Becoming Hers Read online

  “That is quite a bold offer. You would turn your life upside down and give up everything you know for a woman who’s never wanted to be with you?”

  I chuckled drily at that. “It’s not like she didn’t want to be with me because there’s no spark. If she had just shot me down, I could move past it all.

  “The issue is that I’ll never know if I could have a chance with her because I’m the wrong gender. I’m a man through and through, and unfortunately, men just aren’t Lyla’s type. And I respect that.” I gave the woman beside me a bit of a challenging look. “Besides, Lyla’s friendship is pretty amazing. It’s not like it’s a consolation prize for me.”

  “Ah, I see. It sounds as though you truly do care about this woman.”

  “I do. I’m just lucky to have her in my life.” I laughed at myself again. “Listen, I know I sound like some sort of love sick puppy, but it’s not like that at all. Do I wish I could be with her? Sure. But I’m grateful to have her in my life as my friend, and I’m going to enjoy my time in NYC just reaffirming that friendship.”

  “Very well, then.” The woman reached into her purse and pulled out that book she had supposedly finished—a dog-eared romance novel whose cover was so faded that the title was illegible. “I wish you all the best on your reunion.” She flashed me a smile that seemed to say a whole lot that I didn’t understand before returning to her reading.

  It was a weird way to end the conversation, and I almost continued talking to her, but then I decided that enough was enough. This lady had pried into my personal life enough for one day, and I’d already revealed far more than I had intended. It wasn’t like me to speak so freely about personal matters, and I shook my head, suddenly embarrassed. Turning my phone off to save the battery, I pulled my sketchpad out so I could draw to distract myself and avoid any further uncomfortable conversations. But before I could even touch my pencil to the paper, I felt my eyelids start to droop.

  I tried harder to focus on what I was doing, bearing down unusually hard on the heavy stock paper with my pencil, but before I even had a basic sketch outline the page began to get blurry. Why did I feel so tired? Letting out a ridiculous yawn, I put the tools away in defeat and leaned back against my seat. I closed my eyes and let myself drift off, hoping that my nightmares would leave me alone for the first time in days.

  Chapter 2

  “You’ve wasted years of my life and I can’t take it anymore!”

  I awoke with a start, looking around in confusion at the fact that I seemed to be sitting in an economy seat on a cramped aircraft instead of home in my own bed, tangled in sweaty sheets, which was how I usually woke up from horrible dreams of Stacey lately. After a moment of blearily rubbing at my eyes, I remembered where I was and what I was doing.

  “Wow, I was really out there, wasn’t I?” I asked, turning to my companion. But I was greeted by nothing but empty air—not even a bag was left in the seat beside me.

  I swiveled my head around, trying to see if she was in the gaggle of people already crowding the middle aisle and trying to get their baggage from the overhead compartments. The weird, nosey woman was nowhere to be seen. As far as I could tell, she’d vanished without a trace.

  How had she climbed over me without me noticing? She must have really hustled to get past all these other people and deplane with the first class cabin. Jeez. I guess I really needed that sleep. I was out cold. It made sense. I hadn’t exactly been snoozing like a baby since I lost my job, and horrible dreams of Stacey yelling at me, blaming me, and finally abandoning me had made my nights that much worse.

  But none of that mattered now! I had landed safely in NYC, and I was that much closer to seeing Lyla for the first time in forever. If that wasn’t a reason to get my butt in gear, I didn’t know what was.

  I shot out of my seat, impatient to race off the plane and meet my friend. But I must have still been a little woozy from my nap, because I suddenly felt awkward and uncoordinated. As I rose, I stumbled a little and almost crashed into the tall guy waiting in the aisle beside me.

  “Whoa, you okay there, ma’am?” he asked, offering a hand to steady me.

  “Yeah, I’m fine,” I replied automatically. I’d caught myself just in time on the seat in front of me and felt foolish for being so clumsy. I shook myself off, straightened, and shuffled all the way to where I had shoved my carry-on before I realized what he had said to me. Ma’am? That was a new one. Or had he said “man”? It must have been “man,” I decided. Sure, work had been so busy this past quarter that I hadn’t had time to cut my hair, but I didn’t think that it was that long.

  But whatever. I had bigger things to worry about.

  I reached up on tip-toes to wrestle down my carry-on bag, annoyed at how unusually high the overhead bins seemed in this aircraft, and finally managed to pull it out. I wobbled a bit as I brought it down, feeling off center, but managed to recover enough to not fall over. Had the bag felt that heavy when I pushed it up there? Maybe I’d over-packed.

  Man, I really need to shake that nap off, I told myself. I feel so weird.

  I probably just needed a coffee or something. Having retrieved my bag successfully, I got out of the plane and headed through the boarding tunnel that connected to the actual airport. I guessed my nap had been really intense, as I thought about how drowsy I’d been while drifting off, and I resolved to try to get better sleep in the future. Not that Lyla will let me rest while there’s a whole city for us to explore together… I smiled at the thought and quickened my pace.

  The boarding tunnel was crowded, of course, but I’d known to expect that from JFK airport based on what I’d read about how busy it was. I didn’t really mind the wait until I felt a sharp elbow in my back. I whipped around to see a young mother trying to adjust her grip on her adorable baby and immediately softened.

  “You okay?” I asked, noting that she definitely looked like she could use a third hand.

  She flashed me a quick smile. “Oh gurl, I’m okay. Sorry about that. Just tripped on the rug.”

  I looked down to see that there was indeed an impressive number of wrinkles on the carpet beneath our feet. Talk about a hazard! Someone should fix that.

  “Alright. If you’re sure,” I replied, shaking my head at the weird way people talked these days. Was it normal to call even guys “gurl” now? It was getting hard to keep up with all the new social fads.

  As if on cue, a man came up behind her and gently took the infant. They shared a quick peck, and I turned back to face the exit, feeling a little bit of melancholy.

  Would I ever have something like that? Or was I doomed to be alone? I thought I was a relatively okay guy. Sure, I had flaws, but I listened. And I valued friendship just as much as I valued romance. I recognized that my partners were people, first and foremost.

  Then again, I guessed that part of my problem was I had only ever been in love with two people in my entire life.

  I sighed and tucked those thoughts away. I was supposed to be going on this trip to get a break from the abysmal quagmire I had gotten myself into, not wallowing in it. I set my jaw, holding my head high as I took the final steps into the airport.

  But as I was hauling my roll-on luggage over, a wheel got caught on another one of those dangerous carpet wrinkles and my half-awake self toppled right over.

  I hit the ground hard and for a moment everything was a strange swirl of sensations. I waited to hear people mocking the dumb klutzy guy, or maybe toss some accusations of drunkenness my way, but instead two guys rushed over to help me up.

  “Are you alright, Miss?”

  “I’m fine, thank you,” I answered coldly, annoyed that he was teasing me after all. Making fun of guys by calling them women was a pet peeve of mine, and furthermore, it’s not like women were especially clumsy, but it wasn’t worth getting into a fight with a stranger over it. “I’m just distracted, I guess.” I rose quickly and bent down to wipe at my scuffed knees, but then I froze in the middle of the motion. />
  My shoes were different.

  Normally that wouldn’t be a world-shattering thought, but I was almost certain that I had boarded the plane in a pair of old, beat-up sneakers. And I was one hundred percent certain that I had never owned a pair of silver, sparkly flats before.

  “Are you sure you don’t need any help?” the man who had spoken before continued. “I’m sure there’s a first aid station here. We can get an employee to walk you there if you’re hurt.”

  His words hardly registered with me. I was too fixated on what I was seeing below my legs. Maybe I could deal with having mysterious sparkling shoes—they could be a prank played by the nosey woman next to me, after all. But the issue was that the ankles leading into those shoes were also different from what I was used to seeing. They were smaller and tapered into an elegant sort of shape.

  In a state that felt a whole lot like shock, my eyes slowly drifted upwards, taking in the curves of lightly defined calves, slender knees, and then thick, curvaceous thighs that were connected to a nice waistline. My nice waistline.

  “I-I-I…” I stammered, momentarily unable to form a coherent sentence. Meanwhile what I was thinking was, What the fuck is going on?

  This couldn’t be real. I had to still be stuck in a dream. Or I had fallen harder than I thought, and I was suffering some sort of hallucination. Maybe I’d just finally snapped under all of my life’s pressures. That would be just my luck, to go crazy right at the worst possible moment.

  “I have to go to the bathroom,” I blurted.

  I ignored the concerned glance the two men shared and took off like the devil was after me, and it certainly felt like he actually was. My heart hammered in my chest, thundering away like a jackhammer, while my brain spun itself round and round like a carousel that was definitely breaking a whole lot of health and safety rules.

  I was so thoroughly panicked that I must have missed several restroom signs along the way. It wasn’t until I’d slid past security that I caught sight of them at the end of a long side hallway and raced straight towards them.

  I flung open the door the moment it was within range of my now-delicate and nail polish covered fingers only to collide with a massive chest. I bounced backward—barely managing not to fall over again—and looked up to see a man built like a champion body-builder.

  I winced. Guys like this always made me feel uncomfortable, and if they noticed me at all it was to give me an amused smirk as if letting me know how inferior I was to them with my complete lack of impressive muscles. But this guy confused me by looking at me with something I could only describe as caring concern.

  “Sorry about running into you like that,” he said with a warm smile. “Did you get turned around?”

  Why would he think I got turned around? I stared at him like he was speaking a foreign language for what felt like a solid minute before an idea presented itself in my head.

  Maybe he thought I should use the women’s bathroom instead?

  No! I was a man! Why would I need to do that? That was utterly ridiculous. This had to be some sort of strange dream, and I just needed to pinch myself to get out of it!

  So I pinched myself, but all that resulted in was some nail marks in my pale, slender arm.

  Wait a minute… I thought. Hadn’t I boarded the plane in one of my comfy hoodies? I was starting to realize by now that my missing clothing was probably the least of my worries, but I had really liked that hoody!

  “Uh, are you alright, lady?” the body-builder asked uncertainly.

  I was well past the limit of what would be considered polite eye contact for a normal, non-crazy person, so I pivoted on my heel and walked into the women’s restroom just a few feet away without replying. I tried not to sprint like an absolute maniac, but as soon as the heavy wooden door closed behind me, I rushed to the mirror to see if there was some sort of explanation for the madness I was experiencing.

  But instead of seeing some sort of artfully applied prank make-up on my otherwise male face, or a “pretend I’m a woman sign” on my shirt, or a spooky dream demon popping up behind me, I saw a cute young woman staring back at me from the mirror.

  No.

  No!

  This was impossible. Literally, completely and totally impossible. But the reflection moved when I did. Her face pulled into an expression of mock horror along with mine, and every motion she made mimicked mine exactly.

  I was a woman.

  I leaned so far over the sink that I was practically kissing the mirror, studying every detail for some sort of sign that this wasn’t real. I took in everything, from my high, pale forehead, to my bit of a button nose, to the cute, full lips that were currently pressed into an unhappy line. I was annoyed to note that I was adorable even when I was frowning.

  Going further down I saw a long, elegant neck and full, ample cleavage hanging down inside a cutesy peasant top. The girl in the mirror was the kind of girl I would have loved to hit on at a party, but it couldn’t be me.

  And yet it was. I ran my fingers lightly across my face, the rounded curves of my newly soft body, and my strange, delicate clothes. Now that I was paying more attention to myself, I noticed the slightly constricting band around my chest that had to be a bra, and the tight, delicate curve of panties around my ass that was so different from the roomy boxer shorts I normally wore. I didn’t need to touch myself to confirm that I was all woman down below, too, and I was too weirded out to go exploring beneath my clothes right this moment anyway.

  All of it felt incredibly real and incredibly strange to me—it was bizarre to feel my hands on my breasts as I gave them a slight exploratory squeeze—and none of this made any sense! How could I have gone to sleep as a man and woken up transformed into a woman? But I didn’t have any other possible excuses for what I was seeing, and it sure didn’t feel like a dream, so I grudgingly had to accept that that was had happened somehow. I slowly stood up straight and took several deep breaths, trying to calm down and think, my eyes never leaving the mirror.

  I was shorter, it seemed, which explained why the world seemed a little different and walking had been so strange. Not by much, but I reckoned I’d lost at least a few inches. My hair fell just below my shoulders in gentle waves. When I ran my fingers through it, they smelled like the cucumber melon bodywash that Stacey had loved so much.

  My shoulders were still a little broad for a woman (though narrow for a man), but they matched my newly large chest. Surreptitiously glancing around to make sure I was alone in here and that there was nobody who would think I was crazy, I quickly lifted up my shirt and confirmed I was wearing some sort of bra contraption with a surprising number of straps, which sort of explained the dull ache I now noticed in my back. Who knew large breasts were so heavy?

  Below the breasts I had a long, elegant torso with a soft, tapered waist that flared out into wide hips. A half-turn in the mirror revealed that I had quite the behind to go with them—a classic hourglass figure, I think they called it. I dropped my shirt, feeling weird and embarrassed and just completely out of place. My emotions churned, mixing violently. I was definitely the sort of girl that anyone would find attractive: Conventionally pretty and curvy in all the right places.

  But how?

  It was as I was wondering if I was indeed having a full mental breakdown when I remembered learning once that you couldn’t really read in dreams. That gave me an idea, and I ripped into the front of my carry-on, only to discover that my clothes had changed along with me. All of them, shoes included.

  “Whoa… that’s freaky,” I murmured to myself. But I didn’t let myself get distracted and instead dug through the jumble of clothes, looking for my travel documents.

  One by one my passport, tickets, and identification all tumbled out, forming a mess around me. But with each one I snatched up, I found out that not only could I read them, but that each of them were addressed to a ‘Thomas McCallister,’ complete with a picture of me. The old me, that is. Not the gorgeous woman freaking out
in the mirror in front of me.

  I sat back on my knees, breathing hard and trying to think. I was rapidly coming to the conclusion that this was somehow reality, even though what was happening defied every rule of physics that I knew of. How had my clothes changed but not my documents? Who was I if I wasn’t Tom? This was going to be a real problem before long. Nobody was going to believe that the documents in my hand belonged to the girl I now seemed to be.

  I felt myself starting to panic. What was I supposed to do? How was I supposed to function? I couldn’t just walk out into the world as a woman; I didn’t know anything of what it was like or how to protect myself. What if someone came on to me or something? What if they tried to take advantage of me?

  My hand snapped to my phone automatically, just as it had every few moments since Lyla had invited me to stay with her. Shaking, I turned off airplane mode and watched as a couple of texts from her came in.

  [ Are you almost here? I’m so excited! ]

  [ Tell me when you land! I wanna be there to see you right outside security! ]

  [ I got you a green tea cause I figured you’d be thirsty. You like those, right? ]

  I hesitated, completely torn about what to do. At least my friendship with Lyla hadn’t changed, but how could I possibly explain this to her? It was absolutely crazy. I tried to imagine what I might tell her. Hey Lyla, yeah, I landed safely. I’m excited too. Yes, I love green tea. By the way, I seem to be a girl now. Just FYI.

  She was going to think I’d gone totally crazy, and there was no way she would believe me when we met in person. But on the other hand… I frowned at the string of text messages. Lyla was my best friend in the world, and it’s not like I had a better idea. If there was anyone who would help me in this insane situation it was her.

  So, despite the fear and panic coiling in my belly, I hit her number and waited as the phone rang.

  It didn’t even get through a full tone before Lyla picked up. Hearing her voice was like a soothing bath of warm water gently washing across my frayed nerves.