by Alyson Belle
Contents
Dedication
Excerpt
Chapter 1
Chapter 2
Chapter 3
Chapter 4
Chapter 5
Chapter 6
Thanks for Reading
Preview
About the Author
BECOMING HERS
by
Alyson Belle
Copyright © 2018 Alyson Belle
All rights reserved. This book or any portion thereof may not be reproduced or used in any manner whatsoever without the express written permission of the publisher except for the use of brief quotations in a book review.
All characters in this book are over the age of 18 (18+ only). All characters, locations, and situations are entirely fictional representations and any resemblance to real world scenarios are entirely coincidental.
You can see more of Alyson Belle’s work, get in touch, and follow her blog on AlysonBelle.com.
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An excerpt from Becoming Hers:
I didn’t know what to say, so I just clinked my glass with hers and downed my drink in a few gulps, hoping the liquid courage would help me get through this crazy, bizarre night. Lyla followed suit and then her hand slid into mine once again.
It felt right, pressed there against my palm, our fingers intertwining, and my blood thrummed in my veins. I didn’t think I had ever met a more beautiful woman than Lyla.
“How about we hit the floor?” she asked suddenly.
“Sounds good to me.”
I let her pull me out there just as a faster paced song came on. It felt strange to move my new body, since it was so much more… flexible. I’d never been much of a dancer, always feeling sort of awkward on the dance floor, but it seemed so much easier in this body than it ever had when I had been a man. I found myself making more winding, fluid moves instead of my normal jerky side-stepping in time with the beat. It took about half the song for me to get my bearings, but then Lyla wrapped her arms around my waist and pressed her body into mine, moving along with the music.
Oh.
Oh.
I’d danced with Lyla before, but this time it was different. It felt like I’d stuck a fork into an electrical socket, and my heart leapt into my throat. I tried my best to follow her lead, but it was hard to concentrate with every single neuron in my brain dedicated to reporting on all the different sensations I was getting from the feeling of her body moving against mine.
The softness of her breasts as they pushed against my ribs. The delicate curve of her wrist resting just behind my spine. The pulse at her neck. My brain translated all of this in a deluge of information, and I never wanted it to end.
Sometime during that moment, I had reached up and let my hand rest on her shoulder, touching her luminescent skin. God. She was even softer than I was, like silk and satin had combined into the ultimate texture. And as my palm rested there, I could feel the tension of her breasts rising and falling with her movements. A short moment later, I realized mine were doing the same, resulting in a strange circle of both pleasure and pain.
I felt myself getting rapidly overwhelmed by the physical sensations of a body spinning wildly out of control until my mind could only spit out one thought.
Kiss her.
Kiss her!
Chapter 1
“You never were man enough for me anyways, Tom! Look at you! You’re so pathetic.”
I rubbed my temples, my girlfriend’s words playing over and over again in my mind.
Well, ex-girlfriend.
Those words still hung heavy in my mind and felt foreign on my tongue. It had only been two days since my partner of three years had broken it off with me and I was still reeling. I had no idea it had been coming, and I still couldn’t believe that she had kicked me while I was down.
But that was exactly what she had done.
“I can’t be with someone who obviously has no idea where they’re going in life!”
I grimaced at that. Just a week earlier I would have been able to argue that I had an amazing job that paid our bills and allowed her to live in relative ease. But that I couldn’t say that any longer considering the fact that I had lost my job that Monday.
I’d been working there since college, specializing in advertising for a large firm. I’d gone from unpaid intern to a project lead, putting in hours and hours of work, only for them to lay off half of our department in one fell swoop.
Sure, I had an alright severance package, but it had been such a blow to my ego that I’d sulked in our two-bedroom apartment for a solid chunk of time, only coming out to go to the bathroom. And then, on the third day, Stacey had dropped her big break-up bomb.
It had been playing over and over again in my mind on repeat until I practically had it memorized. I could still see the curl to her lips as she insulted me, feel the relief flow through her as she told me it was done. I could still hear my heart thumping in my chest and my blood rushing past my ears.
Just think about something else, I urged myself, looking at my phone for maybe the millionth time out of pure habit, even though I knew nothing would have changed.
“Waiting for troubling news, young sir?”
The interruption startled me, and I looked up at the passenger next to me. She was a dark-skinned woman with elegant features, her eyes lined in what looked like the expertly applied cat eye eyeliner style that my ex had always tried to draw on but never quite succeeded at.
Who talks to their seat-mate on airplanes? Jeez, lady, I thought, annoyed that she was butting in and forcing me to make small talk with a stranger on my already bad day. Week. Life.
“Uh, no. I’m fine,” I said sullenly, putting my phone face down. “It’s in airplane mode anyways.”
“Are you sure?” she murmured, seeming to see right through my clumsy protest.
I took a second look at her, feeling uncomfortable under her direct gaze. Her hair was done up in meticulously kept coils with beautiful glass beads woven in. Her clothes were loose but still stylish, like something from one of the hippy magazines that my girlfriend would pour over for hours.
Ex-girlfriend, I reminded myself, feeling a slight sting.
“Pardon me for prying,” she continued. “But I couldn’t help but notice you seem… anxious. Like someone waiting for something they’re not sure will even be happening.”
“I, uh-”
That was ridiculous.
Except… I supposed it kind of wasn’t. She’d nailed the situation exactly. How had she done that?
“I’m just going to NYC to visit a friend that I haven’t seen in a long while.”
“Oh, are they a very good friend?”
That was one way to say it.
Lyla and I had been friends since we were teenagers, when I’d been little more than an awkward sack full of hormones and pimples. We had been thick as thieves, going through the worst times of our lives together, but we had drifted apart after we graduated college.
“Yes, definitely,” I answered. I didn’t know why I was telling a strange woman this, but for some reason I felt sort of at ease with this lady. Maybe it was just nice to talk to someone about everything going on inside of me instead of keeping it all bottled up for a change. “We trust each other with everything.”
Well, almost everything.
The secret being that I was madly in love with Lyla and always had been.
I wasn’t sure when it started. Maybe it was when I was a wimpy freshman who spoke with an occasional s
tutter and she was nice to me anyway and hung out laughing with me at lunch. Maybe it was when we both got leads in the school play and had to share a stage kiss. I supposed the when didn’t really matter. Just that somewhere in our long friendship, it had turned into something else for me. Something more than platonic.
I wanted to tell Lyla for ages, but I knew how those things usually went. I loved being with her and didn’t want to ruin what we had. So I kept it secret at first, telling myself that it wasn’t real—that it was just puppy love. But I knew in my heart that it wasn’t. It got so bad that eventually I knew I had to confess my feelings to her, take my shot, or regret it forever. Then we both got into the same college, and I had the perfect opportunity.
I’d tell her during our freshman year together, away from home, family, and all the friends that knew us both. That way, if Lyla didn’t return my feelings and it made things awkward between us, it would be easier to either work through it or go our separate ways without the gossip mill churning all around us.
It was during our first semester, while I was sitting alone with Lyla on the thin bed in the girls wing of our dorm, that I prepared to make my move and tell her exactly how I felt about her—how I really felt. I can still remember how nervous I was with the words thick in my mouth on the tip of my tongue. They were trying to escape but not quite able to take form, and my palms were sweaty and shaking slightly against my knees. I swallowed nervously and urged myself to just go for it. Lyla seemed nervous too, and I thought she might have sensed what was coming.
But as it turned out, she hadn’t been expecting that at all. I hadn’t been the only one waiting for college to make a huge revelation about myself. Before I could shift the conversation into my big, romantic reveal, Lyla took a deep breath, looked me in the eyes, and blurted, “So I think I’m gay.”
Talk about a cock block. It turned out that the love of my life was a stone-cold lesbian.
All the things I’d been about to say died in my throat.
I was crushed. Truly crushed. I was madly in love with Lyla, and I knew now that I would never, ever have a chance with her.
There was no way I could tell her how I felt about her after that. I also knew I had to be supportive for my friend. That’s what real love is, right? If I cared about her that much—and I did—I wanted her to be as happy as she could be whether or not I could be with her in the way that I wanted to be. Even though I hadn’t known a lot of gay people in my life, I promised to myself then and there that I would be the best ally that I could be. I would be happy for her when she got a great girlfriend and hold her hand after bad break ups. I’d continue to be the best friend that I’d always been for her.
And I didn’t regret it for a second. She was there for me too, helping me through some seriously terrible times in my life: Making flash cards for me to study for my finals in classes that I was terrible at and sure I was going to flunk, cooking me healthy food when I got struck by a college-wide flu plague, and giving me the encouragement I needed to pick myself up whenever I felt down about myself. She was my confidante and my right-hand man.
Until Stacey happened.
My romance with Stacey had been a lust-fueled whirlwind of intensity that suddenly sucked up all my time and attention. Looking back, I could admit that part of that might have been me compensating for my unrequited situation with Lyla. But I hadn’t had the emotional maturity to realize that at the time, so it was what it was.
“Is your friend a woman?” my airplane seatmate asked, snapping me back into the present and interrupting my trip down memory lane.
I blinked at her and broke into a smile at the question.
“She is—she most definitely is.” I chuckled a bit. “She’s into MMA and fighting, but other than that she’s the most glam woman I’ve ever met. She’s so brilliant with make-up that it’s basically witchcraft. And her hair is always dyed all these beautiful colors that a human shouldn’t be able to pull off, but she does. It’s almost like she’s actually part unicorn.”
She really was something else, which was probably why Stacey hadn’t liked how close Lyla and I were. But I had always told her she had nothing to worry about—after all, Lyla only liked women and I would never, ever be her type. Despite Stacey’s snipes, the two of us had remained best friends, but I realized now that when we graduated, Stacey had definitely done her hardest to encourage our drifting apart.
Not that it was entirely Stacey’s fault. After all, Lyla had moved to NYC and I had ended up with an internship right in the middle of America. Like all adults who drift away into their own lives after college, we went from texting every day to texting once a week. Eventually once a week became once every few months. I was embarrassed to admit that it had been quite a bit longer than that even since I’d last checked in with her, prior to the random text she’d sent me the previous week.
Lyla’s unexpected message couldn’t have come a better time, and as soon as we’d started texting it was like the time and distance that had grown between us just melted away to nothing. I had no idea how she’d known that I needed a friend more than ever, having just been dumped by Stacey, but there was Lyla, coming through for me just like she always had. I looked down and re-read our conversation on my phone.
[Hey, friendo! Long time no talk. What’s cracking? :) ]
I could practically hear her speaking those lines. Even after all these years, she had never lost that enthusiastic joie de vivre that made her so wonderful to be around.
[Uh, I might be having the worst week of my life.]
[Whoa, what’s going on?!?!]
I had hesitated telling her, not wanting to sound completely pathetic like Stacey always told me I was. But how could I keep something so important from the best friend I’d ever had?
[I lost my job and Stacey broke up with me.]
[WHAT??? WTF what happened?]
[Massive layoffs at my job. As for Stacey, I… I guess I don’t know. I’m just in shock, I think. I’ve just been sitting in my room hoping that this is all a dream.]
[Come here.]
[What?]
[Come here. Get a ticket and come visit. You can stay as long as you need.]
I remembered staring at my phone like it had suddenly become sentient. How could I drop everything and fly to NYC? I had all kinds of things I needed to do: start looking for a new job, sort out the shattered pieces of my failed relationship, and figure out how I was going to make rent and pay bills in a month or two when my tiny amount of savings inevitably ran out. Now was not the time to be splurging on cross-country plane tickets. Plus, it had been years since I’d seen Lyla in person!
It was crazy and irresponsible. But also… I suddenly realized there was nothing in the world I wanted more than to go and be with my best friend right now. My fingers flew across my phone as I typed my response.
[I’ll be there.]
“You’re checking your phone again. Isn’t it still in airplane mode?”
My nosey seatmate’s voice once again pulled me out of my remembrance, and I put down my phone on the tray table with an amused shake of my head. “Hah, you’re right. Sorry.”
“So, you are in love with this woman, then?”
“What?” I asked, completely startled by her assumption. I gave her a third, piercing look. Damn, this lady is perceptive.
She seemed perfectly composed and unsurprised by my reaction. That was right about when it hit me just how strange it was for me to be discussing my deepest personal baggage with a complete stranger within seconds of meeting her. Why was she prying so much?
“Of course not,” I stammered, lying through my teeth. “She’s just a good friend!”
Were my feelings for Lyla really that obvious? I’d hoped that after all these years that my school-boy crush would had faded. Sure, I would always love her from the bottom of my heart, but in a friendly, platonic way. After all, she’d made it very clear that she only loved women—I was exactly the opposite of that, no matter how much
I might wish we could be together.
“Yes, I do not doubt that she is a great friend,” the woman continued. “But perhaps you were wishing that she was something more?”
I raised one eyebrow, trying to figure out why this woman seemed so invested in the idea. “You seem very interested in knowing if I love a woman you’ll never meet.”
She just smiled at that, revealing dazzlingly white teeth. “I suppose I am just a bit curious. It is a long flight to NYC, and I finished my book already.”
I looked in her lap, not seeing anything remotely book-shaped near her, but my suspicion only lasted so long before I found myself giving in.
Maybe after so long of bottling things up, I just needed to let go. Who knew? I’d been aware that my relationship with Stacey had been on the rocks for a while. We’d been fighting more and more about increasingly stupid things.
“I guess you could say that I wish I could be with Lyla, even though I know I can’t due to some complicated circumstances,” I admitted slowly. But saying it out loud after hiding it from everyone for so long felt like releasing a giant weight from my chest. As soon as I voiced the words, more poured out of me: “She’s basically the perfect woman for me. I’ve never connected with anyone else the way I do with her, and we’ve always called each other our platonic soulmates.”
“I see. And if you could have her, what would you do to make that so?”
I thought of all the years I had pined for her, cherishing her friendship down to the essence of my soul while in the back of my head wishing desperately that there could be a chance at more. A smile played across my lips, and I decided to answer the woman’s question honestly.
“Anything.”
“Anything? Truly?”
I nodded, completely confident in my answer. “Anything.”
