Page 8 of Best Woman

Kim Cameron and I are sitting in a booth at the Cheesecake Factory, sharing a bread basket. If my high school self could see me now, she’d scream.

Well, if we’re being technical about it, he’d scream. And then ask why I have boobs, and if he could touch them.

The waiter drops off our drinks—Pineapple Moscow Mule for me and my insatiable sweet tooth, whiskey ginger for Kim—and encourages us to take our time with the menu. We’ll need it, considering it’s roughly as thick as a Twilight book. We’re talking Breaking Dawn .

“So—” we say in unison. I sip my drink to make it clear she can go first. I don’t know what I was going to say anyway, having used up all my small talk on the trek through the mall from Born to Bride.

Kim’s teeth are very white and sharp when she smiles, dark-pink lips fuller than filler could ever make mine—and I’ve done the research.

Kim was pretty and aloof in high school, the kind of emo waif I always imagined myself with.

Now she is devastatingly hot, her face more angular, her body immaculately curved but solid .

She was a bit more delicate in high school, but now she’s hardened into steel.

She looks like she could tear me apart. I’d let her.

“How’ve you been? It’s been a long time. I’ve heard things here and there from Rachel and, you know, the internet.”

Another enamel-eroding gulp of my cocktail. “I’m good. Fine. I don’t live in Florida so…there’s that.”

We both laugh. I’ve met more than a few Floridian expats in New York and we all have the same story: weirdos who escaped as soon as we could.

Among my friends who have left the Sunshine State are a burlesque-dancer-slash-mortician, a baker who only crafts cakes shaped like vulvas, and a nonbinary software developer who dresses exactly like Trinity in The Matrix .

Lounging on her side of our booth, whiskey in hand, Kim somehow looks like she is at some horrifically exclusive after-hours party. Even in the unflattering overhead lighting, she glows.

“Not being in Florida is certainly a win. Have you lived here since high school?”

“At the Cheesecake Factory? Yeah, I’ve got a lovely little studio set up in the walk-in freezer.”

Another laugh, her eyes crinkling. “I’ve been in New York since college,” I continue. “Floundered around for a couple of years figuring things out after I graduated. Not that I have figured anything out.”

Her eyebrow raises. “Well, you figured one thing out.”

I laugh. “The girl thing, yes. Everything else, not so much. I somehow fell into interior design, which I like and am weirdly good at.”

“That makes sense.” She rips off a piece of brown bread and starts to butter it. “You always had a very clear sense of style, even in high school.”

I attempt to duck behind my bangs. “I’m not sure my Hot Topic sale rack vibe was all that stylish.”

“You had a point of view. That was pretty rare where and when we grew up.”

“And likely why I left. What have you been up to since then?”

She shrugs, swirling her drink. “This and that. I wanted to make music for a while but was never all that good. Then I dipped my toes into event production, but I hated always smelling like secondhand cigarette smoke. Did corporate marketing for a bit, but the money is not worth how psychotic everyone is. Now I mostly consult.”

“So you’re what, professionally cool ? Sounds about right. You were like, the most interesting person I met until I turned eighteen.”

She laughs. “Don’t sell me short, I’m still the most interesting person you’ve met.”

We clink our glasses in mock cheers.

I suppose it’s time to address the elephant in the Cheesecake Factory. “You’ll certainly be the most interesting person at the wedding.”

“Maybe not. After all, you’ll be there.”

“Aw, shucks.” I take another swig of my drink. “Being interesting is not all it’s cracked up to be. A wedding is inherently a family reunion.”

“But one with ice sculptures.” Kim knocks back the rest of her drink and waves over the waitress. “Last week Rachel told me over FaceTime that they’re having a hard time deciding what kinds of animals to do. Swans are so 2012.”

We order another round of drinks from the waiter.

“That’s nothing.” I tear viciously into the bread between us. “Last I heard they were trying to rent a replica of the couch from Friends for wedding photos.”

“Why?”

“I don’t know. Straight people?”

“Straight people.”

“How’s your sudden promotion to maid of honor going?” I ask. “It’s a lot of responsibility in such a short amount of time.”

“Honestly, it’s been a nightmare. I love Rachel, but you know what she’s like on a normal day.”

“The first time I met her I tried to buy Adderall off of her because I assumed she was on, you know, a lot of it.”

“Right,” Kim says. “I still don’t know why she needed me to step in all of a sudden. She and Jenna were always so tight.”

How to handle this? If Rachel didn’t tell her, it was probably for a reason, although if I’m being generous, that reason was probably to spare my feelings.

“Jenna didn’t want to walk down the aisle with me.”

Kim’s brow knits in confusion. “But you’re Aiden’s sister. You’re the best woman.”

“Yeah, but I used to be Aiden’s brother and I was supposed to be the best man.

Jenna is pretty conservative.” That I refer to myself even in the past tense as male is a testament to how the drinks are hitting me.

It’s no secret that I’m trans, that I haven’t always identified or presented as a woman, but in the current landscape of trans politics, it’s not exactly the done thing to admit to ever having been a gender other than the one you are now, or always were, or whatever.

What I’m supposed to say and think and believe with every fiber of my being is that I am a girl, have always been a girl, was born in the wrong body, and that my transition was a righteous victory in my lifelong battle against the assignment forced on me against my will at birth.

And no matter how true or false or complicated that may be when applied to my real lived experience, I at the very least should not hand ammunition to the millions of people ready and willing to call me a wolf in women’s clothing.

“What a cunt,” Kim says, leaning back against the vinyl booth. “I’m so sorry. Did Jenna say something to you?”

“No, my brother told me.”

“Damn, that’s shitty. Why did you even need to know that?”

I guess I understand why she’d think that, but she doesn’t know my relationship with Aiden, that our closeness was born out of our willingness to share the ugliest parts of ourselves and our lives.

Two children of divorce so used to being lied to by their parents that the only way to survive it was promising to never lie to each other.

But I don’t know how to put that into words Kim will understand.

This is a girl who, if I remember the gossip correctly, spent most of her senior year living with her grandmother after her mom found out she was gay and kicked her out.

I don’t want to throw in her face that my brother is such a good, ugh, ally that he wouldn’t stand for having a bigot at his wedding.

And the sympathy swelling in Kim’s eyes is a little patronizing, sure, but it’s also kind of nice.

It’s the same way she looked at me when she saw me sitting alone outside the auditorium.

That sympathy is the reason she gave me a ride home, and let me get close to her for long enough to set my heart—and hormones—on fire.

Maybe…there’s something in that. A chance to get a little more of Kim’s attention.

Not that I’m desperate or attention starved.

I have plenty of fulfilling sex with hot people, but this is Kim Cameron, my unattainable first crush suddenly thrust back into my life, the first person I ever wanted so bad I thought I’d die from it.

Maybe it’s the mall, or whatever preservatives are in the Cheesecake Factory bread, but that old teenage obsession is roaring through me all over again and I’m as desperate for her as when we were dumb gay teenagers.

You have an angle, some reptilian part of my brain hisses. Use it.

I shrug and cast my eyes downward, trying not to oversell it. “I don’t know. I guess they were a little upset about the whole thing.” And they had been, but on my behalf .

“ Dealing with me in the context of their wedding has been, I don’t know, a constant source of tension,” I say, feeling stupid as I say the words but also enjoying the opportunity to ham it up.

“Aiden and I aren’t even that close,” I say, surprised my tongue doesn’t trip over the lie.

“When he asked me to be his best man it was honestly kind of surprising.”

Kim nods. “I thought it’d be Ben Otsuka.”

I truly cannot deal with the thought of Ben Otsuka right now, so I just let my mouth run.

“Well, it was me. And when he asked me, I was just like, figuring the girl stuff out, but I wasn’t ready to talk about it yet, so I just said yes.

” That was all true, but once I was ready to talk about it, Aiden had been kind and supportive.

He’d done the work to educate himself, to admit that it might take him some time to get everything right while assuring me that he wanted to.

“We’ve all spent the past couple of years not dealing with it.” Also technically true: everyone had been so cool there hadn’t been much to deal with.

“OK, so you’re my best woman, ” Aiden had said, arm around my shoulders. “Big whoop.”

“Anyway,” I say, attempting to project the deep inner fortitude of someone rising above it, “I just have to make it through this wedding.” I finish off my drink and set it down on the table, and Kim makes the world stop when she puts her hand down on mine. It feels like a live wire.

“You deserve so much better than that, Julia.”

My insides twist like the snakes my cousin Max used to keep in a terrarium, making them fight for dead mice. I’m ecstatic and ashamed all at once. It’s working .