Changers Book Four. T Cooper
or anything she did. Because Audrey would never forgive herself.
“But why?” Audrey asks for maybe the tenth time. “Why did they want to hurt you?”
“It wasn’t me, specifically. There’s this group of people out there who suspect they know about Changers and are scared of us, I guess,” I try to explain.
Audrey seems like she’s deep in thought, about her church maybe. Or her brother.
“It was terrible timing. After what we shared that night—I swear, the best night of my life, all my lives, hands down.” (Audrey smiles a little at that.) “And then the bracelet. I was going to tell you everything when I saw you, but I never got a chance because they picked me up the next day when I was out walking Snoopy.”
“But how did they find you?” she persists, something niggling at her, even if she isn’t putting two and two together yet.
“No idea,” I say, shutting her inquiry down. “So anyway, I was withdrawn from school, recovering at Changers Central through the end of the year, no phone, no Internet, explicit restrictions on all non-Changers communications so as to make sure those Abiders weren’t able to find me or any of the others again.”
“It’s so horrible,” Audrey says. “I can’t imagine what it was like in that basement, not sure you’d survive.”
“It wasn’t so bad,” I sigh. But it kind of was.
“If only I hadn’t run out of the apartment like a crazy person,” Audrey says, anger and guilt in her voice now, “and called my brother to give me a ride home. Maybe we would have been walking your dog together that morning, or . . .”
“Look at me.” I gently take Audrey’s chin in my hand. “You are the bravest, kindest, most accepting person I know. Thank you for letting me share all of this with you. Anybody else would have melted down and bailed.”
“But I’m the reason you got abducted.”
“I got abducted because of who I am, and what people in this world fear about who I am. That has nothing to do with you.” And then, because she seems so inconsolably sad, I add one last thing: “No matter what happens from here on out, I’ll never keep anything from you again.”
“You swear?” she responds, apparently relieved for the moment. “You’ll tell me the truth, always?”
“I swear,” I say. And I mean it.
Kim
Change 3–Day 265
You know that nineties song “Dreams Can Come True”?
If you don’t, you can listen to the inside of my head right now because that jam is on an endless loop:
Just a question of time I knew we’d be together
And that you’d be mine, I want you here forever
Do you hear what I’m saying gotta say how I feel
I can’t believe you’re here but I know that you’re real . . .
Dreams can come true
Look at me babe I’m with you . . .
I’m officially proclaiming it the “Audrey and me” theme song, because not only does it sum up the past three years of our roller-coaster romance, but it also lays down the unicorn wonder starburst moment that is happening this instant. Because, yeah baby, like the proverbial band, Audrey and I are back together.
After all my pining and depression and living in a self-dug hole of misery for, oh, a whole freaking year, Audrey has come around, and by come around I mean we had sex.
Boom.
It happened yesterday when I picked her up on my Vespa and we drove downtown, hanging out on a blanket by what I now think of as OUR river, watching the old-fashioned tourist paddleboats putter by, listening to playlists she’d made—heavy with songs from the Cure and Tegan and Sara, I might add. She confided she’d made some of the lists weeks ago with me in the back of her mind.
She’d never really been able to shake me, even though she didn’t know why. That fluke night at the bowling alley when I impressed her with my give-no-effs at karaoke had something to do with it. How much fun she had, despite herself. And now that she did know, meaning KNOW the truth of who I am, all the chips fell into place, and the more time we spent together our last couple months, the easier it became for her to spot Drew and Oryon in me, to see all of me in general, and well, as the sun began to set, and we moved our blanket behind some trees, one song led to a peck on the head, which led to a kiss, which led to a grope, which led to Audrey suddenly climbing on top of me, pulling the second blanket over us and letting herself go wild in a way I’d never seen before.
It was, all told, a glorious night.
Even if the ride home was a little strange. Lucky the wind was loud, and we couldn’t hear much through our helmets. I think Audrey was embarrassed. It’s like she surprised herself. Maybe she had some regret. But I didn’t care. I mean, I care about her, which would be obvious to a blind-ass bat from space. But I didn’t care to plumb whatever fears or second thoughts Audrey was wrestling with in her busy brain because I’d just had sex with the woman I love for the second time, and that was a high I was going to ride for as long as possible.
Bee-Tee-Dubs, I’m still on that high.
It’s not just the sex. (Okay, it’s a lot about the sex.) Some of my unbridled joy is the unique satisfaction that comes from being right about a person. Audrey is the Audrey I’ve always suspected her to be. Deep and soulful and above trivial concerns like physical appearance. Though I confess I was freaking when she reached under my shirt, her hands settling on my chest with such gentleness and acceptance, I swear my soul flew from my body.
Audrey found a way to love me as Kim. Not that Kim is unlovable. But Kim is no Oryon. She’s not a Drew. She’s not typical or traditional or conventional or the image anyone sees celebrated in any media ever. Chubby Asian girls aren’t exactly popping up on all the lit feeds. Kim, in modern America, for all its claim to diversity and acceptance, is invisible. But as it turns out, none of that mattered, because Audrey connected with my insides.
(Boy did she.)
(Sorry.)
(Not sorry.)
Audrey confessed she’d realized she’d let herself get caught up in trying to be “normal” this year in school, because she was sick of fighting so hard to be different in her family, at school, with queen bee Chloe. Different wasn’t all it was cracked up to be. No matter how much they try and sell it in the soda ads.
“Preaching to the choir,” I said, and she kissed me on the mouth hard, like an apology.
* * *
Later, when I Facetimed Kris and told him that Audrey and I slept together, and that SHE initiated it, he of course insisted on hearing every sordid detail, squealing with delight whenever a nipple entered the picture.
“So now I have two mommies?” he joked.
“That might be premature. I’m not sure she’s ready to be a card-carrying LGBTQ-club kid.”
“Um, from what you’ve just shared, she could be president of the club.”
Kris was still living with his drag mother, channeling every queen he met, wandering through the wilderness of his sexual and gender identity, assuming he was THE expert in the subject, blissfully naïve to the truth that his best buddy Kim was part of a race of people obliterating the very conceits of gender and sexuality to begin with.
“Vice president,” I say, and Kris laughs.
“Treasurer, because girlfriend was all about your coin purse,” he cracks.