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Image Credits: Title Picture purchased and licensed for publishing from

123rf.com. The model in this image in no way supports nor conveys the issues and situations brought up within the story. The models use within this work is solely for the representation of looks of the main character of this particular story. ~Sephrena

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*Before…

And it’s like just after five thirty in the morning and I’m all caught up with the feelings and singing it with Alex and it’s so good, so like 80’s or something but like so good…I mean it kinda is really feel good kind of music and it…this.

Me being Jade…

Even after it’s done I trail off with me still singing… “Flyin away on a wing and a prayer…”
“Who could it be….Believe it or not it’s just me…”

*And Now…

I’ve been here before but it’s always been one of those parent trips and stuff and I’ve liked Boston though the few times that I’ve been here the traffic set me on edge. I’ve been to Halifax and to be that’s kinda crazy the way they drive there but really it’s never had anything on the traffic here.

But like this hour of the morning it’s not so bad. I mean we’re steering clear of the highways and stuff and the express ways because it’s nearly six so people that have to commute are actually already doing it.

Though it’s still really nice in this very different way. I’ve never really done this before and being out driving around as the sun is coming up is very cool. It’s cool because I’d never…ever get to do this. Well at least until college or something. There’s just something about the morning steam from all the hot water hitting the sewers so you get the plumes from the grates and manhole and then there’s the little fleets of cabs like in groups still just waiting for the calls at the starts of their shifts and in the parking areas of their morning coffee spot of choice. The guys with the stores and newsstands opening up and grabbing the bales of their daily papers and stuff and then there’s the cool buildings.

Boston has a lot of cool older buildings and stuff and they actually have a lot of modern stuff too I don’t know what half of these places are and Alex and I aren’t really touring so much as cruising but before it gets like all crazy and stuff we’re sort of able to slow down and take a lot of it all in.

We even make it down to see some of the bayside as we’re driving and the sun’s up now and I can see stuff like the big tanker and cargo ships out there and a couple of docked cruise ship types. Just some really neat stuff and it’s so making my morning to be one of the best one’s I’ve ever really had.

I’m not hard to please really.

Just stuff like this, a chance to be me.

Alex looks at me. “Breakfast?”

“Oh no, not yet I feel like I’m eating all the time since I got here. But a coffee?”

“What kind I mean I want to go to Starbucks later but I’d rather go someplace else.”

I look at him and he’s skinny but he’s also a guy. He’s a teenaged guy. “You’re hungry again aren’t you?”

He blushes. “A little but I can eat later.”

“Alex if you want to stop and get something we can just because I’m not all that hungry doesn’t mean you can’t eat.”

“But if we go in and I’m eating and you’re not it’ll look weird.”

“Who cares we’re not from here.”

“Okay there is that. You sure?”

“Ohmigawd…yes I’m sure!” I roll my eyes, jeeze are all guys like this?

He looks sheepish but he sort of smiles and he keeps driving and looking around and we pass a few places until we find what he’s looking for.

An IHOP.

I have never been to one in my life.

“Okay, I might be a little bit hungry.”

Alex looks at me.

“What? I’ve never been to one of these places before and they always look so good on TV.”

He grins. “I’ve only been to a couple of them but they are pretty awesome actually.”

I’m smiling and I’m blushing but smiling too as he pulls into the parking lot and he actually holds his finger up. “Just a sec.”

“Uhm okay.”

Then he comes around and he opens my door.

Oh…oh okay that was kind of awesome.

I slip out of the van and smooth out my clothes and grin a little bit at Alex who closes the door for me and we walk together inside and he opens the door for me in there too.

It really is the kind sweet little things really. I’ve never really had this and actually I tried not to dream about it too much because it felt like just such a stretch but wow…seeing the girls that got some of this old school treatment I was so jealous sometimes.

Not that I need it or that women need the special treatment either because while it’s nice and everything it’s not needed all the time and stuff. But I’m a transgirl…

Feminists and the hard critics about us say that we don’t have stuff like they do like the hardships and all the bad stuff that comes with being born a girl that we don’t have a shared girlhood.

But they don’t get that we do, only a transwoman’s a transgirl’s shared childhood is something entirely different and stuff. We have things in our heart that we treasure that they can’t or usually don’t we have the pain of dysphoria that they can’t understand and we see the entire aspect of being female differently than most of them.

It doesn’t mean we’re not women, it’s just different like how ethnic feminism is different than mainstream feminisms because those women face a whole different set of things as opposed to first world generally white girls.

Sorry…I was mentally Tumbrilining.

You get that way when you’re trying to have your voice heard online as a transperson and you keep running into people that just hate you for the thought of your existence.

Point is I really am sooo into getting this kind of sweetness and courtesy. It’s so nice and it’s for me and not a day-dream or an idle fantasy but just real and it’s for me which is really cool.

We get inside and get a nice booth that has a window and sunshine coming in and it smells awesome in here. Its waffle and pancakes and sausage and bacon and all sorts of yayness.

The girl comes with our menus and I’m looking and there’s stuff that I’ve never even heard of like NY cheesecake pancakes and Jelly doughnut pancakes and those are kinda eeew…too sweet I think for me. I'm kinda liking the idea of the strawberry banana ones or the whole wheat and banana ones but I’m actually looking at the plain buttermilk ones.

There is something to be said for a plain really light and fluffy well-made pancake.

Alex looks at me. “So what looks good to you?”

“I’d like to try the buttermilk stack.”

“Really but we’re here and it’s kind of the point to try something different.”

“But I like regular pancakes.”

“C’mon live a little.”

He looks so earnest and it kind of hits that he wants to make this special for me. I do another blush and smile and I look at the menu again and sort of hide my face a bit too. Yeah I’m a blusher but it’s the interest and him just being him plus out in public-public and not the hotel and I’m kinda smiling a bit too and I feel oddly shy about smiling like this because of the way that he’s being with me.

“So you’ll help me eat them if I can’t do the whole thing?”

“Definitely.”

“Then I want the jelly doughnut pancakes then.”

“And I’ll get the NY cheesecake ones.”

The waitress comes over and she takes our orders and Alex orders a breakfast sampler too for us to split and we both get coffee. I usually am a double-double girl and stuff home but this is going to be really sweet so I do what my dad does and get coffee with milk on the side and I put just enough milk in it to make it not eye-blinkingly black and I use it to deal with the sweet.

I smile actually after my first bite of the jelly doughnut pancake.

“Good?” Alex asks.

“Not bad, I actually don’t mind raspberry I was worried that I’d be grape.”

“What’s wrong with grape?”

“Grape jelly’s actually just not a thing up home. We have it but it’s still not a thing with us.”

“But what do you put on a peanut butter and jelly sandwich?”

“We don’t, at least not where I grew up.”

He looks at me. “You guys don’t have PB&J sandwiches.”

“Oh we do only home its peanut butter and jam.”

“What’s the difference?”

“Jelly is fruitless it’s just the essence and stuff like Jell-O, Jam has the fruit.”

“Oh…well that’s just odd.”

I nod while eating and break off some of the hashbrown in the sampler to cut the sweetness of the other stuff. “There’s a lot of differences and we’re not that far away from each other.”

He nods and chews his food and swallows with coffee before talking. “It’s a good thing actually I think. Canada’s kind of neat and stuff.”

I shrug. “Well I live there or rather in like the valley so it’s not all that neat.”

Alex looks at me head tilted. “That’s the Annapolis valley right?”

“Y..Yeah how’d you?”

“I’ve been y’know Portland…I’ve been to Nova Scotia a couple of times.”

“Okay…yeah we just call it the valley.”

“I figured.”

We eat and we talk and I’m explaining the appeal of Tim Horton’s over Starbucks and telling him about home. Okay I know I bag-on home a lot but there’s some cool stuff. Like St-Anne de Beau-Pre it’s a touristy thing and stuff and it’s a monument to the Acadians and the expulsion of them to the United States by the British and no it’s not in Greenwood but it’s really close and it’s actually really, really pretty.

And I tell him about Upper Clements Park which is cool to me again and stuff but it really sort of has nothing on like US amusement parks and stuff. I tell him about going to Antigonish and being in the Air force cadets which makes him raise his eyebrows until I told him that I quit it because it was either be one of the guys and be all macho or watch the other girls and stuff in their stuff and be dying of jealous on the inside.

I think I’m rambling and stuff and it’s likely from the sugar and the caffeine and we leave and Alex pays for everything and I do offer but he shook his head no and smiled that smile and said. “My treat I asked you out.”

“But…but…”

“Jade you have a cute butt.”

“Alex…….” I’m blushing a lot now and my voice went into the whole high girly whine and stuff but at the same time again it’s.

It’s Kawaii…

Yeah I know it’s Japanese and I’m Chinese but I’m an anime geekette and the only time learning Chinese has ever appealed to me is seeing how it got used in Firefly.

But as we’re going back to the van and even driving we’re talking about stuff. Like stuff I’ve never heard of like Coffee-milk and Griddle or Johnny-Cakes that are like a corn-meal pancake that we don’t have home either and stuff like fast food.

Home there’s no Applebee’s or Sonic no Long John Silvers or Popeye’s.

But there’s no Swiss Chalet or St. Hubert’s here and we both have Red Lobster’s in both place and Alex and I both hold them in that kind of contempt that only a Mainer and a Bluenoser might have.

Bluenoser’s are kind of a slang term for people from Nova Scotia. Despite what people west of the Maritime Provinces say we’re not Newfies, Newfies are from Newfoundland.

Which is a whole other thing and Alex is laughing as I’m telling Newfie jokes.

He actually starts getting them but has to stop at a gas station’s parking lot when I start trotting out the “You know you’re a Newfie-Jedi when…” jokes.

… “You’ve ever used your lightsaber to quarter a moose.”

… “You’ve ever eaten bottled Ewok.”

… “The best part of being on Dagobah was the lovely weather.”

… “If you’ve ever used your landspeeder to escape the wildlife officers.”

… “When even C3-PO can’t understand what you’re saying.”

He’s really laughing hard and that’s kind of awesome because I’ve actually never really done this either. I’ve never had the chance to cut loose and be the funny girl.

Or the funny geeky-girl.

I mean I’m or at least in my head I’m into all the girly-girl stuff and I love the make-up I have and my hair even in boy mode is really super important to me and stuff and I sort of swoon over dresses and cute clothes I’m still a geekette in my heart.

And it’s really nice to just be that, to just be myself.

Heck, actually I’m learning to be myself.

Which I never get to be and that’s a big deal for me.

Gods and Goddesses Alex was so unexpected.

I never thought that watch a boy laugh, like really laugh would make me feel this way.

Make my heart go all flippy-floppy and just so full.

Yeah…so crushing.

I want to reach out and do the thumb thing to the tears on his face…I want to reach out and touch his hair and move it out from his eyes.

Be happy with this Jade my head’s telling me, be happy because this might be as close as you might ever get. He’s your friend he’s really sweet and really cool but he’s sooo new to this even newer than you are to this.

Be happy with this and don’t freak him out.

It’s sobering stuff but it still doesn’t wreck the mood or the feelings that I’m having…it’s just part of the kind of butterflies that girls like me have to go through when we like someone.

Alex recovers and we start up again and we head off to “The Container Store.” Now that it’s open. I go in with him and it’s another thing that I don’t think that we have home. We might but not anywhere that I’ve been.

It’s actually exactly what it sounds like containers of all kinds and all the shelving stuff and all the labeling stuff that you could imagine. It’s just fun to go in with him and look at things I’m not really buying though if I was home I would because some of the shelving stuff and click-stack bin that are actually also drawer are kind of awesome and I could use them home.

He buys some white marker? And a stencil in cursive and a green marker and some white circle labels and a large red box. Well not large but it’s one of those boxes that is red and shiny and looks like a box that you’d get at a doughnut place.

It’s actually pretty fun to sit in the parking lot and watch him use the stencil and the white marker to decorate the box to say. Deevil Doughnuts and then he draws in green mark on those little white label this face that when you look at it looks like this reptilian demon man’s face…well like Aahz from the Myth Books.

I have all of them home and Robert Asprin’s like sort of an older writer and stuff but the guy at the used book store recommended the first book to me and I’ve been a fan ever since.

I’m actually grinning all the way back and I’m kinda excited when we go to Starbucks and buy some coffee’s and we get some extra cups and Alex gets one of the barista people to use their pen thing to write Pervish on each lid.

Oh I’m such a geekette it’s almost embarrassing.

Then it’s a stop at Crispy Cream to get the box of doughnuts filled.

It’s amazing what we’ll do for Cosplay and Alex is just doing this as props for his Cosplay look for a D&D game.

I think that’s pretty awesome.

And…and then we’re done.

We’re back to the hotel and all the way back to our floor and I’m looking at him and it’s just…it’s just that I kinda want to not stop.

But I can’t.

I mean I can’t keep clinging to him.

I bite down on myself inside and I give him a hug, a tight one and he hugs me back. “I’m going to crash for a while Alex, I had an awesome time…thank you so much.”

“I had a great time too Jade, I really did.”

“Okay…have a great game.” Bite hard girl…no crying or getting weepy about this.

“Thanks Jade you’re pretty amazing…” And dammit he says that just as I’m fighting with my keycard and he leaned over and he kissed my cheek.

It’s a kiss on the cheek but it’s still a kiss on the cheek with Alex knowing.

I give him a smile that I’m not sure where I found the willpower to get on my face and he slips away and I slip into my room and lean back against the door.

Everything…everything has been just so great and alive and amazing so…so why do I feel like crying so badly.