✅ My Cousin's Keeper [NaNoWriMo 2021]

146. My Final Solution

This bonus chapter is dedicated to Peter. Thank you for all your support! Any my apologies for any typos I missed in this chapter; as I'm having some trouble seeing the screen right now

By the time I'd finished my half of all the paperwork for Ffrances becoming a homeowner, I realised that it was almost time for her to be home. I'd been planning to make something special for lunch, so that she would have time to relax after a long day at work. I knew that morning shifts were always stressful for her. I cursed under my breath, hoping that she would be excited enough about the movie not to notice if my preparation for this afternoon wasn't quite perfect in other ways. But when I got down to the kitchen, I realised that the delicious aromas tempting me probably should have been a clue that I didn't need to hurry.

"You don't need to do that," I told Tess with a smile. I didn't want her to get into the habit of taking on chores that would be better handled by an adult. But I couldn't deny that I'd failed to sort things out today; or that the fancy buffet she was preparing looked – and smelled – amazing.

"I could have..." I said, a half-hearted attempt at saving face, before I turned around and saw that Spike was helping to lift a tray out of the oven with some bite-size fancy pastries on. She looked different, and it took me a couple of seconds to process what I was seeing. Of course, she'd said that she was going to try wearing more feminine clothes to make me more comfortable. But I hadn't expected her to have changed already. I felt like I should have found that strange or something, but I couldn't for the life of me see why.

A couple of seconds passed before I realised what was weird. Not the girls in front of my, but my own reaction. I was sure it should have taken more than just a change of clothes to get me thinking of her as a girl. But as soon as I saw her, it hadn't even occurred to me that I was looking at a boy in a dress. One of Tess's outfits, I thought, now I looked more closely. I asked Tess if it was hers, and she confirmed it. But that didn't address the biggest question on my mind right now. My perceptions and instincts weren't doing what I thought they should, and I knew that somebody would have found it funny.

"So does this mean..." I said, and then realised that she might not know what had surprised me so much. How much would Ffrances have told them? She probably would have kept it to herself. After a second, I settled on just asking "Did Ffrances talk to you?"

I'd told Ffrances that I wanted Spike to be a girl more, so that I would be more comfortable. So it might have seemed only natural that she would tweak my responses, so that could happen more naturally. Making me think of Spike as a girl whenever she dressed the part. She might not even have told Spike what she was doing; might have let her think it was her own idea.

Tess thought I meant talking about the movie we would be watching today. I'd told Ffrances that I had a treat for her, but not what it actually was. Spike realised that I meant the dress, and said that it was all her own idea. Well, that was entirely possible. Or maybe this was something that she'd been talking with Ffrances about for longer than I had realised. Still, I didn't want to explore the idea any further, not in front of Tess. If she realised that I'd been trying to push her girlfriend towards something like this, she might have been pretty upset.

Of course, it was clearly working. But I still wanted to ensure that Spike changed mentally, rather than just her clothes. I didn't know if there was anything I needed to say about that right now, but I figured it was as good an excuse as any to separate the two, so that I could catch Tess on her own before the movie started.

"Can I talk to you for a second before we start the movie?" I asked. Spike nodded, and it seemed that Tess was quite capable of serving up all the food that she'd made by herself, while we waited for Ffrances to get here again. I took Spike aside into the hallway, so that we wouldn't be in the way while Tess was setting out whatever she was offering us for lunch.