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Author Note: This story should stand on its own, but if you're interested in the bigger picture, it takes place about 2 or 3 years after "Taste & Hold", and about 5 years before "Hesitant Heat". The timeline won't match up perfectly because I've workshopped the world and metanarrative significantly since I started this project in 2019. Someday I may go back to edit my older stories.

This one is probably one of my messier entries. It's also light on pornographic content.

Content: cheating, queerphobia, references to bad family situations.

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My date fit perfectly against me as I shadowed her around the memorial service, arm around her shoulders, shit-eating grin on my face.

"You don't have to say anything," she'd said, when we were strategizing over text.

"But I can be

really

annoying," I'd replied.

"Your presence will be annoyance enough."

And so it was: in every direction, it seemed, was yet another cluster of family members draped in somber colors, murmuring something reverent or sad amongst themselves--until we came into their sights. Then the performance of grief turned into something more genuine: exasperation, in most cases, but occasionally full-on offense.

All the aunties had something to say.

"Whatever happened to that sweet boy you were seeing?"

"Does your boyfriend know about this?"

"Your grandfather really loved Brook. He should be here, even if you're, you know..."

No one spoke to me directly. I was an abomination attached to the family's wayward daughter. I could feel like an abomination anytime I wanted, of course, just by reading the news or going on certain social media apps, but that felt bad. This? This was hilarious.

"I'm seeing Scarlotte now," my date said primly, to all challengers. And then she would nuzzle me, and the aunties would turn away and flounce off, and she and I would exchange a conspiratorial grin.

My date's parents approached us last--a final boss of sorts in this game we were playing.

The mom looked genuinely spooked to see me on her daughter's arm. The father? Livid.

"We forgave you," he sputtered, with no greeting whatsoever, "when you laid your perversions to rest. We thanked God and we welcomed you back." He said something in another language and I felt my date's body temperature soar.

"I guess that's the difference between us," she bristled. "

I

never forgave

you

."

"This is a sick joke," her dad responded, louder than before. People were staring. "And you're not only insulting your hard-working parents, you're insulting the dead with this... this..." He gestured toward me. "You're sick, Fumine."

"You've thought this through?" I had asked, the night before. "A funeral is a pretty big deal."

"They deserve it," she'd replied.

From her family's behavior, I could tell they deserved every bit of it. But I wasn't worried about

them

. There's only so much genuine queerphobia you can take from your own fucking parents, right? Fumine shut down. She went rigid and cold in my arms. And I--I went off-script.

"Don't talk to my girlfriend like that," I said.

"Girlfriend nothing," the dad said dismissively, waving a hand as if I were a fart. "You're not welcome here," and then he dropped the f-slur.

He said it more quietly than he said his other words, like he wasn't accustomed to profanity, but with all the pent-up vitriol of someone who would say much worse if he were.

For a moment, no one said anything. I think he was surprised he'd said it. For my part, I hadn't heard it uttered aloud in person in

years

, except by those among my peers who considered it their right to "reclaim" the word. Sure, I'd seen it in comment sections. I'd heard it in rap music. But this was different.

"Really?" I asked, once I'd gotten my bearings. "In the year of our lord 2019, you want to act like

that

in a house of god?"

That startled him.

"He's my god too," I hissed. "You want to talk about Jesus? You want to talk about love? You want to talk about how we treat each other?"

He gaped.

I squeezed Fumine tightly. "We're not

sick

. We're

gay

. And God loves us. I'm going to pray for you, shit-head. Lord knows you'll need it when you die miserable and alone." The dad's fists were trembling. He looked like he would throw hands if there weren't dozens of mourners watching. I turned to Fumine's mom. "I feel sorry for you, but you're this asshole's accomplice as long as you put up with this shit. Get out while you can, and maybe your daughter will still have a relationship with you. And hey, there's still time for you to find a nice woman to share your life with; it's never too late."

I couldn't read the mom's expression, but I didn't need to. We were done here. I spun Fumine around and marched her out of the church.

It wasn't really my job to sit with her in her car while she cried.

We'd left the venue. By all accounts, I'd played my role.

But I couldn't leave her like this. I considered borrowing her phone and calling her boyfriend, but in the end I just held her awkwardly, reaching over the center console. She alternated between clinging to me and apologizing. I tucked her smooth black hair behind her ears and rubbed her shoulder.

After some minutes, she pulled out of my arms and wiped her face. She was a mess, puffy and flushed. Her lips looked really dry. I offered her chapstick from my purse, and she accepted.

"Sorry," she said, after some deep breaths. "I didn't--it doesn't matter. Can I--can I give you a tip? God, I don't know how this works."

"I mean..."

I didn't want to say no to money--I was here to be paid, after all--but holding a crying stranger wasn't exactly the paid service I was providing. While contradicting instincts warred in my head, Fumine shoved a twenty my way.

I did the simplest thing. I took the money.

"Those

fuckers,

" she exhaled, looking out the front windshield at nothing.

The part of me that stirs shit up--the part of me that posted the damn Fiverr ad--retorted silently that she had provoked them. She had a perfectly good boyfriend she could have brought to her grandfather's memorial, but instead she hired a woman off the internet for the express purpose of "annoying" her family.

The other parts of me, the parts that knew that unbearably complex flavor of incomplete grief for a family not gone but still lost, led my hand back to her shoulder.

"Those fuckers," I agreed.

She turned to me. "Grandpa would have loved that, though." She sniffed. "He liked drama. Used to say he'd live in a soap opera if he could. He was the only one who stayed in touch with me, during the bad years."

"Your mom's dad, right?"

"Yeah."

"He should have done more."

"Like what?"

"I don't know. More."

"He had a stroke the year they kicked me out," Fumine said, shrugging. "He was in assisted living after that. He wrote me--for new year's, for my birthdays... but he wasn't..." She sucked in her breath. "He couldn't--"

I squeezed. "You deserved better."

"I know."

She pulled a tissue out of the glove box and dabbed her eyes.

The windows were fogging up, so I cracked my door. I wasn't intending to leave yet, but any thought of an early exit evaporated when I saw the look on her face as the door opened.

"Don't worry," I said, settling back in the passenger seat.

"I should have been more forthright," Fumine sighed, after a moment. "You only offered to annoy my family, not help me get re-disowned."

"It's cool," I said automatically.

"I went back to them, after I got with Brook... Honestly, I did it for financial reasons, and I think it was pretty obvious to Dad, but we all pretended nothing had happened. Like I'd been straight all along..."

"Yeah."

"The weight of it, though."

"Yeah."

"Grandpa was the only one I cared about."

"Yeah."

With another deep breath, she put both hands on the steering wheel. Her knuckles whitened briefly. Still with that far-away look on her face, she said, "Thank you, Scarlotte."

There was the tone suggesting she was

actually

ready to drive home. I released her shoulder and sat up straight, hands on my knees. "You're welcome."

"Um..."

I turned to her. She was looking at me as if seeing me for the first time. Couldn't blame her, with everything she'd been dealing with, but--

A little "oh" escaped her lips.

And then she quickly pulled out her phone and became extremely interested in the Fiverr app. "Um, I better rate your services. Where's the stupid button? Ugh. Five stars, of course." Her delivery was rapid, flustered.

"Thanks," I said, hoping to spare us both any acknowledgment of what was happening. "Good luck out there, Fumine."

#

I took down the ad immediately upon getting home.

"I'll pretend to be your annoying trans gf" was a lark cooked up by my buddy Petilda. She'd done it for extra cash down while putting herself through school, and she'd only had funny stories from her experiences. I figured, if

she

could pull it off, why not me? I was more annoying, anyway.

But my very first sortie had gone sideways, and I was still reeling from it. I considered adding qualifications to the ad. "I'll annoy your family for you but

not at funerals

," maybe. Or maybe: "don't engage my services if your family will drop the f-slur." But whenever I tried adding enough safeguards, the ad text became too cumbersome. In the end, it was simplest to give up on the idea.

I wanted to blame Petilda for the debacle, but if I complained to her she'd just say I didn't do my due diligence screening my clients, and like, that was true. So I just screamed into a pillow for a few minutes while remembering Fumine's tear-stained face and then took a shower.

#

It was two weeks later when I got a notification from Fiverr. I didn't have any listings there anymore, so even before I checked it I knew it was either going to be a Terms of Service update, or...

"Sorry to bother you, but are you still offering your pretend gf services? I can't find a way to re-order. Thanks for your time, Fumine."

I started typing automatically, as if cutting this off quickly would keep the mental image of her staring at me from haunting my nights.

If I were offering them you'd see the option on my profile

. Thankfully I had the good graces to delete that before sending it. I rephrased with a simple, neutral, "no."

"Darn. Okay. I have a bit of a situation on my hands, but it's my fault, so. Thanks anyway!"

Her situation wasn't my problem. Her situation wasn't my problem. Her--

"What's wrong?"

She started typing, and then stopped. Started, then stopped. This continued for over a minute, and I decided the best thing for my mental health was to turn off my phone and take a walk.

After last year's fires, we'd had a relatively calm summer in the Estuary. The Gullet of Hell was active in the south, but our skies were clear. From the hill trail over semi-suburban Rust, I could see the region's glimmering cities spread out before me. Across the sparkling water was the golden gate: the skyscrapers of Sacred Freedom, the mountains of the Sea County. Everything was beautiful and calm, in perfect contrast to my own mind.

Easy enough to ignore a rando from the internet, of course.

Slightly harder when you've held her through a traumatic break with her birth family.

Much,

much

harder when she's a total knockout.

I just kept

thinking

about her. Her warm brown eyes, with their amber flecks. Her hair, framing her face perfectly while catching its own reddish hue in the sunlight outside the church. Her shoulders, deceptively slim--but my fingers knew how strong they were.

And then I was thinking about how her body

felt

, of course, and front and center was her neck, how much tension it held, how that tension had ebbed, ever so slightly, in my arms...

I found a bench on the bluff overlooking the recycling center and I sat down. I pushed Fumine rather forcefully from my mind, doing that age-old grounding exercise of counting the things I saw, felt, heard, smelled, and tasted. The landscape was picturesque, like something out of one of those paintings old people always seem to learn how to do in assisted living. The sky was this immaculate gradient of pale gray-blue to deep azure, peppered here and there with clouds so white and fluffy I almost counted them as a thing I could taste. Everywhere I heard the chatter of birds, the buzzing of insects, the distant low thrum of the highways.

One thought led to another--

I wish Petilda could see this

, oh,

I could take a photo

--and suddenly my phone was booting up in my hands.

The notification hit as soon as the thing finished turning on.

Shit.

#

We met at the steam tray place in the mall. I'd only ever picked up to-go there; I didn't really remember that there was seating, didn't expect to see them there, didn't expect to see them

smiling.

I almost didn't go in. But then her mom saw me, and she lit up and waved me over.

"Scarlotte, right? Hi, hi, sit down, here's the menu, and--we should split some dumplings, right? Or do you prefer egg rolls?"

"I'm good with whatever," I said, even as Fumine sprang out of her chair to embrace me.

The jig should have been up. I should have gone stiff. I should have shied away, I should have made some obvious tell that we were not, in fact, girlfriends. But damn if I'm not a professional.

I clutched Fumine to me like we'd put our bodies against each other a hundred times. I made

her

reconsider our proximity, felt

her

stiffen--not on purpose. I wasn't playing chicken with this gorgeous woman. I was just doing what she was paying me to do. Which, it turned out, was

not

pretending to be her annoying trans gf to piss off her family. It was pretending to be her kinda wholesome trans girlfriend on a completely innocuous lunch date with her mom.

"So Fumine," her mom was saying before my ass was even in my seat, "really, no more Brook?"

"I told you, Mom. Brook was just a friend. He let me pretend to be with him so Dad would take me back. It's a whole thing. He was my beard."

"Well, then, he was

very

good at pretending." Fumine's mom leaned in toward me, expression--salacious? "Why do

you

think I found used condoms in the trash, Scarlotte?"

"MOM!" Fumine was beet red.

"Ahaha." I did not have to

pretend

to laugh awkwardly. "Brook was, ah, dedicated to our sham. But don't worry, ma'am, your daughter was not cheating on me. It was all smoke and mirrors."

"Shows you what I know," her mom said, shrugging, tone very much suggesting that my client was cheating on me with her boyfriend.

I shouldn't have been concerned. I shouldn't have been bothered. But if her mom was sure they were fucking, I was sure they were fucking. There's smoke and mirrors, and there's your beard leaving used condoms in your childhood bedroom's waste basket. And I wasn't upset on

my

behalf, because, of course, Fumine was my

client

and Brook was her

boyfriend

, but it was in that moment that my brain chose to fixate on the fact that Fumine had made it abundantly clear to me that she identified not as a bisexual but as a lesbian.

I shot her a look, but she was focused on her mother. "Mom, can we stop talking about Brook? I'm embarrassed about the whole thing."

"Of course, of course."

"So, Mrs.--"

"Call me Atsuko," she insisted. "And no missus!" Fumine's mom beamed. "Not anymore!" I'd never seen someone so pleased to be getting a divorce. Go off, I guess. Her expression darkened a bit as she asked, "did Fumine explain everything?"

Yeah. The funeral had been the last straw for more than just Fumine. Atsuko had finally made the decision she'd always been too afraid to make. Less than twenty-four hours after her father was in the ground, she'd served her husband divorce papers. She waited until everything was official to reach out to her daughter, unsure if Fumine would ever talk to her again. There had been no contingency. Just faith that she was doing the right thing.

I didn't need to interrogate my feelings to know I was jealous of my client.

And--maybe that's what it was, the feeling that drove me to hold her hand more than I needed to at lunch that day. The thing that put an edge to my faked affections. I felt like I deserved

more

from her. And I couldn't tell you what we

ate

that day, or what Atsuko and I talked about, but I can tell you how soft Fumine's thigh was under the table, how cautiously quiet she was as I overstepped, how warm her cheeks were when I kissed her good-bye outside the restaurant.

"It was so good to meet you for real, Scarlotte." Atsuko wouldn't stop shaking my hand. "And--I need to thank you."

"

Thank

me?" I chuckled, unremembering.

"Well, yes. It was your passionate words that helped me see my cowardice."

Fumine said nothing, just pretended to be extremely interested in the cracked mall sidewalk.

#

"My mother wants to see you again."

When she sent that text, it hadn't been more than three days since the steam tray place. My nobler parts were certain that Fumine and I needed to talk about where this was going--or, better yet, not talk about anything again ever--but the annoying trans gf in me just texted back "damn, am I dating you or your mom."

"She wants to make up for lost time"

I didn't know what to say to that. Fumine was supposed to have a retort for my bad joke. She was supposed to say "I'm dating Brook, idiot." But she didn't do either of those things. And I didn't do what

I

was supposed to do: block her, delete her number.

"What's the plan?" I asked. That was plausibly deniable, right? I just meant

what's the game plan

,

how do we want to play this?

"At Panisse's," Fumine wrote back. "In Oceanview. Noon on Friday."

Block her. Delete her number. "I'll see you there."

"Looking forward to it"

#

At Panisse's that Friday was... uncomfortable, for a lot of reasons. For one it's this world-famous Oceanview joint with sky-high prices and fancy plating that makes working class dolls like me feel even less belonging than usual. For another, Fumine's mom was

on one

.

Atsuko wanted to join my gym. Atsuko wanted to do brunch on Sundays--not

this

Sunday,

Sundays

. Atsuko wanted to talk about Thanksgiving. Atsuko, suddenly separated from her husband, her relatives, her church, wanted

family.

"We need to talk," I hissed when Atsuko was in the restroom.

Fumine looked away. "I can keep paying you."

"It's not the money, it's--" How could she not see the problem? "You hired me for a one-off

prank

, Fumine. Your mom wants me to have your babies. This can't keep going. Someday she's going to know this was all a lie."

Fumine tugged at the hem of the tablecloth. She still couldn't make eye contact. "She doesn't need to. We'll 'date' for a month or so, and then we'll break up, and none of this will matter." Something thick and rancid washed through me. "I just don't want her to know the funeral was a gimmick. Once a little more time has passed--"

Her voice was trembling.

I reached for her face, made her look at me. There were tears in her eyes, and something else. I'd ignored the something else when she was paying me after the funeral, confident that that would be the end of that. I couldn't ignore the something else any longer.

"Fuck you," I said.

She recoiled. "I--what? I don't--What?"

But Atsuko chose that moment to return from the restroom, so we busied ourselves with our salads while Atsuko educated me on her preferred Christmas activities.