A Romantic Story

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Two shemale friends marry for convenience but find passion.
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YKN4949
YKN4949
5,864 Followers

"Oh my God, a honeymoon! How romantic! We went on cruise for our honeymoon too!" the bleach blonde, taut-skinned woman of about 42 sitting across from us gushed. She had that sort of drawn look that pretty woman who resist aging get. Hannah always called it "Courtney Cox Syndrome." But I wasn't focusing on her. Even looking across the table would make my head swim a little bit. It was our first meal on the cruise and, in the wide expanse of the dining room, I could see (and feel) the motion of the ocean. They said it was calm seas from New York to the Bahamas, but I'd never been on a ship before.

"How did you two meet?" the husband of the blonde woman said. Since it was just Hannah and me on the trip, we'd been partnered up with a few other people. No tables for two. The husband looked a few years older than his wife (but probably wasn't). He had that square-jawed, graying at the temples, aging gracefully thing that I usually found pretty irresistible in men. But my stomach did a little flip as I tried to look up at him. My eyes darted down to the table. I let Hannah handle it.

"It's a cute story, really," Hannah said, turning and looking at me with a smile. We'd promised before we'd decided to take the cruise that we wouldn't outright lie about anything, unless we were placed directly on the spot. It'd be hard to keep any story straight. But, we'd shade the truth as we needed to, "About ten years ago, I was in the city and I am walking out of the subway and I see this pretty girl behind me. I didn't think anything of it. I had an appointment ten blocks from the subway stop and I start walking. Ten winding blocks, not just a straight shot, I should say. And I turn back at one point, and I notice this pretty girl is following me. I ignore it, no big deal. But block after block, she's still behind me. And I feel like she wants me to know that she is following me, because she is always staring at me..."

"I never remember that part," I say, interjecting as I always did at that point in the story. But I regretted speaking immediately, opening my mouth seemed to invite trouble.

"Emma doesn't remember it, but she doesn't deny it either," Hannah said, lifting one finger up in the air for emphasis.

"Oh my god, you're such a cute couple! I mean your both so pretty and just, clearly so compatible!" the blonde woman said, and, despite myself, I blushed, even though I assumed she was mostly talking about Hannah. Hannah was, after all, very pretty. She had the straightest, silkiest blonde hair I'd ever seen in my life. Big, almond shaped eyes with such long lashes they looked fake. A long, slender, almost regal nose and perfect, pouty pink lips. She would always complain that she was "on the scrawnier side of anorexic," but, of course, that wasn't true. She was slender, but still curvy with pert, small breasts, a flat stomach, perfect flared hips and long, delicate legs. She was 30 years old, but looked like the captain of the high school cheer squad.

I looked younger than my 30 years as well, but not, to my mind, in a good way. I had mousy brown hair that I, for reasons I didn't really understand, always put in pigtails. I had bangs that hung down almost to my eyebrows. I had big eyes too, but they made me look overly innocent (I think). I had a tiny nose and light pink lips. My body was small, with little apple breasts and delicate curves. I was almost five inches shorter than Hannah, and she was only 5'6. Mousy might be the best word to describe me in general, not just the color of my hair. Hannah, of course, always rejected that characterization, she said I had a "girl-next-door" look. I guess, as friends sometimes do, we each sort of wished we were the other person.

"Anyway," Hannah said, returning to the story, "She keeps following me and following me and I get more and more upset set, tenser and tenser with each passing step. It is weird and I've never experienced anything like that before. I get to the building where I have my appointment and I turn in and figure that's the end. She's gone. But this crazy...girl follows me into the building!" Hannah usually said 'bitch' when she told the story, but she seemed to be cleaning it up for our sophisticated cruise friends. "I sort of run over to the elevator to get away from her. City people are nuts, I figured she wanted to like...cut my face off and wear it. I get in the elevator and push the number and she sprints up and gets in. I stand real far away, terrified of her."

"I am 105 pounds soaking wet. And was then too," I reminded our listeners and they laughed. Hannah ignored us and kept going.

"There are like 30 floors in this building, but this crazy girl gets in and doesn't push anything. I pushed the 15th floor and she doesn't say anything. She just keeps stealing glances at me," I demonstratively roll my eyes (the most I could manage), but Hannah kept talking, "So I get to the 15th floor and I step off and she follows me. And she turns and follows me down another hallway. And then we get to my doctor's office and she turns to follow me in. And I am terrified and annoyed and upset. I can't take it anymore."

"She's paranoid," I opined to the cruisers and they laugh again. I might not have felt well, but I couldn't ignore the rhythm of a good story, I had to play my part.

"And so I turn to her and I say, 'Alright, you psycho! Don't think I don't know what you're doing. I am not afraid of you. I have pepper spray in my purse and I am not afraid to use it!'"

"And," I cut in, realizing I was feeling a little better because I enjoyed the way Hannah told the story, "At that exact moment, as my jaw drops on the floor, the door to the doctor's office opens up and the nurse walks out and she says, 'Oh Hannah, Emma, you're both here. The doctor is waiting." There is half a beat as the punchline lands. And now the couple roars with laughter.

"So I say, 'Oh, I thought you were following me,' with as much dignity as I can muster. And I walk in," She said. She didn't mention that as soon as I followed her into the waiting room, she started laughing and apologized about thirty times. I was laughing too hard to hold a grudge. The doctor received an unexpected phone call and we spent the next twenty minutes talking to one another. I don't even remember what we talked about, but it was simply natural. It was an instant connection, a friendship that I fell into in a way I'd never experienced before. I'd never even really had someone I'd considered a "best friend" before (a difficult childhood, let's say), and then in a matter of minutes I had one.

"And we've been inseparable ever since," I said. The blonde woman smiled indulgently, and the man nodded along, looking over at me.

"Oh what a wonderful story!" She said. She then told began telling the story of how she met her husband. Apparently she was dating someone else, he'd swept her off her feet. There'd been a fist fight. All very dramatic and romantic. The husband added his observations with relish, looking lovingly at his wife. I wanted to eat that story up, because it was the kind of thing that I loved. The kind of story that I aspired to have one day. But I couldn't focus on it because I could sense Heather looking over at me, trying not to grin.

Of course, the story we told was true. But it wasn't the whole story. What we didn't say is that the doctor was an endocrinologist, and we'd both been going to the same place because we were both transgirls, going to the doctor to get a check on our hormones. And that a big part of our bonding was that we'd been so happy to find someone else in the city going through exactly the same thing. Even now, having this loving couple moon over us, I wondered if they'd be as open minded about a couple of 'shemales' as they were about a hip young lesbian couple. I figured there was no reason to find out.

"Did you start dating right away?" the blonde woman asked. I was at a loss as to how to answer this somewhat loaded question without giving away the whole truth, I wondered if we were already backed into a corner where we had to tell the truth. But Hannah (always so creative) was on it. She sidestepped the problem.

"Well, I moved in around, what? Six years ago now?" She asked, which was also true. She'd moved into my little apartment when her boyfriend broke up with her and there was no place else for her to go. Not that it was any sort of hardship for me. She had been over at my apartment almost every day for the previous four years. Where else would if make sense for her to live?

"When did you decide to get married?" the blonde woman asked, resting her chin in her hand an leaning forward onto the table. Once again, I wouldn't have known how to answer.

"One day, I looked over at Emma," Hannah responded, "And I realized that I wasn't sure that I could live without her. What else could we do?" The woman made a sort of 'aw' sound. But I had to rapidly bring my coffee cup up to my lips to block the laugh. Hannah certainly wasn't lying about this either.

About four months earlier, Hannah had been laid off and, while I could easily pick up the rent by myself (and never would have dreamed about kicking her out), Hannah lost her health insurance. Even with her job, she couldn't afford everything she needed without insurance. She had been crushed. She was desperate and scared in a way I'd never seen her before. I was scared for her.

I don't know what made me think of it. Maybe it was that Carol in accounting had just gotten married. But I realized that the benefits that I got at work were stellar. What was the point in letting a friend be in danger? I hadn't asked, I'd told Hannah that we were getting married. I mean it couldn't be a fraud. I had to send in the marriage certificate. So we'd gone down to the courthouse and gotten it done. A few days later, Hannah was holding an insurance card. Oh, and I had a wife.

We looked at our marriage first as a necessity, to prevent Hannah from losing her medicines. But secondarily, we looked at it as a joke. We'd spent out twenties, side by side, searching for men who would want to spend their lives with us. Turns out, we were the only people who could stand one another. It was funny, and it didn't mean anything more than Hannah would stay my 'wife' until she got a new job or found someone to marry her for real. We'd had a lot of fun walking around our small apartments, having little fights and talking about how the honeymoon was over.

But the honeymoon had, actually, caused a little bit of trouble. My employer was very generous and, as a matter of policy, granted employees two weeks off, paid, when they got married or had a kid. They even gave a small "life event" bonus. My boss told me to go somewhere, have fun. I didn't really want to take the time off, but what was I supposed to do? Admit to the fact that the 'marriage' was a sham and I didn't want to go? I had to take the time. At first, my plan was to just sit around at home. But, having been laid off for awhile, Hannah wanted nothing to do with that. Besides, she said, we might never get another chance for a paid vacation again. We deserved to have a little bit of fun, she promised me a good time by paying for the drinks. And what if we never got our own honeymoon? With that unhappy thought in my mind, I'd booked a cruise (it was the cheapest nine-day-long option). And so, here we were.

"Well enjoy yourselves!" the woman said, "I can still remember every moment of my honeymoon!" And she looked almost longingly at her husband as she did. She reached for his hand and he wrapped his palm around her fingers He smiled warmly and looked at his wife as though they were, again, on their honeymoon.. I felt a little twinge, and I wasn't sure what it was.

"We've enjoyed it so far," I responded, "except for the sea sickness."

"Eventually, the bad memories sort of fade. You only really remember the good times, isn't that right Andrew?" the wife asked. The man turned to his wife and gave a little nod. He didn't respond for awhile, just looking at her with such perfect love, that it was clear that no words needed to be said. But, for our benefit, he spoke.

"Marriage is an indescribable thing. It isn't just a ceremony, or even a lifelong promise," he explained, "It is a frame of mind. An agreement between two people, to turn their passion into commitment. To turn churning emotions that are love into something solid. It is a...lovely institution," the man said. The wife made a little "aw" sort of sound. But I nearly gasped.

The man's words seemed to have solidified something in my that had been bothering me ever since...ever since the ceremony at the courthouse. I in no way regretted my decision to 'marry' Hannah, so the feeling had been sort of hard to place. But I thought back over the romantic story of this couple, I thought about the beautiful expression of love that this man had just made, and a feeling of intense jealousy suddenly attached to these people. But I realized it had been there before, something sort of amorphous, waiting for something to attach to. Even before I'd met this couple, I'd been jealous of the love they had. The kind of love that I'd always wanted but never been able to find. Or even, really, come close to. And now I was married to someone, and I loved her. But not like that. There was no passion, or even a pretense of romance. We were friends. We looked at our marriage as a joke. A joke honeymoon, because we'd never have a real one. And in that moment, as happy as I was that Hannah was healthy, I longed for some real passion and romance in my life. I needed a kind of love that felt farther away than ever.

Hannah must've seen something in my face, even if she didn't really know what it was. She was, after all, my greatest friend. She moved immediately to change the subject, to lighten the mood. I knew that she was doing it for me.

"Well," Hannah said, "Emma always said I was going to end up in an institution. Who knew?" She asked, and the married couple looked at each other and they laughed again. But all it did was remind me how crazy, and really, how sad, all of this really was.

* * * * *

I hadn't really expected to enjoy the cruise. It really wasn't my kind of scene, generally. Lots of drinking, all you can eat food, organized excursions, dance clubs, casinos, and small talk with strangers. I hated all of those things individually. But somehow...on the cruise, it all ended up being a lot of fun. I drank daiquiris, I ate trayloads of bacon, I lost $250.00 at the casino, and I made a bunch of acquaintances that I didn't hate. And, I'd still gotten to do the things I liked to do. I laid out on the deck in my bikini and I'd gotten a decent tan while I read magazines and even part of a book. I'd slept in late and eaten breakfast in bed. It was great.

It was all the more surprising that I'd had fun, because the first full day of the cruise had started off looking like it was going to be terrible. I was already in a bad mood because of the first night in our stateroom. 'd been unwilling to spring for the "honeymoon suite" so we'd gotten a regular room. It was the size of a good-sized bathroom and only had a double bed and a small porthole. It smelled sort of dank and the bathroom was entirely black rubber, I guess because water was going to slosh around. There wasn't even enough room for one of us to sleep on the floor if we wanted to. So we crammed into the small bed, getting in each other's way and feeling uncomfortable because, after all, it was the first night of our honeymoon. Maybe the only honeymoon I'd ever have.

When I woke up, Hannah was already gone. The room was overly humid, probably from Hannah using the shower, and I had a minor headache. I felt claustrophobia in the tiny room and decided not bother with a shower myself. I quickly put on a bathing suit (a new blue and yellow bikini) and threw on a white mesh cover up on over the bikini and headed out.

The formal dining room we'd been in the previous night was only for the "fancy" meal. I headed up two floors to the cafeteria, where the other, all-you-could eat meals were offered. I figured that Hannah was there and I was going to catch up with her. I was, I admit, a little annoyed with her. She knew that I didn't like exploring new places by myself. And she I'd had motion sickness the previous night. I felt better now, but there was no way for her to know that.

The whole cruise ship seemed garish in its orange paint and bright red carpets. I moved as quickly as I could, just keeping my eyes open for the signs for the cafeteria. Eventually, I reached it. I sidled up into a line with breakfast food. There were at least two dozen people in front of me, probably more. I looked around as I waited and saw the cafeteria was swarming with people. There were packs of unsupervised children running across the deck, screaming at the tops of their lungs. There were old people loading their plates with free food (even though they could come back as many times as they wanted). There were young, attractive (and unattractive) people wearing little and clearly trying to attract one another. In short, it was a theater of the grotesque and it felt like the world was closing in on me. I looked out into the distance, and saw the shockingly bright blue water extending out in every direction. I realized I was both stranded in the middle of nowhere and surrounded by a wall of humanity a the same time and my stomach lurched.

"Go ahead and move up," a voice behind me said. I took a deep breath and shook my head, trying to get a hold on myself. I looked forward and saw that two or three people had moved forward and there was a five foot gap in front of me to the line.

"Sorry," I said, looking over my shoulder at the guy who'd prodded me forward. He was middle-aged, with a thick gray mustache and watery eyes.

"People will cut you in line if you give 'em half a chance," the man explained. I moved forward quickly, closing the gap.

"Sorry," I said again. It didn't seem to me to be that big of a deal, but I wasn't trying to antagonize the guy.

"You don't need to be sorry, you just need to focus on what you're doing," the man explained to me. I felt my cheeks growing red and my anxiety flared higher.

"I will," I said, trying to disengage from the man. He laughed sort of ruefully.

"Maybe you will, but you ain't right now," he said, pointing. I looked forward and gap had, once again, formed about two feet wide between me and the rest of the line. I stepped forward, my head feeling like it was filled with air, the pressure in my sinuses grow more and more intense. I was so flustered by this man and his near-total focus on my line-standing ability that I found myself feeling embarrassed and cowed, like I'd done something really wrong. Maybe I had.

"I'm sorry," I repeated for a third time, and stepped forward.

"You're sorry a lot," the man said, giving a little huffing laugh, "Guess you got your reasons. Move forward lady, jeez, do I need to tell you each time?" My heart was fluttering uncomfortably now. I wanted to turn and run back to my room. But I knew then that all the eyes in the place would turn and look at me, and I just couldn't handle that. I knew there was some sort of easy way out of this, something I could say that would defuse the situation, or at least allow me to ignore this guy. But I couldn't think of what those things were. Instead, I did what usually did, when faced with this level of confrontation: I hunched my shoulders and retreated into myself, letting my discomfort form a hard shell around me.

"Now goddamnit, you've done it!" the man said, and my eyes fluttered back to him. His arms were crossed in front of his chest and there were white spit bubbles on his lips. He looked enraged, "You got us cut!" I turned again and looked in front of me, mortified. God this guy was right, I was incompetent. But, almost instantly, my anxiety receded.

YKN4949
YKN4949
5,864 Followers