After Wife's Death - Becoming Her - Final Chapter

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"Your flight will be called shortly, Miss Piper, if you want to start heading toward the gate," the attendant said. Lonna and I were in the airport's executive lounge, waiting for our ski trip to begin. We gathered up our carry-on items and made it to the gate just as they announced our boarding. First-class service definitely takes a lot of the hassle out of travel.

Lonna and I had decided to be ‘twinsies’ for the flight just for grins. We wore matching snowy-white sweaters that were thick and soft, yet still snug enough to reveal more than a hint of the upper parts of our figures. There was nothing as subtle as a hint about the form below the sweaters, though. The ski pants we both wore were tight enough that you could have counted the teeth on our combs if we had combs. Or pockets to put them in. Of course, with her bright blonde waves and my dark tresses, I didn’t think anyone would have any trouble telling us apart.

"I still can’t thank you enough for paying for my trip," Lonna began again as we took our seats.

"And I can’t thank you enough for all you’ve done for me," I countered. "Now, let’s just enjoy ourselves for a few days, no keeping score."

To get to Steamboat Springs, you have to go into Yampa Valley Airport, which is most of an hour outside of town. Gee, what a coincidence. It’s hard to find space to put an airport on a mountain. That’s why they’re good for skiing. I had been to Steamboat several times and liked it best of all the ski areas in Colorado, but that didn’t mean I liked the long ride once we were already supposed to ‘be there.’.

The flight had been selected so that we arrived fairly late in the evening, just enough time to get settled into our condo and hit the sack. Which created the first problem of the trip. When we arrived at the condo, it was quickly obvious that there was only one sack, and that if we were going to hit it, it would be together.

As in sleeping together.

"Oh, Lonna, sorry. I didn’t think. I’ll make up a bed out on the couch."

"Don’t be silly," she replied, laughing. "If I didn’t trust you, I wouldn’t have come in the first place. Get your nightgown and come to bed."

"What a statement," I said, laughing too. "At least, coming from a pretty girl."

"Why, thank you, Tami," Lonna said.

"What for?"

"That’s the first time you’ve ever said I was pretty."

"No, I’ve told you lots of times."

She was suddenly quiet, and I realized I was being shown a window into her heart when she said, "No. You’ve said, ‘Wow,’ but you never once just said I was pretty. I, um, paid attention."

"Lonna, you are the most beautiful girl I have ever seen. If I never said that, well, it doesn’t mean I didn’t think it."

"Thank you again," she said, still quiet. Then she shrugged a little like she was throwing off a too-strong feeling and grinned. "The last one in the bed has to turn out the lights."

She beat me to bed, of course. I had a lot more to do to get ready, mostly taking off items that Lonna wasn’t even wearing. Besides, all she did was pull on an oversized t-shirt, while I had to wriggle into a soft nightgown. I should have checked what she was packing so I could have been more casual, too.

"Ha!" she said as she slipped under the covers. "Don’t stub your toe in the dark."

"Ha, yourself," I said, laughing while I slipped in beside her. "The lights can be turned off from the bed. So there."

She giggled as we did the wiggle/slide thing to find out how much room we each had in the strange bed. And the strange circumstance. Well, maybe not strange, the circumstance that is, but at least unfamiliar. Come to think of it, the circumstance was pretty strange at that.

"G’night, Tami," Lonna murmured softly, interrupting my thoughts.

"G’night," I echoed, settling down for the first time in a very long time to try and sleep in a bed that was occupied.

The next morning came a lot sooner than I had expected. The rustle as Lonna got up seemed so natural that at first I discounted it and almost fell back asleep. But I woke up just enough to remember the real situation. After that, sleep was out of the question. Which meant that coffee was most definitely called for. By the time Lonna came out of the bathroom, toweling her still-damp hair, I had one cup down and needed desperately to go make room for more.

There didn’t seem to be any need to comment when Lonna just started in on my hair and my makeup after I got back to the main room. Well, that’s not exactly right; it’s just that the comment wasn’t what you might expect.

"What color are your ski clothes?" she asked.

"Oh, um, red, black and white, and some gray accents," I answered, pointing out the sleeve hanging in the little closet.

She walked over and looked at the jacket a little more closely, then smiled and said, "Let me guess, Trish picked this out."

A few months earlier, the sound of Trish’s name would have made me freeze up, tensing for the pain. Now, I could actually see some humor in what we had shared.

"Well, duh!  My idea of clothes coordination ran out if I reached some sort of compatibility with temperature. Which didn’t always happen."

"Oh?" she said, offering a conversational opening while she resumed doing my face.

"Well, the first time we went skiing, I just wore blue jeans and a windbreaker. It’s basically all I had, and I had seen pictures of girls skiing in bikinis, so I figured the sun reflecting off the snow made everything pretty warm."

"And of course, the big macho guy wouldn’t need warmer clothes than the girls," Lonna said, snickering.

"Well, I never said I was macho."

She nodded at my point. "So then what?"

"Oh, about what you’d expect. I found out later that the bikini skiing is usually done in the spring. That first time we went in the middle of February, and I think I remember some sort of warning to watch out for the puddles; they might be liquified oxygen."

"Been there, felt that," she said.

"And of course, I spent the whole day on my fanny or on my nose, sliding along, scooping up snow inside my shirt."

"Been there, done that," Lonna said, laughing even louder.

One of the funny things about skiing is that everyone has ‘been there, done that.’.  All the stupid, clumsy, embarrassing things that a beginner does are laughed with, not laughed a, when you talk to someone a bit better. They have left their own impressions on a lot of mountains, too.

I was about to ask her about her own ski experiences when she stepped back and said, "Voila!"

You’d think I’d have been used to it by then. I wasn’t fainting any longer when Lonna worked her magic, but every time I thought I had the ‘rules’ down, she’d do something different and spectacular. Normally she stuck to warm brown-to-dark-red tones for everything from my eyeshadow to my lipstick. And I always thought it looked great. I mean, really, amazingly great.

But this time my lips were a much lighter red, and my eyes were mostly a pale gray that just matched my ski outfit. It looked shiny and bright, like the sun on the snow.

"Wow," I said quietly.

"Glad you approve," she said, giggling. "You’ll have to ski pretty fast today to keep ahead of the boys."

"Yeah, right. If there are any boys after me, we’ll do the girl-kiss trick you showed me."

"Promise?" Lonna asked a laugh on her lips and in her eyes. Was there a hint of something more serious, though, in her voice? Don’t go there.

Instead of answering, I just went to the closet and got out my ski outfit. It was out of style nowadays, but it was comfortable and warm, and I had decided to keep it for yet another year. It was a one-piece design, with pants and a acket hooked together. Trish and I had gotten them when tight stretch pants were in. She wanted to do twinsies, and I wanted to see her in tight pants, so we compromised on a sort of unisex style that made me wonder if Trish had always seen something of Tami in me even at the beginning. In any event, wiggling into the pants occupied me while I tried to ignore what I might have heard in Lonna’s voice.

"That looks HOT!" Lonna gushed.

"Why, thank you, beautiful. A girl tries her best, you know."

By then she was in her outfit, stylishly new in a sort of satiny blue that just caught the lighter tones in her eyes. Some trick of the contrasting color panels made her feminine contours seem even more shapely, despite the thicker, quilted fabric.

"That looks cool as ice and twice as comfortable," I observed in my turn.

She just grinned, and we did the last-minute flurry of finding gloves and goggles and earmuffs. Our condo was ski-in, ski-out, and I had arranged for the first day’s lift tickets to be waiting in our rooms, so it wasn’t long before we were shuffling toward the Silver Bullet gondola at the base. One really, really good thing about Steamboat is that even a five-minute lift line is a very rare thing, so it wasn’t a much longer time, and we were sliding down the snow, trying to wake up reflexes that had lain dormant for a year.

And it wasn’t much longer than that when the first guys started sniffing out our trail. It was sort of fun, really. The secret joke that only Lonna and I shared was always there, just below the surface, and the humor of that kept our spirits up even as a succession of young men had their hopes dashed on our obliviousness. We flirted, of course, but we were cheerfully uninterested in any invitations to get a cup of hot chocolate or ‘go explore this really interesting side trail.’

It turned out that I was a little better skier than Lonna, not enough to make any difference in the trails we went on, but enough that as the day wore on, she started to get tired sooner than I did. And that meant she started to ski slower than I wanted to. That wasn’t really much of a problem. I just let her get down the hill a little, then skied to catch up at the speed I liked.

We were up at Storm Peak, starting on Buddy’s Run when I got my skis crossed just after Lonna launched off. It wasn’t a big deal. Lord knows I’d fallen more than once already, but it did put me further behind her.

So I was really ripping down the hill after her when disaster struck. Not the worst sort of disaster with an injury, but I caught an edge and then started having a yard sale. One ski came off, then the other. I lost my poles and my earmuffs. I swear, if my pants weren’t hooked to my jacket, I think I’d have lost them, too.

When I finally slid to a stop, I looked way back up the hill at the trail of ‘stuff’ I’d left behind and contemplated the long walk in ski boots on snow. Not a happy thought.

About halfway back up, though (I’d picked up one ski, and most of the rest of my things), a guy swooped in with my other ski and offered it to me. "You know," he said, "I don’t think I’ve ever seen anyone end up farther from their equipment."

"Thanks a lot," I snapped.

"Oh, lighten up," he said, laughing. "As long as you’re not hurt, there’s nothing to be upset about."

"Yeah, right." I was not convinced.

He stood by politely while I dressed myself again, shaking snow out of gloves and knocking more off my boots. After a very long time (during all of which he stood there with this smirk on his face), I was finally ready to go again.

"Thanks for your help," I said, putting smile number 14 on my face.

It wasn’t really appropriate, but it was the best I could do.

"My pleasure," he replied, bowing neatly despite his skis.

When I launched off again, I was mostly trying to catch up to Lonna, but I realized the guy was more or less pacing me—nothing obvious or close, but he stayed level with me on the hill.

Lonna was down by the lift back up to Storm Peak, watching for me and looking fairly anxious by the time I arrived.

"Are you okay?"

"Nothing injured but my pride," I said. By now the skiing had put me back in a better mood, and I was able to smile with a little more sincerity.

A masculine voice joined in uninvited, "You ski very well."

It was him, of course, the guy who had brought me my ski.

"Not all the time," I answered, smiling ruefully.

He laughed and said, "Oh, it happens to the best of us."

Lonna had to know, of course. "What happened?"

I shrugged. "Crash. Burn. A pile of rubble."

"Not that bad," the guy said. "She just lost a ski, or so."

Then he did the polite thing I had been carefully avoiding. "By the way, I’m Roy Clifton."

"Lonna Roberts." "Tami, um, Tami Piper."

Since he was now a ‘real’ person, with a name, I took a moment to look at him, really look at him. He was sort of neutral in coloring, with light brown hair and dark brown eyes. There was a piratical beard that made me envious. Every time I’d tried to grow a beard, it had come in patchy and ugly. Of course, after a couple of months of waxing, I didn’t even need to shave very often anymore. Standing on level ground near the lift showed that he was several inches taller than me, which made him almost six inches taller than Lonna. And I assumed his shoulders looked so wide because of a bulky jacket. If not, there was another thing I didn’t like about him. Typical ski hunk, just like in the movies. I’m surprised he didn’t go by Chip, or, um, what did he say his last name was? Clifton, so ‘Cliff.’.

Lonna was the next one to speak, and her voice had a funny tone. When I turned to look at her, I realized I had been staring at Clifton for a surprisingly long time. Lonna’s eyes were going back and forth from him to me even as she said, "I’m, um, getting a little tired. I think I’ll call it a day."

I tried to get her to change her mind. "Oh, come on, Lonna. There’s lots of time yet."

"No sense pushing it," Roy said. "That’s how you get hurt."

"Right," Lonna agreed. "I’ll just take it easy down to the base and hit the showers."

"I’ll go with you," I offered, though my voice held its own note of contrast with my words.

"Don’t be silly," she said. "Ski till your legs drop off. You know where to find me."

She waved and headed off down the hill. That path takes you down a long, gliding trail, and it’s frankly boring unless you catch some other lift on the way to the bottom.

"So, what runs do you like to ski?" Roy asked.

"Oh, um, whatever. I don’t usually do the moguls, but I don’t mind steep."

"Good. I’m about up for Heavenly Daze. You want to give it a try?"

"Uh, sure."

The first step toward that run was to go back to Storm Peak, so we caught the lift. And had nothing to do for several minutes but talk. It turned out he was an airline pilot (of course, what else?) and arranged his trips so that he could lay over in Steamboat about two weeks out of three in the winter. I gave my more-or-less true story about writing, but I figured I ought to claim to write as Brenda Carstairs rather than as Tim Piper. It turned out he hadn’t read any romance novels, big surprise, so I didn’t have any problems with him getting too close to my secret.

We made quite a few runs before the lifts started closing. When we were on the last swoop down the hill, it was his turn to fall and my turn to help him get his things together. By that time, we were way past simple politeness, so I ragged him pretty well about his own yard sale. He took it pretty well, better by far than I had, and we were laughing all the way to the base.

"Let me buy you a drink," he offered.

"No thanks."

"Not even some hot chocolate?" he asked, making puppy dog eyes.

"Oh, um, sure. I’d like some hot chocolate."

We forced our way into the base lodge, and I tried to run a brush from my fanny pack through my hair while he got the drinks.

"So, do you come here often?" I heard an unfamiliar voice say, a feminine voice, chirpy and soprano. Turning, I saw Snow Barbie, complete with an oh-so-stylish outfit, way-too-much way-too-blonde hair, and way too big . . . well, an improbable figure.

I just smiled at her joke, figuring she was playing on the oldest pick-up line in the books. She was very pretty, in a plastic sort of way, and I figured she’d heard it so often she felt entitled to use it as an icebreaker of a different sort. I was sort of flattered that she seemed to think I would understand.

"Need some help with that?" she asked, moving closer and resting her hand on mine where it held the brush. I smiled politely again, ready to decline, but she interrupted my words before I spoke them when she realized I had not gotten her real message. So she made it really clear by leaning close to me and whispering, "I’ll be glad to help you in any way you want, gorgeous."

I’m surprised the sprinklers in the building didn’t go off with the heat of my blush. Hell, I’m surprised the whole mountain of snow didn’t melt. I was doing the fish routine, mouth hanging open and looking stupid, when Roy arrived with the hot chocolate.

Snow Barbie leaned back in her own seat, and Roy offered me one of the cups. He had a sharp little twinkle in his eye as he said, "So, come here often?"

It’s a good thing I was still so frozen from Snow Barbie’s offer that I hadn’t reached for the hot chocolate, or I’d have sprayed it all the way back to the counter. As it was, I started coughing and spluttering so much that Roy was honestly concerned.

"Are you all right?"

"Yes, just . . swallowed wrong," I lied, reaching for the drink and nearly burning my mouth with a too-large gulp. Well, why shouldn’t my mouth be as hot as my cheeks?

He must have thought I needed a moment on an easy topic or something  because he glanced at the brush I had been using and said, "You have beautiful hair."

"Oh, um, thanks."

When he saw that I had myself back together, it was his turn to lean close and whisper, "I see you met our blonde lioness. Rumor has it, she makes a notch on her belt for every young maiden she . . . enjoys. Apparently h,unting is good on the slopes. I hear she’s on her third belt."

This time I did spill some hot chocolate, only I was laughing, not shocked. Roy’s voice might have been just large enough for Snow Barbie to hear. In any event, she picked up and moved on. Or maybe it was just the redhead she saw across the room.

Roy watched her go and smiled with an interesting combination of triumph and embarrassment. He changed that into a sheepish grin when he realized I was looking at him and said, "Sorry, that was probably unfair. I guess I’m just a bit jealous. If I’m repeating rumors at all, I should repeat the one that says all her . . . friends were smiling afterward. I, um, didn’t mean anything by it."

Yes, he did. And he knew I knew, yada, yada. But instead of calling him on it, I just smiled back and tried to decide what my own feelings were about being propositioned by a pretty girl, who was then run off by a handsome man twhofelt he had a prior claim. It was too difficult a question for any immediate answers, so I tuned back in inintohatever whatever he was saying, but the question lingered in my thoughts.

We ended up sitting there until it started to get dark, just talking about favourite ski areas and runs despite what might have been considered an opportunity for more. Intimate topics. All of a sudden I realized it had indeed gotten dark, and I sat up straighter.

"Oh, my goodness. I need to get back. Lonna must be starving."

"I’ll walk you to your place."

"Um, thanks, but that’s not necessary."

"I know," he said, another smile I didn’t want to decipher on his face.

We gathered up our stuff, and I realized for the first time that I had forgotten about the ski-in aspect of the condo. The lifts, even the bunny hill one that would have gained enough altitude to allow a glide to the condo, were long closed, so we had to trudge uphill, only about a quarter mile, but at that altitude, in ski boots, and carrying my equipment, I was too winded for conversation until we got to the door.

I should have just pushed right on in, calling for Lonna.

When I did make it through the door, sometime later, I found the room to be dark except for the flickering light of a fire. I could see Lonna sitting on the floor against the couch, either watching the fire or asleep, so I tried to be quiet as I finally shed my clunky ski boots and struggled out of my ski suit. Finally, wearing my silk long underwear and not much else, I went over to sit near Lonna.

"Hi," she said. Awake, at least.

"Hi," I answered. Even as I said it, I knew my tone was not as casual as I had intended.

"Did you enjoy your skiing?"

"Um, sure."

"And the rest?"

"What rest?" I asked, too quickly. Then she made it worse by not bothering to answer.

We stared at the fire for a while as though there were answers there, but if she found any, she was the only one.

Words started coming out of my mouth, softly, tentatively, sniffing the air for signs of risk. I wasn’t really explaining so much as exploring, sometimes incoherently. But I couldn’t be quiet, either.

"He put his arms around me. Oh, God, how I missed having someone put their arms around me. Hug me. Support me. I was standing at the door, thinking about opening it, thinking about inviting him in. He slipped his arms around me from behind, gently, and just hugged my waist."

"It was as though I was suddenly too tired to stand, almost too tired to breathe. I sagged back into his arms, against his chest, letting him lift me as much as squeeze me."

Lonna stirred just a little. She didn’t say anything, but she shifted her weight so that she was, somehow, a little more distant even though she didn’t move an inch.

"I don’t know if it was his hands directing me or my own impulse, but I found myself turning so that I could put my arms around him, too. I hung on his neck, put my head on his shoulder, and let him hold me. Still so gentle, yet strong, too. I don’t know if my own legs would even have kept me upright then, but they didn’t need to. It felt so wonderful to be close to someone again, feeling a vibrant, living body touching mine."

"I felt his hand in my hair, first caressing it, then softly pulling it to get me to move my head back. Then his lips were so close to mine."

I stopped then. What happened next with Roy was not what I had expected, and I truly didn’t know what to say.

Lonna didn’t say anything, either, but I heard a sniffle, and I looked up. Even in the dim light from the fire, I could see that she was crying.

All right. I’m an idiot. And insensitive, and too stupid to be let out without a keeper. All this time, I had been blind. At least I got there in the end.

"Oh, God, Lonna, don’t cry. You don’t understand. Roy kissed me, but I didn’t like it. It wasn’t comforting or nice at all. It didn’t feel right, and it for damn sure didn’t arouse me."

I slid over closer to her and took her into my arms. I held her close to me and said, "Oh, God, Lonna, how could I have been so blind? I don’t want a man in my life. I want a woman. I think, I mean, I want . . . you."

"You don’t have to say that to make me feel better," she said in a tight little voice that I could barely hear.

"You’re right, and I’m not," I declared firmly. I pulled her back with me as I leaned against the couch. We looked at the fire some more, but this time she was cradled under my arm, and my cheek rested on her head. I started talking softly again, exploring again, but this time with a different insight.

"Dear Lonna, tonight I realized how much I want, how much I need to be close to someone. I thought . . . I wanted that part of me to be dead so that I never had to risk a loss again. That’s why I’ve been Tami, really, I think. Tami was Tim plus Trish and didn’t need anyone else."

"Was?" she asked, picking up on the word I hadn’t even realized was key.

And I for sure didn’t know what to say in answer to her insight. Why had I spoken of Tami in the past tense? The pause lengthened; the fire consumed our attention as it had done for humans over the centuries and eons. Finally, Lonna asked quietly, "Do you regret becoming Tami?"

"No," I answered sharply, sharply enough that I realized that was an

Important truth, too. Then I continued more softly, "I have learned so

much about Trish, made her more real in my memories than even when she

was still . . . with me. I still want to touch that closeness, to think,

‘This was something of Trish's, something we share.’"

"But it’s not enough," I said, realizing that was another truth.

"What’s missing?" Lonna asked.

"I’m not sure I know, exactly, but I know what’s not missing. It’s not something about dressing or about Trish. It’s about me. I haven’t learned anything that showed me anymore about Trish, not really, since the night of the writers’ ball when I went out with Bud. I enjoyed the things we did together after that, but it wasn’t because I was thinking, ‘Trish was like this.’ It was just because it was fun being with you. I thought it was because I was being Tami—Tim plus Trish—but this afternoon, when you were gone, I was still Tami, and it wasn’t . . . what I needed."

The scene with Snow Barbie, the pick-up lines, and the kiss with Roy all got jumbled up in my mind, and I knew there was something that connected them. Something related to being Tami. I struggled to get the thoughts in my mind organized into words, rolling slowly out of my confusion.

"Tami couldn’t ever get close to a man. It was physically impossible, for one, but more than that, it was... unthinkable. I stayed safe, in a crowd, doing ‘proper’ things. I could be attractive, even sensual, and it was nice to be flattered. It made me feel better about myself, less like I was alone because I didn’t deserve to have someone in my life. And I never had to prove it, one way or the other, because I was always proper."

I felt Lonna’s hand reach up to stroke my cheek, and I realized that she was wiping away a tear I hadn’t noticed fall. My mouth kept exploring things that my mind didn’t really understand, trying to come to grips with feelings I had been locking away.

"And women, that was automatically improper. Trish wouldn’t have done that. So any woman attracted to Tami would not have been as attractive to Tami as Trish. I... found that out this afternoon. At first, I was jealous of this beautiful woman who spoke to me. In my mind, I was very catty and, well, unkind. But she made a pass at me, and I realize now I had been as uncomfortable with that as Tami was when Roy kissed me."

"Tami was sort of armor for me, proof against the advances of men or women. Armor I wore to keep intimacy at bay."

"But I didn’t, don’t, want to keep intimacy at bay any longer. Do you know what I was thinking about when Roy kissed me?"

Her head shook just a little, enough to let me know to go on. "I was remembering when you kissed me in that redneck bar. That’s what I wanted. I wanted to think that you wanted me because of who I really was, Tim, but... but I didn’t think you really wanted the real me."

Her voice, when she contradicted me, was so soft that I wondered if I was imagining what she said, especially since it seemed a dream too good to be true. "I’ve wanted you since before Trish died. Not just physically, and I knew you’d never betray Trish anyway. I wanted the total devotion that you had for her and that she had for you."

"But you made me into Tami, or at least helped. And why did you ski off this afternoon and leave me instead of staying with us if you wanted to be with me?"

"I didn’t want to get in the way of your happiness. I helped you be Tami because that was the only way I could help you at all. If you need to be Tami, and Tami needs to have her femininity validated, demonstrate her sensuality, then . . . I couldn’t do that. I wouldn’t do that. Oh, Tami is fun, and I enjoy spending time with her, but Tim is who I . . . love. I never forgot who you really are, even when it seemed that you had forgotten."

This time it was definitely my hands that provided the guiding pressures, my arms that turned her around to lie in my lap. And this time, it was my lips that were reaching down to meet those of a beautiful woman reaching up.

~-------------------~

Epilogue

The next morning I was the one who got up first. While I was in the bathroom, I took care of a few things that had not been part of my normal routine and didn’t do a few things that were. When I stepped from the bathroom, my breast forms, hip pads, and long nails stayed behind. The wig had been so woven into my own hair that I couldn’t get it off, but I had pulled it back into a low ponytail and wasn’t wearing any makeup at all.

Lonna’s eyes were only about half open when she passed me on the way to see to her own morning needs. She mumbled a quick, "Morning, Tami," and shut the door.

Then opened it again before I had moved a step away.

"Tim?!!"

"Yes," I answered nonchalantly. I was rather proud of myself for that ‘nonchalantly.’.

We didn’t say much after that for a while. And it was looking like it was going to be quite a while before we needed words when Lonna wiggled and stepped back through the door.

"Sorry," she said through the barrier, "but I really have to pee."

I laughed and went about making coffee, heating up a couple of rolls, and doing whatever else seemed necessary. The bathroom door opened behind me, and I turned to see Lonna watching. I just grinned and waved her into the little kitchenette and pulled back a chair. Though she moved forward, she remained standing.

"Does this mean that Tami is, um, gone?"

"Would you like her to be gone?"

"No, not really," she said, smiling. "Though Tim has some very special advantages."

"Thank you, milady, I’m glad you noticed," I said, bowing deeply.

She raised an eyebrow in question, and when I didn’t take the hint, she said, "So?"

"Let’s see," I said, pretending to be casually mulling through alternatives. "Tami gets better service in restaurants. She’s generally taller. She’s a damn sight better looking. . ."

"Oh, I’m not so sure about that," Lonna said, giggling and moving toward me.

I ‘allowed’ myself to be distracted for a long, lovely moment, then I pulled my head back and looked her directly in the eyes. "Lonna, love, I will be for you all that I can. If you like Tami, at least as a change of pace, then I will gladly be Tami. But I realize now that I no longer need that armor—that I am really Tim. Is that okay with you?"

"Perfect," she said. Then she showed me she was pretty near perfect herself. For the next 50 years and change, as it turned out.

The End.