Under My Skin

by A. E. Dooland

  “I'm in the middle of doing some graphics for Pink and I just ducked out to grab some dinner,” I stammered, conveniently neglecting to explain why I looked like this specifically, “and there's a little pizza place up further...”

  She groaned. “You were going to buy pizza?” When I nodded, she shook her head at herself, looking a bit disappointed. “Hah, I should have known it was too good to be true. You aren't here to hang out with me,” she said. “Well, you're going to anyway. By some fantastic coincidence, this place has table service open until one. You can just keep me company until the girls arrive later.” She gestured for me to follow her.

  I stayed put. When she raised her eyebrows at me, I held my arms out to indicate what I was wearing. “Sarah, I can't go in like this.”

  She didn't sound too concerned. “Uh, it's a pub? Pubs don't have dress codes. As long as you're wearing actual clothes, no one's going to throw you out.”

  I opened my mouth and took a breath, but I ended up just releasing it. I didn't want anyone from work to see me like this. I didn't want any possible way anyone in marketing or, most importantly, any possible way Henry could find out about this. Sarah... well, Sarah, herself, she was maybe okay. She hadn't told anyone about Bree, after all. But she was still from work, and I worried about mixing her in with this stuff.

  When I didn't say anything, her frown deepened. She was onto me. “The dress code isn't what you meant, is it?” I shook my head. She pressed her bright red lips together for a second, looking intently at me. It seemed like she was having trouble figuring out what she wanted to say, too. Finally she took a tentative step towards me. “Can I just do something for a second? It won't hurt.”

  I didn't know what to expect, but I didn't think she'd do anything inappropriate. She wasn't Bree. “Okay...” I said hesitantly.

  She glanced over her shoulder toward the pub to make sure no one was watching us, and then stepped in closer to me. Taking the hem of my hoodie, she pulled it gently downward. The fabric pulled flat against my body and it was very, very clear I'd done something to my breasts. There was no point in pushing her away now, she’d seen what was going on. I braced myself to be really ashamed by it; I was usually hugely uncomfortable with anything to do with them. It didn't happen this time, though. I mean, I was worried about what she was going to think, but I didn't feel self-conscious about my lack of chest. With the thick material the hoodie was made out of, the bandages weren’t visible, either. It looked like there had been nothing there to begin with.

  Her eyes widened and she released my jumper. “Wow,” she said as she stood back with her jaw open for a second. She closed it quickly, though. “Wow. Okay.”

  She didn't ask, but I knew what her question was. “It’s complicated.”

  Her eyes were still wide open. “Yeah, apparently,” she said, considering what she'd just seen.

  I looked down at the ground and nodded. Fuck. Well, she knew now. At least now she'd understand why I wasn't going to come inside with her. “Yeah, so,” I said, “I'm going to go and get that pizza I was after.”

  She snapped out of her surprise and stepped in front of me when I went to leave. “No you're fucking not,” she said. It was jarring to hear her swear; she didn't do it that often. “You're not getting away this time, not now.” I opened my mouth to contradict her, and she interrupted me. “I don't care what you're going to say, your argument is void. It's pitch black in there and I promise you no one will recognise you, seriously. I almost didn't, and I wouldn’t have if you'd never shown me that painting you did of yourself.”

  “Sarah, I—”

  “Nope,” she said shortly, leaning on one hip and crossing her bare arms. “I have bought you lunch almost every day, and every day for the past two weeks I've been doing all that menial crap for you. Now, I may not be as young and cute and blonde as that little friend you've got on the side, but if she can refuse to take no for an answer from you, I certainly deserve to do the same.” I just stood there gaping at her as she added, “You said she'd carry you out of work if she wasn't so small? Well, I'm bigger, and I swear to god I'll carry you in there myself if you try to keep making excuses. It's dark in there, Min, and you cannot just leave me hanging now after the whole ‘it’s complicated’ thing.”

  There... wasn't much I could say to that. She was clearly not going to let me get away, and she was right, anyway. She had been doing a lot of stuff for me, and I had run out on her last time we'd eaten. Fuck. Fuck! Now I felt bad, too. She'd been really great the last few weeks.

  I looked past her at the pub. There was a gauntlet of people along the walls to get into it, though. “Are you sure no one will recognise me?”

  She snorted. “Uh, yeah. You look like a—” she winced, “well...”

  I looked back down at her. “A guy? You can say it, it's okay.”

  She sighed with relief. “Yeah, even with the whole,” she indicated my chest with a wave of her hand, “I wasn't sure if you'd be insulted if I said that. But seriously, Min, it's kind of creepy how my boss now looks like an 18 year old boy.” Her eyes were wide again. “Like, really creepy. Although you and that schoolgirl kind of makes more sense, now.”

  I was not following that topic anywhere. “My ponytail doesn't give me away?”

  She considered it for a moment. “It actually just looks like a really bad fashion decision,” she said, leaning around me to get another look at it. “Like you're some kid who's trying really hard to be cool and mature.”

  “Great,” I said flatly. “Because I was worried people weren't going to be able to judge me, after all.”

  That made her laugh. “I think you've just about run out of excuses. Let's eat, I'm basically dying of a combination of starvation and curiosity.” she said, and then took a few steps towards the pub. I didn't move. “What now?” she asked.

  “Didn't you offer to carry me in, before?” I said in a complete deadpan. “Because I'm not going to walk if I don't really have to.”

  She groaned, waiting for me as I caught up to her anyway and we continued to the pub. “I think I've done enough for you this week,” she said, looking sideways up at me. “Go on. Get in there and let's get dinner.”

  No one paid any attention to us as we past them. Sarah got a couple of second glances because she looked good, but otherwise we could have been any two people off the street walking into the pub.

  When we'd stepped inside, I quickly realised Sarah wasn't kidding about the place being dark. It was nightclub dark, but there weren't any laser lights to break it up. Several groups of people were sitting in little booths that lined the walls, laughing, chatting and drinking, but whether or not they were Frost employees, I had no idea. That was because, unless we got right up close to people, there wasn't enough light to see the details of their faces at all.

  Sarah led me over to a corner booth that had a 'Reserved' placard on it. She brushed it aside, explaining, “The guy who owns this place always does that for us. We've been coming here for like seven years.”

  No sooner had she said that and we’d sat down, a greasy middle-aged guy leant over the bar. “Sarah!” he called halfway across the floor, instead of actually coming over to our table. There was no music yet, but because there were so many people inside it was still difficult to hear him. “You want food?”

  It was an interesting way of taking our order, that was for sure. “Some table service…” I said to Sarah with a smirk, and she kicked me underneath it.

  “Potato wedges!” she yelled back. “A huge bowl with lots of sour cream and at least something resembling a salad.” She looked at me, and I shrugged. I was almost too nervous to feel like food anymore. Turning back to the guy, she shouted, “Times two. And a bottle of something bubbly.”

  He gave us the thumbs up, and then disappeared behind the bar into what I presume was a kitchen, throwing a passing glance at a television mounted in the corner of the room. There was some sort of sports game playing on it.

  “
Min,” Sarah said to get my attention. I looked back at her, and she was leaning forward across the table, watching me intently. When I didn't say anything, she prompted. “Come on, I'm dying here. This is the part where you tell me what's going on with you. Is this the 'personal thing' you were talking about the other day?”

  “It used to be a personal thing,” I said, and then glanced around us. And I'd kind of like to keep it that way, I thought. “What time did you say your friends were coming again?”

  “Not for ages,” she said dismissively. “Their time management skills leave a lot to be desired. So, this... thing, are you...” She stopped and made a face. “Sorry if I screw up, I don't know any of the words for this stuff. So, the point is to look like a guy, right?” I nodded, and she leant back in the booth, staring at me. “Is this just like some secret hobby, or...?”

  If only. “Hah. I wish it was that simple.” She had her eyes fixed on me with an intensity which said 'elaborate', so I did. “I mean, it's secret in that I don't want anyone to know. I wish it didn't have to be, but it does.”

  “What needs to be though? What is 'this' and 'it'? I won't tell anyone.”

  Before I even considered explaining I spent a few seconds checking around us again to make absolutely certain no one could hear. It took me several more to gather enough strength to actually say exactly what was going on for me in so many words. “I don't feel comfortable as a girl.”

  I don't know if Sarah had expected me to be so succinct, or if she just hadn't expected that to be the issue or what, but she looked really stunned. She sat back in the booth, staring at me. She didn't say anything straight away, either. “This is such a trip out,” she said eventually. “You're so incredibly girly at work, even more girly than I am. You're always immaculately dressed, with pearls and earrings and stockings and even though you're six-foot-a-thousand, you still always wear really nice heels...”

  I sighed deeply, and shrugged. “It takes me 20 minutes to get into my dress every morning. I hate it.”

  She spent a few seconds letting that settle. “Fuck,” she said, swearing again. “So, you think you'd be better off as a guy, then?

  I shrugged. “I don't know. I don't really know what's going on, to be honest. I just know what feels right and what doesn’t.” I paused. “You're only the second person who knows.”

  She still looked spun out. “Henry?” I shook my head. “Bree?” When I nodded, she needed to think about what that meant, too. “Fuck, Min... I mean, I kind of wondered about that painting, but I had no idea it would be something like this.”

  “That's kind of the way I'd prefer it, to be honest,” I said. “I don't want this to get around at Frost.”

  She made a noise. “Yeah, you really don't,” she said, and then looked more troubled the more she thought about it. “Wow, yeah, you really don't. Can you imagine what—Ah, here we go...” She was looking across at the bar and getting distracted by approaching food.

  The greasy man walked out from behind it with a tray in one hand and a bottle of wine in the other. He plonked it all down on the table in front of us. “Bon Appetit,” he said in a really broad Australian accent, and then instead of pouring the wine or laying the food out nicely in front of us, he swaggered back behind the bar, sat on a barstool and stared upwards at the game on TV.

  “Classy place,” I commented as I tried to force myself to eat a potato wedge.

  Sarah went straight for the wine, filling my glass to the brim and then pouring one for herself. “Eh, he always lets me eat for free because I drunkenly kissed him on his birthday like five years ago. Actual guests get reasonable service, but me and my friends are just part of the furniture so he's stopped bothering.”

  “So much for buying you dinner,” I said with a tense smile as I accepted my wine glass from her. “I'll just have to pick up the bar tab, instead.”

  She pointed a potato wedge at me. “You'll be sorry you said that.”

  “Didn't you say you were a lightweight? I think I'm getting a great deal, here. Free food and all I need to do is get you trashed on a couple of glasses of sparkling.”

  She indulgently poured her sour cream all over her wedges. “A couple? I'll be on the floor after one.”

  “Even better. I'll help you out of here looking like I scored the hottest girl in the place.” She stared at me for a second, and I faltered, remember what we'd been talking about. “Uh, I didn't mean—”

  She broke into a laugh. “It's okay. I was just messing with you. But since I’m playing a long game of truth with you: I believe we were up to 'Bree'.”

  “We were?” I cringed a little. “What about her?”

  “Come on, she's basically a cut and paste job from one of those 'Bid-on-my-virginity-dot-com' sites, school uniform and all. She's got the puppies out all over her Facebook page, and she was about ready to jump you in the street when I met her. Tell me with a completely straight face that you've never slept with her.”

  I opened my mouth to say exactly that, and then remembered waking up next to her earlier in the week. Technically, that was sleeping right?

  I paused for too long apparently. “I knew it!” Sarah announced, holding her hands up in the air. “I totally knew it! Oh my god, Min, you are unbelievable!”

  I put my face in my hands for a second. “It's not what you think, and she is not like that,” I said. “She does show skin, sure, but she's just so sweet, she's not like that!” I realised how all of that sounded, and so just to make it perfectly clear to Sarah, I looked up at her from my hands and said, “I've slept beside her. Not with her. Because she's a 'she' and we're just friends and I have a boyfriend.”

  Sarah stopped cheering, but she still looked pretty smug. She gestured at my torso. “Yeah, but you look like a 'he' and you feel like you might be a 'he' so I'm actually not sure what's more gay: you sleeping with Bree or you sleeping with Henry.”

  “Sarah, I'm straight,” I said, pretending to cry into my hands.

  “Again,” she said, making a 'tada' motion at me and how I looked. “You being in the situation that you are, what does that even mean?” She reached across the table and gave me a solid pat on the shoulder. “Sorry to give you the third degree but your mysterious behaviour over the past few weeks has been driving me absolutely crazy. Here, drink your wine.” She pushed the glass towards me again. “It's going to be okay, I promise.”

  I obediently drank deeply from it. “Put that in a contract so I can sue you if you don't deliver,” I told her, giving up.

  She sat back against the padded spine of the booth, eating another few wedges and washing them down with more wine as she watched me thoughtfully.

  After she'd finished them, she said, “You know, when I thought you might be fun to drink with, I just had this sort of vague idea that you might have a wild streak. Understatement of the year: at the rate we're going you might as well tell me you're a dominatrix or a wizard or a spy or something. I suddenly feel like I don't know the first thing about you.”

  I laughed darkly. “Yeah, well, join the club.”

  “Count me in,” she said, and then shrugged, holding her glass up in the air as if she was making a toast at a wedding. “Whatever, Min, I couldn’t care less what you end up as. Working at Frost is hell on earth most of the time, especially with the bastards in marketing. But these past two weeks haven't been like that at all. It’s been great. Working with you is stacks of fun. I don't even care what project I'm on: I wouldn't want to work with anyone else but you.”

  My chest clenched; it felt so good to hear that. Just so good, and I think I might have teared up a little if the wine hadn’t been starting to get to me. Sarah was great about this stuff, why hadn't I just told her in the first place? “Thank you,” I said, meaning it. “And I do have something to tell you.”

  She put her glass down, all serious again. “You do?”

  I nodded, looking with exaggerated drama at my wedges, and then up at her. “Sarah, I'm a wizard.”

&
nbsp; She threw a wedge at me, and, predictably, she missed. “You're a dag,” she said as we kept eating, “that's what you are.”

  I was comfortable around her; too comfortable, in fact. The bottle that her owner friend had got us was sparkling wine, and while I was perfectly able to hold normal wine, sparkling just went straight to my head. I'd finished my third big glass of it when Sarah whistled at the owner and got us another one.

  “We've got to stop,” I said as she filled my wine glass to the brim for the fourth time with the second bottle. “I'm never going to get any work done. I need to get home at some point and get through the last couple of hundred images.” I wasn't slurring yet, but I wasn't too far away from it.

  Sarah took a big swig from the bottle and then poured her own glass full. “Yeah, sounds fascinating,” she said sarcastically. “Or you could stay here with me and get completely wasted. They clear the floor and play bad music after one. I'm a terrible dancer, it will be really entertaining.”

  I laughed once, and had been about to inform her that I was also a top contender for the World's Worst Dancer title, when someone said something behind me. It took me a few seconds to realise it was to us, and by that time there were two gorgeous women looming over the booth. As if that wasn’t intimidating enough just in itself, it reminded me of high school when some of the girls would surround me after class. If I hadn't been so very drunk at that moment, I think I might have actually tried to get away.

  “Hey, Sarah, don't you already have a boyfriend?” one of them asked her light-heartedly, and then gave her a bit of a clumsy shove. We weren't the only ones who were drunk, apparently. I couldn't tell if the girl was being nasty or not—did she actually think I was a guy, or was she having a go at me?

  Sarah looked at me with alarm, and then glanced at the screen of her phone. “Crap!” she said. “What time is it? I completely forgot you guys were coming!” She held a hand out towards me. “It’s okay, though, they’re totally cool…”