemed likely to be more of a low visitor volume, with lots of work per visitor kind of thing.

The two of us stood in the lobby, awkwardly shuffling about and saying little, I could tell she wanted to speak, wanted to check in on me since our last conversation, but the pain we both felt from being around one another got in the way of any levity. Luckily, we didn’t have to linger like that for long before being helped. Nobody was ahead of us, which was good, since that depressing space seemed to only heighten the tension between us. At the very least though, the lady who motioned us over seemed friendly enough.

“Hey there, so who have we got?” Her voice was the perkiest thing in the whole building

“That would be me. I’m Avery Carver, formerly Jay Carver. Here’s my old passport and license, my social security card, my medical paperwork, and also my, uh, my friend Julie as a testimony.” I handed her the paperwork, gesturing to Julie whom she gave a friendly smile. I tried to ignore the little wince which crossed Julie’s face at being referred to as a friend.

“Lovely to meet you Avery, I’m Kathy. You’re a walk-in, I take it? Not like anybody actually needs an appointment ahead of time. We’re rarely at anything close to capacity.”

“Yeah, a walk-in. What do I actually need to do?” I felt a little foolish sitting there, I hadn’t actually done much research other than a brief internet search that told me this sort of thing would be pretty easy to get done.

“I’ll have you sign these and from there I’ll mostly be talking to your friend here.” I nodded, pouring over the documentations, it was a lot of legal mumbo jumbo, repeatedly reminding me that if I were found to be faking my identity I could be punished with up to ten years jail time, all that good stuff. The forms I actually needed were all pretty simple, things like birthdate, former name, address new name.

I filled the forms out fairly quickly, mostly tuning out the barrage of questions Julie was getting, trying not to look uncomfortable when she told Kathy I used to be her boyfriend. The idea of being referred to as boy-anything left a sort of uneasy feeling in my stomach, but I couldn’t blame her for being as specific as possible. What was worse was the undercut of numbness with which she set it, and the painful reminder that I was now her ex.

The two went over some old photos of Julie and I, as well as a few candid photos Julie had taken of me unawares during the whole process, and Kathy grilled her on our history to verify the legitimacy of her claims. That must have sucked. I had no desire to relive those old memories and it was doubtful Julie did either. The fact that she had to just made me feel worse. When she was finally satisfied. Julie was instructed to sign her own set of forms warning her of the same things about not doing a fraud.

Before I knew it, I’d had my picture taken and was given a set of papers to take to the courthouse next door with the assurance that once things were squared away with the judge they’d be doing the rest for me and my new documents would be expressed mailed to me within the week. The courthouse was a breeze. We made it just in time to not miss the walk-in service cutoff, and before I knew it I had an official piece of paper with my name on it that told the world that’s exactly who I was. We descended the stairs, Julie and I finding a spot to sit, which I kind of needed since I was shaking a little.

“You okay, Avery?” She lay a hand on my leg lightly, looking a little concerned. I nodded vigorously.

“Yeah, yeah I am I just, wow. I didn’t realize how nice it would be to see my name like this. And now I’m thinking about how soon enough I’ll have a driver's license and a passport and all that with ‘Fs’ on them and my name and my picture and, damn. I’m just happy.” I brought my head down to rest on her shoulder, then tensed a little at the gesture of intimacy. “Oh, sorry I didn’t mean,” I trailed off, straightening my posture and scooting away slightly.

“Don’t apologize. It’s okay, look, this is hard. Hard for me, hard for you, but it really is nice to see you happy.” We let the moment breathe, I could understand where she was coming from, but she still deserved better than that.

“Sure, I’m happy to have this done, happy to be who I am, but what about you? All the stuff I just put you through, it couldn’t have been easy. It was hard enough for me just hearing the stuff you were talking about, you had to actually talk about it.” I was trying hard to not spiral, since I was fairly certain that would just make Julie feel worse, but fuck, I was not as ready as I thought I was to see her again.

“It sucked, it really sucked yeah. But you would have done the same for me.” That seemed to settle the matter on her end. “Just cause all that hurt happened doesn’t mean we don’t care about each other.”

“I hope you’re right. And thanks,  for coming with today, for sticking around through that whole process. I don’t think I ever actually told you how grateful I am for all you’ve done, have I?” She blushed, and pulled me in for an awkward hug.

“There’s no need to thank me, but I’ll take it. I’m glad to carve out a role in all this, you know, process or whatever that leads to you finding happiness. I know it will be tough, but I don’t want the breakup to define us, I’d like to think we were much more than just a couple. I know it’ll take time for the hurt to go away, but I don’t want you to head out into the world on a sour note with me.” She laced her fingers with mine and it was then that some jackass passerby decided to try and ruin our moment. He took a look at us, wrinkled his nose in disgust and sealed his fate.

“Fucking ugly dykes.” He murmured just loudly enough for us to hear. I wasn’t about to let him talk to Julie that way, and Julie seemed to have the same idea as we simultaneously sprung from the bench and said some things that definitely bare not repeating. He scurried off in surprise. The look on his face was absolutely priceless, and we shared a glance before breaking out into fits of laughter, the kind of laughter that reminded me of how we became friends in the first place before all that romance happened. It was also nice to see I still had my protective streak, despite my size. In the moments between gasping breaths I managed to actually get a word across to her.

“So, do you feel like lunch, or would you rather leave it at that?” Julie needed a moment before she could manage a reply, both from contemplation and the fact that she still had  most of her breath to catch.

“Yeah, yeah that sounds like it could be okay.” She took a gasping breath. “Also, I was thinking, you could probably use a lot more clothes. You have what, three outfits? You’re gonna be going on vacation, girl. Wanna get you some new threads?”

““Sure, sounds like fun.” We set off toward Westlake, between the commercial district there and the light rail access there would be no shortage of options.

“By the way, now that you’ve got this all out of the way when are you two lovebirds planning on setting off?” There was some emotion in Julie’s voice I couldn’t quite detect, though apprehension seemed to best fit the bill.

“Probably as soon as possible to be honest. My documents are coming soon, we’ll probably book some last-minute flight as soon as we have them in hand, then it’ll be off for, well, I dunno how long. However long it needs to be.” Julie had a quiet sullenness to her after hearing that, and I sure as hell wasn’t going to let her stew in it like Jay would have, “Something on your mind?”

“Yeah, I dunno I was just thinking, I’m kind of in your shoes from a year ago. I mean it’s definitely not the same. There are some pretty important distinctions, but you’re gonna go off into the wide world for an unknown amount of time and I’ll just be here. I’ll miss you.” It made sense, I already knew she didn’t have too many people to rely on. A breakup alone was bad enough, but without me she didn’t have much of anyone.

“This might sound kind of crazy, but, wanna come with?” That was probably something I should have run by Sophie first, but I wasn’t about to leave Julie high and dry. She laughed a little, and shook her head.

“No, I don’t think so. I’ve had my fill of travel for the time being. And, to be honest, being around you constantly like that, especially you and Sophie sounds pretty painful. Just, stay in touch okay? And don’t worry too much about me; I was always better than you at making new friends anyway. Besides, it’s not like I’m not friends with Elle and them. Promise you’ll come say hi again before you head off though?” I had to admit she was definitely taking it all better than I had in her shoes, and she was probably right. She was stronger than I had been. Probably still stronger than me even after all that growth I’d had.

“I will, I promise.”

“Good, then let’s get you some clothes that actually fit. You’re an embarrassment to be seen with, honestly.”