by Tia Fielding
It was a slow process. Lettie swore under her breath more than once as she tried to manipulate the twists of his hair into the braid, and they got away from her. She backtracked a few times, her fingers pressing into Wyatt’s scalp as she worked, her short blunt nails scratching him pleasantly. He felt like one of her dogs, melting under her scritches.
“Your hair is nicer than mine,” she grumbled.
“That’s because I know what conditioner is.”
“I’m rolling my eyes at you,” she said.
He smiled. “Yeah, I figured.”
He relaxed into her touch. Lettie didn’t usually like touching or being touched, so Wyatt accepted it like the gift it was. Lettie worked slowly, and Wyatt let his eyes slide closed. He found his thoughts drifting back to Izzy, like they always did ever since Izzy had swaggered into his life, and wondered what his touch would feel like. Would his fingers be calloused yet from working in the greenhouses? Would he be rough? Or would he be surprisingly gentle? There was room for both in Wyatt’s fantasies.
“Done!” Lettie announced at last, scooting back.
Wyatt turned the camera on her phone on, and inspected the braid. It was a little uneven, but that hardly mattered. His hair fell from it like waves. “Not bad, Lettie!”
She poked at his scalp. “I’m gonna need to practice more on you before I try on me again.”
“Okay,” Wyatt agreed, changing the angle of the phone to get a better look at the side of his head.
He looked good. He felt good.
He handed Lettie her phone back at last.
He felt good, as long as he didn’t think about it too deeply.
* * * *
Justin was still working, and Dad was out meeting some guy who could source him local venison, and Lettie was upstairs doing her homework with her headphones on when the doorbell rang. Wyatt wiped his hands on his apron and hummed to himself as he went to answer the front door. He was working on a practice batch of cupcakes for Jimmy and Jenna—not that he didn’t think he could make good cupcakes, but he wanted to send some home with Jimmy tomorrow and make sure they were definitely the ones Jenna had liked. Wyatt had made a lot of cupcakes for Justin’s workers over time, and the ones with ‘like the cream stuff in the middle’ didn’t really narrow it down a whole lot. He thought he knew the ones Jimmy meant, but he wanted to be sure. Also, it was an excuse to make cupcakes.
He pulled the front door open to find Izzy standing there.
“Hey,” Wyatt said, and then froze as Izzy’s gaze lingered on his hair.
Shit. He’d forgotten about his hair.
“You look like a girl,” Izzy blurted out.
Wyatt froze.
Izzy stared at him intently, his eyes dark and unreadable. “Pretty like a girl,” he said at last.
Somehow that was more ominous than anything else he could have said, because Wyatt didn’t know what he meant. Was pretty like a girl a good thing, or wasn’t it?
“I…” he said, his heart racing and his tongue thick and clumsy with nerves. “I was—Lettie. She was practicing. On me.” He swallowed. “For her hair.”
Izzy’s stare was no less intent.
“What are you doing here?” Wyatt managed.
“I came to say thanks,” Izzy said, his brows tugging together. “To your dad, for feeding me last night.”
“He’s not here,” Wyatt said. He was still clutching the doorknob, and it was slippery under his damp palm. Wyatt’s throat felt as dry as a gravel pit, but the rest of him was sweating like crazy.
Izzy took a step forward. His gaze slid up and down Wyatt again and then he reached out and touched Wyatt’s hair. He held a tress of it between his thumb and forefinger, and rubbed it gently to separate the strands. He was standing so close, and Wyatt felt like a prey animal trapped under the gaze of a predator. Wyatt’s mouth was dry too. He licked his lips quickly, and froze again when Izzy’s gaze was drawn to his mouth. Hardly daring to believe what was happening—what was happening though?—Wyatt lifted his gaze to meet Izzy’s.
And suddenly Izzy’s mouth was on his, and the kiss was shocking, intense, and Wyatt’s knees almost buckled when he felt Izzy’s tongue touch his. One of Izzy’s hands tangled in his hair, and the other one slid down his side and rested on his hip. Izzy pulled him tightly against him, and Wyatt went willingly. Izzy’s hand found its way under his shirt. His fingers were as hot as brands on the skin of his waist, and Wyatt shuddered. He was hard and aching in his jeans already.
And then as quickly as the kiss had begun it was over, and Izzy was pushing him back. His eyes were wide now and his mouth, which had felt so good against Wyatt’s, so full and soft when they’d been kissing, was pressed into a thin, harsh line that turned down at the edges.
“Shit,” Izzy said, his voice gruff. His gaze dropped to Wyatt’s crotch. “Thought for a second you…” He trailed off.
Wyatt’s face burned as he realized. Izzy had thought Wyatt was pretty like a girl, and kissed him because of it, and then Wyatt’s erection had fucked the illusion up for him.
He opened his mouth to say something, and the words that spilled out of him were wrong. So wrong. “I could be,” he said, his voice cracking. “A girl. I might be. Sometimes.”
Izzy stared at him like he’d sprouted a second head. “The fuck are you talking about?”
“Nothing,” Wyatt said. His eyes stung with tears, and his stomach lurched. He wanted to be sick. “Nothing.”
Izzy stared at him a moment longer. “Sorry,” he said at last, and turned and left.
Wyatt closed the door behind him, and then sagged against it and sobbed.
* * * *
Wyatt sat on the shower floor, untwisting the waterfall braid roughly, and tugging his hair straight again. He leaned his head forward, half wishing the water would run cold so he’d have more of a reason to be miserable. He hated himself. He hated this body that didn’t fit, at least not today. His chest was too flat, his hips were too straight, and there was a dick between his legs, and it was wrong. It was all wrong. Wyatt closed his eyes so he didn’t have to look at himself. Wyatt didn’t want this body, and neither did Izzy. Neither would anyone, once they realized how fucked up the brain inside it was.
Because now, on a not-boy day, this body didn’t fit. But maybe it would tomorrow, or the next day, and Wyatt would happily be a boy until the whole shitty cycle started again. Wyatt fucking Abbot. Couldn’t make a decision to save his life, couldn’t pick a career, couldn’t even settle on a fucking gender.
He could be a girl, he’d said to Izzy. He might be a girl.
Why the hell would he even say something like that? He’d never even said that to himself. He’d made concessions. He called them not-boy days. He didn’t call them girl days, because that was too big a step. Too big a step to come back from, maybe, and he’d gone and blurted it out to Izzy like he was talking about the fucking weather.
Why would he do that?
Wyatt hugged his torso and cried, letting the noise of the shower carry the sounds away.
* * * *
Wyatt curled up in bed and tried to forget today had happened. He heard his door open and squeezed his eyes shut. A moment later his mattress dipped, and a warm hand pressed against his forehead.
“You feeling okay, kiddo?” Dad asked gently. “Justin said you had a headache. I brought you a juice and some Tylenol.”
“I just want to sleep it off,” Wyatt mumbled, keeping his back turned to Dad.
“They’re on your nightstand if you need them.” Dad rubbed his back gently, like he’d done for Wyatt for years now whenever he got sick. “Okay?”
“Okay,” Wyatt mumbled. He kept his eyes closed as Dad leaned over and kissed his temple, the hair of his beard tickling.
“Okay,” Dad echoed softly. “Love you, Wy.”
“Love you too,” Wyatt whispered.
He waited until he heard his door snick shut before he started to cry again.
Chapter
8
What the actual fuck? Izzy walked back toward the greenhouses, feeling discombobulated as fuck. Fuck!
He just kissed a guy. A pretty as hell, sort of feminine looking, but definitely a guy. Or…not? Wyatt had said he was sometimes a girl? What the fuck?
Because it was lunch break and he’d had his lasagna quickly and had had some time, he’d thought to go to the house to be polite. Instead he’d gone there and practically mauled Del’s teenage son and would’ve probably not stopped until he felt the hard dick against his own, equally hard one.
What the fuck?
Izzy wiped his mouth, then licked his lips again, the sweet taste of whatever Wyatt had been baking—he’d had some flour on his shirt—lingering behind.
That hair and eyeliner and just…all of Wyatt had been different today. He’d been—not a boy.
Izzy stopped so fast that he almost stumbled. He stood there without seeing anything and rewound what Wyatt had said.
“I could be. A girl. I might be. Sometimes.”
Which meant that while Wyatt was a guy, he wasn’t always one. Today Wyatt hadn’t been a guy, he’d been a girl. Or as close to a one that he could probably be.
Izzy’s attention was pulled to the dirt road in the distance as it started to billow with dust when a delivery truck drove toward the greenhouses.
Okay, okay. He had work to do. But then he would sit down and figure this out, because the expression on Wyatt’s face, the heartbreaking hope of someone seeing him had turned into shame and even fear and…no, Izzy was a lot of things, but he would never…
He’d hated the scoffing and sneers from Morales when he’d fixed the car. The slurs and the vitriol aimed at Wyatt’s family because of who they were. The huff when Izzy had said he liked to work there and the Abbots were nice.
No, he had to make sure Morales would never set foot on this property again. The Abbots deserved more than that. If Izzy’s car broke down again, he’d fucking hitchhike back home instead of having anyone potentially dangerous anywhere near Wyatt.
* * * *
“Izzy! Can you give me a hand?” Patty, the hippie lady, called when she spotted him crossing the parking lot.
“Yeah, sure, what’s up?” He jogged last of the distance to her tiny old car.
“I just got back from the post office and we’ve got bees!” She held up a cardboard box with tiny holes in the sides and smiled victoriously.
“Bees?”
“Yes! To pollinate the rest of the tomato plants! We don’t have to do them by hand anymore, not with these guys bumbling in!” She looked at him more seriously then. “You’re not allergic, are you?”
“Not that I know of,” Izzy said, shrugging. “I don’t generally go searching for things that might sting me, though.”
“Well, if you come with me and open the doors so I can get these guys to the right greenhouse, they’ll stay happier. A pissed off bumble bee is no joke!” Her tone was still cheerful, like she was getting a real kick out of this.
It was infectious, and for the time being, Izzy forgot about Wyatt and concentrated on getting Patty and her bees to their correct destination.
* * * *
Izzy was going through the cucumber plants and picking out dead leaves and other weird stuff, when the manual labor let his brain loose again.
He’d been an asshole to Wyatt who had enough problems as it was. Izzy had sent mixed signals like, whoa, and that was inexcusable. As he tried to wrap his mind around the whole gender thing, he suddenly remembered there having been a guy like that in prison for a while.
Izzy hadn’t talked with him, but his cellmate at the time had actually had a few conversations with the guy and he’d tried to explain Izzy what they’d talked about.
Apparently there were more than two genders out there, for starters. Well, Izzy also had vague memories about that being discussed in high school when it came to the Native American tribes or something like that. Those people had more than, what was the word again?
Izzy frowned. He concentrated on combing through all the stuff he heard on the TV and online since he’d gotten out. He must’ve looked grumpy as fuck, because Sam, who walked past him actually stopped.
“Everything okay?”
“Yes,” Izzy grunted. Then sighed. “No, sorry. I fucking hate the fact that I missed so much while being inside.”
“Oh?” Sam, who worked for Justin because he actually hadn’t gotten any jobs anywhere after his second college degree—yeah, go figure that—tilted his head curiously. “Anything specific on your mind?”
“What’s that word, when you’re not like a man or a woman? That new word they use everywhere?” Izzy tugged off a half-wilted leaf and frowned at it.
“Non-binary?”
“Yes! Thank you!” Izzy felt that rush of relief for now getting the annoyance off his mind. “I fucking swear I lost like fifteen years instead of four.”
“Well, times are changing much faster these days. People have more knowledge and there’s the internet and stuff. A lot of people find themselves later in life, too. I have an aunt in San Francisco who thought she was straight until she fell in love with this woman who moved next door. My aunt was over fifty at the time.”
Izzy turned to look at Sam. “What? Really?” At Sam’s smile and nod, Izzy said, “Huh. I know gay guys and I guess lesbians too who have been in straight relationships because they’re like hiding and stuff, but that’s news to me.”
“My aunt also knows this dude who was raised as a girl until he transitioned in his sixties. All I’m saying is that times are a changin’, my friend.” Sam chuckled, slapped Izzy’s shoulder, and moved on to whatever he’d been going to do next.
For the next hour or so, Izzy continued his task, his mental jukebox playing him some Bob Dylan and his brain whirring with thoughts on how to approach this thing.
He had to be back home in time for Morales to take another look at the car, so he couldn’t go see Wyatt after work. It felt horrible, leaving things like they were, but at least it also gave him enough time to go online for some research.
Insurance fraud guy, Thomas, was happy to loan him his laptop because “the quality of food in this house has gone up since you started to work at Abbot’s, Izzy.” That was one of the things Izzy hadn’t anticipated; the fact that bringing produce home meant that his housemates might feel more positively about his presence, not that he had any problems with them really.
Still, he used a couple of hours scouring the internet on gender identity and sexuality and stuff, and learned that gender, sex, and sexuality were three separate things.
The next day, as soon as his lunch break started, he headed toward the Abbot house.
On his way, he came across Lettie and her pack who were doing some sort of obedience training thing in an open area close to the yard.
“Hey, Lettie, doggos.” He nodded politely to them, but didn’t engage the dogs. They were working, after all.
“Hey, Izzy.” Lettie smiled but didn’t take her gaze off the German shepherd that was wiggling a little bit at the sight of him.
“Do you happen to know where I might find your brother?” Izzy asked, hoping that he sounded casual about it.
“Yeah, last time I saw him he was at Dad’s work kitchen. Dad’s not home so he’s borrowing it for something.”
“Okay, thanks!”
He walked toward and around the house, where he’d been shown the professional kitchen Del shot his videos in. The night of the family dinner had ended in Justin showing him around the house and property, and Izzy loved it all. It wasn’t his style, homey as it was, or it wasn’t what he’d chosen for himself if he’d been rich, anyway.
He’d want a Spanish style house, something smaller with terracotta tiles and stuff. Those were so pretty to him for some reason.
Izzy opened the house to the studio building quietly, hoping that Wyatt was alone. He heard some sounds from the kitchen area and walked carefully to peer through the
half-open door.
Wyatt’s hair was in the usual bun again. There was no eyeliner this time, and he was wearing a simple plain T-shirt under his utilitarian dark gray apron. He looked as though he were concentrating, but the way he moved wasn’t fluid, which Izzy would’ve normally expected.
He was piping a cake, carefully moving his hands and frowning when the frosting went wrong in a way Izzy couldn’t see from this distance.
“Wyatt, can we talk?” he asked quietly when he was sure he wouldn’t interrupt Wyatt’s work too badly.
Wyatt jumped and the bag of frosting fell onto the island right next to the cake. Izzy winced. At least it didn’t hit the cake, though.
“Why?” Wyatt asked, the one word sounding small somehow.
“Because I was horrible to you yesterday, and I want to make things right, okay?” Izzy walked closer slowly, as if not to startle Wyatt any more. “Please? Not for my sake, but so you’ll know I’m not—” He stopped to lick his lips, trying to find the words. “I’m not asking you to give me rope here, that’s not your job, but I wanted you to know that I’ve been in prison for four years. I went there straight and I came out of there the same way. I just don’t know all the things I should, had I been out that whole time.”
Wyatt still didn’t look at him, but he was clearly listening. His hands clutched the countertop behind him, and Izzy slowly made his way around the island as he continued to speak.
“I did some research, actually. I’ve heard the word ‘non-binary’ since I got out. I just…I guess it was a knee jerk reaction to be an asshole. I didn’t actually think you were a girl.”
Wyatt shrunk a little, like he had at the dinner table.
“But I get that on some days you can feel like you are, and that’s okay. It’s not for anyone to say who you can and can’t be.” Izzy stopped in front of Wyatt, who seemed to be mulling over his words. “Can you look at me?”
He gave Wyatt time, but when he didn’t seem to be able to do it himself, Izzy reached his hand ever so slowly and gently placed two fingers under Wyatt’s chin. Then he coaxed his head up enough to be able to peer into Wyatt’s gorgeous eyes.
