dicot.moe

Chap­ter 1

When they open the door, a stray cat is there, soak­ing wet with rain.

“I got dumped,” she of­fers.

“Oh my god,” says Fran, tak­ing her hand and pulling her in­to the warmth of the apart­ment. “Oh, no…!”

“Oh, no,” says Lia, eyes wide with con­cern. “Oh, no, you poor thing…”

“You poor thing!” Fran agrees.

The cat’s ears flick back. “I’m okay,” she says, break­ing the feed­back loop. “I mean — I’m okay. I’m fine. I feel good, ac­tu­al­ly.”

“Yeah?” says Fran.

“Yeah?” says Lia, help­ing the cat pull off her drenched jack­et.

“Yeah. I mean… y—yeah.” They’re pulling her through the tiny, rick­ety hall of their apart­ment. Es­cort­ing her like a wound­ed an­i­mal. They sit her down in the mid­dle of their dingy so­fa, and crowd around her, coo­ing and wav­ing their hands as they try to find some way to treat her wounds.

The cat works up her courage again. “It’s, it’s a good thing he dumped me, I mean. He, we, we would­n’t have worked out.”

“I al­ways thought he was a jerk,” Fran huffs.

“The next time I see him, he won’t know what’s com­ing,” Lia says, grind­ing her knuck­les in­to her palm.

“What hap­pened, though?” says Fran, sud­den­ly talk­ing to the cat for the first time.

She balks. “He! I mean! Y’­know! He…” Her ears are all the way back as she fig­ures out how to phrase the com­ing words. “He said I was too… fem­i­nine.”

Fran ex­plodes. “Too fem­i­nine? What a fuck­ing… what a fuck­ing…”

Lia shakes her head. “Dis­gust­ing.”

“In­ter­nal­ized ho­mo­pho­bia.”

“The worst.”

“You’re too good for him, J—”

The cat sud­den­ly butts in. “He said, that, he was on­ly in­ter­est­ed in… men who act like men. So I said, um, I told him, that, uh…”

“Oh my god,” Lia says, sim­mer­ing.

Fran looks dead­ly. “He’s not wel­come in this town any­more.”

“How can any­one be so self-loathing?”

“I’m go­ing to pay him a vis­it.”

“No, we’re both gonna —”

“I TOLD HIM,” the cat prac­ti­cal­ly shouts, “THAT I’M A GIRL.”

The sud­den si­lence in the apart­ment is over­whelm­ing. The win­dows rat­tle through the roar of the rain, squeez­ing all of the space out of the room.

“I told him I’m a girl,” she re­peats, qui­et­ly. “S—so, he dumped me, of course. A—and, so, um, I don’t have any­where to stay any­more…”

Lia is the first to break the si­lence. She pulls the cat in­to a tight em­brace from her side of the couch. Her arms are buff, and warm, and she pulls her in as firm­ly as she can, as if to shoo the rest of the rot­ten world away.

“You can stay with us as long as you want,” Lia coos.

“Yeah,” says Fran, join­ing in from the oth­er end. “Don’t you wor­ry about a thing, sweet­ie.”

“We’re your best friends.”

“You’re our best friend.”

“We love you.”

“Yeah, we love you a lot…”

---

Lia is tall, and buff. Her up­per arms are about as wide around as one of the cat’s scrawny thighs, and she has long, flat blonde hair and the eyes of a con­cerned maid­en. She’s a jack­al girl with a long face and tall, perky ears. De­spite ev­ery­thing, she’s a calm­ing pres­ence to be around.

Her girl­friend, Fran, could­n’t be more un­like her. A short, chub­by rac­coon with a braid, scary eyes and an off-putting de­meanor that be­lies the fact that she’s at least as sweet as her girl­friend. Usu­al­ly. To the right peo­ple.

And their mu­tu­al best friend. The cat. She’s tallish, though her eyes on­ly meet the lev­el of Li­a’s lips. She’s thin as a stick with messy black curls and a ner­vous look. It does­n’t mat­ter when, or where — she’s ner­vous about some­thing.

She’s ner­vous right now — nat­u­ral­ly. But in spite of all that’s hap­pened to­day, and the bomb she just dropped, she’s odd­ly col­lect­ed. Af­ter eat­ing some re­heat­ed stew in awk­ward si­lence, she’s back on the so­fa, try­ing to think of words to say, but noth­ing will come out. She is­n’t cry­ing, but she is­n’t sure what she’s feel­ing, ei­ther.

It does­n’t help that her best friends, sit­ting on ei­ther side of her, are twid­dling their thumbs. They can’t seem to form words ei­ther. The cat knew that com­ing out to them would go okay, but she was­n’t sure what more she was ex­pect­ing.

Fran is the first to break the si­lence. “So, um, have you thought about names at all? What should we call you?”

The cat flicks her ears. “Oh, um… I haven’t re­al­ly come up with any­thing yet,” she lies. Of course she has, but even now, she can’t scrounge up the courage to say it out loud. Not yet.

“Oh! That’s fine,” Fran smiles. “If you ev­er do… y’­know…” She trails off in­to si­lence. The cat stares at her feet.

The win­dows rat­tle. The rain pat­ters. Fran clears her throat.

This is aw­ful. The cat hates do­ing this. It’s in her na­ture to be small and unas­sum­ing, slink by un­no­ticed. This feels like such an im­po­si­tion on her friends. She knows they care about her, but of course there’s no mag­ic words they can say to ease the ten­sion.

She does­n’t even know what she wants from them. She’s mak­ing a scene! She’s the worst! She’s tak­ing ad­van­tage of her friends to house her, and —

And then Lia blurts out. “Look, I’m just gonna say it. You’re cute as fuck.”

The cat blinks. “Um.”

“God, yeah,” says Fran, look­ing re­lieved. “Just, the cutest. Fuck your boyfriend and his masc4­masc bull­shit. You’re just like…”

“I just wan­na squeeze her for­ev­er,” says Lia, pick­ing up en­er­gy. “Y’­know?”

“Yeah! Yeah!” Fran turns back to the cat. “You’re so nice. And you’re re­al­ly pret­ty.”

“And we don’t mean that in like, a pa­tron­iz­ing way. Like, it’s not like that val­i­dates your gen­der or any­thing. Just, FYI, you’re a re­al­ly cute pret­ty girl.”

“God! Yeah! I’m sooo! Just!” Fran has both of her hands on her cheeks.

At some point, the cat re­al­izes that she’s smil­ing. She can feel her face heat­ing up. “Um, you don’t, you don’t have to say all that —”

Lia takes the cat’s long, bony fin­gers and in­ter­twines them with her own. “No way, we love you.”

Fran squeezes her oth­er hand. “Yeah, we love you. This pret­ty girl right here.”

All of a sud­den, the cat is al­most gid­dy. She’s used to get­ting swept up in their back-and-forths, but she’s nev­er seen them this af­fec­tion­ate be­fore. She starts to say some­thing, balks, and then mur­murs it too qui­et­ly to hear.

“What did you say?” asks Lia.

“S—say… say it again… th—that I’m…” She’s blush­ing up to her ears, try­ing to hide her­self in her long arms, try­ing to dis­ap­pear in­to the couch cush­ions, try­ing to es­cape from her­self in a mil­lion dif­fer­ent ways. But she push­es the words out. “Say I’m… a pret­ty girl… again.”

“Ooohh!” Lia can’t take it. Al­ready sit­ting side­ways, Lia wraps her arms around the cat’s slim frame and pulls her in so she’s sit­ting on her lap. With her arms around the cat, she al­most sings the words. “Pret­ty girl.”

Now Fran has both of her hands, squeez­ing them so hard it hurts. “Pret­ty girl!”

“A love­ly girl,” Lia agrees, hold­ing on tight. The words ring in the cat’s ears, giv­ing her mo­men­tary goose­bumps.

It’s in­tox­i­cat­ing. The cat is gig­gling qui­et­ly. She can’t help it — she’s so ex­cit­ed, so glad, so re­al. She’s a pret­ty girl. Sit­ting there with her long, bony arms, her cal­lused hands, and her crack­ing voice, she can’t help but be­lieve she’s a princess.

And when the two of them toss her around like this, she feels so small.

---

A few hours lat­er, when the rain has died down and the clock strikes eleven, Lia and Fran are look­ing tired. Be­fore ei­ther of them can mo­tion to go to bed, though, the cat gets up.

“There’s one last thing I need to do to­day,” she says, as Fran and Lia watch from the couch. She roots around in her jeans pock­ets and pulls out two small pill bot­tles. Fran looks con­fused, but Lia gets it im­me­di­ate­ly.

“Are those your…”

“I fi­nal­ly got a pre­scrip­tion filled,” the cat says with a small smile. “That’s kin­da what start­ed all this…”

“That’s so great!” Lia says, ex­cit­ed.

“I was gonna take them as soon as I left the phar­ma­cy, but I thought… I want­ed to take the first ones with friends.”

“What’s go­ing on?” asks Fran, con­fused.

“She got her girl pills,” Lia ex­plains. Fran lets out an “Oh!” like she should have known that.

The cat sits back down. In her palm are two pills: a round white one, and a tiny blue one. One to kill the T, and one to be­gin the E.

“I’m gonna do it,” she says. “I’m gonna do it,” she says again, like it’s a threat. Lia rests a hand on her shoul­der. “Here I go.”

She pops them in her mouth and tries to swal­low…

…then gets a hor­ri­fied look on her face, scram­bles for a near­by glass of wa­ter, and downs them with a big gulp. She sticks her tongue out and scrunch­es up her face from the bit­ter taste. “What was that?!”

“Oh, sor­ry,” Lia chuck­les, grin­ning wide. “I should have warned you about the spiros.”

“Y—you know about this stuff?” says the cat, sur­prise mix­ing with the dis­gust on her face.

“Oh! Yeah. Well, I’m trans too, so.”

A fast si­lence set­tles as that sinks in. Lia sud­den­ly looks ter­ri­fied. “Oh my god, I’ve told you that be­fore, haven’t I?”

“N—no!” says the cat, so dumb­found­ed that all she can do is laugh. She turns to Fran, half-ex­pec­tant­ly.

“I’m not, FYI,” Fran says plain­ly. “But me and Lia have been close for years, so…”

The cat slumps back in the so­fa, feel­ing some­thing like re­lief wash over her.

Fran leans for­ward, ex­cit­ed. “More im­por­tant­ly! How do you feel? Do you feel any­thing yet?”

“I… I don’t know.”

Lia just looks amused. “She would­n’t feel any­thing yet, Fran. This stuff takes time.”

“No,” the cat says, look­ing at the ceil­ing. “I think I do feel some­thing.”

“Ooh, what?” asks Fran.

“I feel… safe.”

---

“So, um… we got­ta go to bed now,” says Fran. “You should come too, if you want.”

The cat is stand­ing awk­ward­ly, un­sure of where to put her body. She looks to­wards the rat­ty couch.

Lia in­ter­jects. “You don’t wan­na sleep on the so­fa. Weird bugs come out of it at night.”

“Yeah, you should come sleep in our room,” says Fran, tak­ing the cat’s hand. “Don’t wor­ry, there’s no im­po­si­tion or any­thing.”

“Yeah, we’d love to have you.”

The cat is­n’t sure where this is go­ing as she fol­lows them in­to their bed­room. In­side, clothes cov­er the un­pol­ished wood­en floor and hang from the rafters. A tiny, chunky tele­vi­sion paints the knot­ty walls blue. Their bed, per­haps the on­ly ob­ject in their apart­ment that looks new, is a queen size, and it takes up most of the space in the tiny room.

“I don’t know if there’s enough room for me to sleep on the floor,” the cat says, wor­ried.

“I’m telling you,” Fran fi­nal­ly says, “you can sleep with us. If you want, I mean. The bed’s a lit­tle cramped for three peo­ple, but it should be fine.”

The cat feels a lit­tle weird about it, but she’s be­gin­ning to give in­to her tired­ness. Lia is al­ready slip­ping in­to a night­gown in the cor­ner.

“I don’t have any pa­ja­mas,” the cat says, less out of protest and more out of prac­ti­cal­i­ty. “And my clothes are still pret­ty wet…”

Fran starts search­ing the room. “Oh! Here!” She picks up a mas­sive t-shirt off the floor, gives it a sniff, and hands it over. “Don’t wor­ry, it’s still clean. It’s one of Li­a’s. It should be big enough on you to be kin­da like a gown.”

Too em­bar­rassed to change in front of her friends, the cat slinks out­side. With her jeans and shirt off, she pulls on Li­a’s t-shirt.

It re­al­ly is huge. The cat is tall, but in this thing, she’s swim­ming. It smells a bit like their apart­ment, and a lot like Lia. She feels a lit­tle warm in the head.

Fold­ing her clothes and putting them some­where they can dry, she re­turns to the bed­room. Lia and Fran are al­ready in bed, sit­ting on ei­ther side. Lia pats the space be­tween them with a friend­ly grin.

Qui­et­ly, the cat climbs in­to bed with them. It’s cramped, but her friend­s’ body heat on ei­ther side makes it sur­pris­ing­ly snug.

She sinks be­neath the cov­ers as Fran turns off the TV, leav­ing the room in com­plete dark­ness. Be­tween the warmth of the two bod­ies next to her, and the ex­haus­tion from the day’s events, the cat is ready to drift off.

She whis­pers in the si­lence.

“I did ac­tu­al­ly come up with a name.”

She hears Lia and Fran shift next to her. She clears her head and takes a deep breath.

“It’s, um… Is­abel­la.”

In the dark­ness, four arms wrap around her body, and four lips whis­per: “Is­abel­la.”

Chap­ter 2

It’s ear­ly morn­ing, sun is be­gin­ning to shine through the cave of clothes and cob­webs that is Francesca and Li­a’s at­tic bed­room, and Is­abel­la is skip­ping across the pond of awak­e­ness.

She ris­es with the sun, but to­day it’ll have to tear her out of bed if it wants her. Still half asleep, the pre­vi­ous day’s events are be­gin­ning to sur­face in her mind. As al­ways, the first thoughts to greet her are her wor­ries.

For once in her God damn life, she wants to sleep in. There’s a thou­sand and one things to fret over wait­ing out­side this room, and the bed is so toasty and invit­ing. Her pil­low, pressed up against her face, is so soft and warm. Try­ing to push the wake­ful­ness away, she nuz­zles her face in deep­er. This is the best sleep she’s had in months, and she won’t let it get away from —

“Mmmh…”

Her pil­low lets out a con­tent­ed sigh.

Im­me­di­ate­ly, Is­abel­la pulls her face out of Fran’s tits and flings her­self up­right. Oh, no. Um. Um. Um.

Thank­ful­ly, Fran is still sound asleep. Flush­ing with em­bar­rass­ment, Is­abel­la won­ders how long she’d been do­ing that. With grow­ing dread, it oc­curs to her that she usu­al­ly sleeps with a body pil­low.

She rubs the sand out of her eyes. It’s time to get up, she de­cides.

Trapped be­tween two sleep­ing bod­ies, she does­n’t have an easy time mov­ing. She be­gins to shift to get out of bed, and places her hand on Li­a’s dick for sup­port.

WRONG PLACE AC­CI­DENT I DID­N’T MEAN TO DO —

Lia lets out a hap­py noise and mum­bles in her sleep. “Not now, Fran…” Is­abel­la, al­ready dy­ing of em­bar­rass­ment, tries not to ab­so­lute­ly, bla­tant­ly ogle Li­a’s mas­sive morn­ing erec­tion.

Fi­nal­ly man­ag­ing to es­cape the bed, Is­abel­la heaves a huge sigh. This is… a lot.

She steps out of the bed­room and tries to col­lect her thoughts. To­day, she has one thing she ab­so­lute­ly needs to do. When her boyfriend dumped her yes­ter­day, she stormed out with­out so much as pack­ing a thing, and as much as she hates it, she knows she’ll have to re­turn one last time to col­lect her be­long­ings.

If she’s go­ing to go, bet­ter to do it ear­ly. It’s 6 AM and the sun has on­ly just risen. She be­gins look­ing for some­thing to wear, and finds her clothes from yes­ter­day, fold­ed up and hung over the sink. She touch­es them and finds them still soak­ing damp, and now freez­ing from the night air.

She has noth­ing else to wear, but… she flicks her ears in an­noy­ance. She hates touch­ing wet things. Qui­et­ly, she re­turns to the bed­room. She’s still wear­ing Li­a’s too-big T-shirt. She be­gins search­ing the messy room for some kind of bot­tom. (She tries not to take no­tice of Fran’s.)

Get­ting her filthy, un­ac­cept­able mind out of the gut­ter, she spots some­thing in the cor­ner that looks like it might fit.

It’s a pink skater miniskirt.

It has an elas­tic waist­band, she ra­tio­nal­izes. It should fit her no mat­ter what, she ra­tio­nal­izes. Hold­ing it in front of her, she stares at it for a long time.

For one mo­ment, this skirt rep­re­sents ev­ery­thing. Her con­tempt for an ex she tried too hard for too long to bend her­self for. Her blind anger against ev­ery­thing and noth­ing from a life­time spent in the shad­ow of a world that does­n’t want the per­son she want­ed to be. The count­less hours she spent en­vy­ing pieces of cloth like this one. The days she spent watch­ing the crowds for peo­ple with bod­ies like hers, try­ing to feel re­al.

Any­way, she slips it on and it looks su­per cute. She rules. Fuck you.

---

Stand­ing out­side her ex-boyfriend’s house, Is­abel­la has been try­ing for ten min­utes to work up the courage to knock. She’s god-aw­ful at talk­ing to peo­ple and even worse at con­fronta­tion; it’s half the rea­son she was in that aw­ful re­la­tion­ship for so long. She’s cow­er­ing on his doorstep with her tail be­tween her legs.

She takes a deep breath, clears her head. She tries to think of some­thing calm­ing. She drags her mind through soft im­ages. Clouds, sun­sets, bee­birds chirp­ing, smil­ing friends. The warmth of the bed last night. Li­a’s dick.

Is­abel­la shakes her head fu­ri­ous­ly, try­ing to wash away the sin. Oh, no. She needs to dis­tract her­self some­how. Oh, no.

She knocks, hard.

When she re­al­izes she’s fi­nal­ly done it, she waits with trep­i­da­tion. When no an­swer comes, she knocks again.

Be­gin­ning to get an­noyed, she knocks a lit­tle hard­er, then a lit­tle hard­er. Is he try­ing to ig­nore her? Ha! God. That’s just like him. He tried to ig­nore her for a year straight, did­n’t he. He loves to ig­nore his prob­lems. She’s pound­ing now. Well look at your fuck­ing prob­lem now, she’s stand­ing here in a skirt and her hot friends are gonna beat you up if you don’t OPEN THE DOOR —

She rests her head against the door, breath­ing hard.

A lot of aw­ful feel­ings are ooz­ing out of Is­abel­la to­day. So many rot­ten emo­tions she nev­er knew were build­ing up un­til she saw the clear light of day.

He ei­ther is­n’t home, or he’s dead set on ig­nor­ing her. Ei­ther way, she needs her stuff. She’s nev­er com­ing back here again.

Tak­ing a step back from his doorstep, she looks around. His sec­ond-sto­ry win­dow is wide open. There’s a drainage pipe bolt­ed to the brick close by. A plan forms in her head… and she im­me­di­ate­ly dis­cards it.

She sighs and walks away. No mat­ter her roil­ing emo­tions, she’s not a reck­less per­son. She’ll come back lat­er.

She will not come back lat­er.

Is­abel­la, the reck­less cat in a pink skirt, be­gins climb­ing the drainage pipe. She’s light as a feath­er, and the pipe seems to sup­port her. She shim­mies up with dif­fi­cul­ty, find­ing just enough pur­chase to wrap her fin­gers be­tween the pipe and the places it’s bolt­ed to the brick.

She some­how man­ages to make it all the way up to win­dow lev­el. From here, it’s not too far to reach the ledge. She just has to work up the courage… and not look down.

Is­abel­la looks down. Be­neath her, a weird-look­ing red-haired girl looks up in con­fu­sion, then blush­es fu­ri­ous­ly and hur­ries away.

Is­abel­la’s hav­ing a lot of firsts to­day.

She steels her­self, finds pur­chase on the win­dow ledge, and shifts her weight on­to it. At last, she re­leas­es the pipe and scram­bles to pull her up­per body in­to the win­dow.

She tum­bles in­to her erst­while bed­room, pant­ing and shak­ing with adren­a­line.

When she re­cov­ers, she looks around her. Her side of the room is ex­act­ly how she left it less than a day ago. Her ex is nowhere to be found.

Re­lieved that she would­n’t have to deal with him, she be­gins to pull to­geth­er her be­long­ings for the last time.

---

Dear Jerk,

I’ve col­lect­ed my stuff. You can keep what­ev­er I left be­hind. I won’t be com­ing back. Please don’t talk to me ev­er again.

IS­ABEL­LA

Is­abel­la paus­es to think for a mo­ment, then adds:

P.S. My girl­friends want to beat you up. You should lock your win­dows.

She gig­gles mis­chie­vous­ly. “My girl­friends.” A cute lit­tle em­bel­lish­ment.

---

When Is­abel­la fi­nal­ly gets home, she finds Fran and Lia still asleep. Hum­ming to her­self, she de­cides to put her plan in­to ac­tion.

To­day, she’s go­ing to cook the two of them break­fast. She thought of it on her way home from her jerk’s house and dipped in­to the mar­ket to get in­gre­di­ents.

She cleans up the piles of un­cleaned dish­es and gets to work. Fran works at some kind of food place, so she prob­a­bly has more ex­pe­ri­ence than Is­abel­la. Still, she’s de­ter­mined to do her best.

A while lat­er, a sleepy Fran steps out of the bed­room. Still in her un­der­wear and a camisole, it seems to take her a few mo­ments to re­al­ize what’s go­ing on.

“I… Is­abel­la! You’re cook­ing?”

Is­abel­la turns around, mix­ing a bowl of pan­cake bat­ter. She blush­es at the sound of her name com­ing from some­one else’s lips.

“Y—yeah,” she mum­bles, smil­ing in­to the bowl. “I just thought, since y’all were so nice to me yes­ter­day… I want­ed to do some­thing spe­cial.” She feels the need to tem­per her­self. “I can’t guar­an­tee it’ll be any good! Though!”

Fran is gawk­ing, wide-eyed. “Are you a saint?”

Is­abel­la’s shy smile widens. “N—no?”

Fran flash­es an un­usu­al­ly gen­uine ex­pres­sion, but Is­abel­la can’t quite put her fin­ger on it. “That’s so sweet. Lia and me will love it for sure.” She gig­gles, and Is­abel­la turns back to the counter, feel­ing proud.

“Oh, by the way,” Fran adds, as Is­abel­la hears her mov­ing around be­hind her, “cute skirt! Where’d you get it?”

Is­abel­la drops the bowl on the counter with a loud clat­ter and whirls around. “I’m sor­ry I did­n’t have any­thing else to wear I should have asked you I hope this is okay—”

Fran is grin­ning from ear to ear. “You’re beau­ti­ful, Izzy.”

Is­abel­la lets those words hang in the air for a mo­ment.

She’s not sure she’s ev­er heard them be­fore.

No, she has. But un­til now, she’s nev­er been the right per­son to say them to.

Her vi­sion starts to blur, and she pre­tends to look in­ter­est­ed in a knot in the wall. “Oh, um,” she starts, push­ing the emo­tions away, “while we’re on the sub­ject of in­va­sions of your per­son­al space, um… I feel like you should know that… this morn­ing, I woke up with my face in your… in your boobs.”

Fran looks con­fused for a sec­ond, then bursts out laugh­ing. “Ha­ha­ha! Is that all!”

“I al­so touched, um, I ac­ci­den­tal­ly touched Li­a’s, um, h—her priv… her pri­vates, by ac­ci­dent—”

Fran steps in close to Is­abel­la and looks up at her, flash­ing that same un­de­fin­able ex­pres­sion from be­fore. Is­abel­la’s eyes dart all over the place. Fran reach­es up… and en­thu­si­as­ti­cal­ly pets her on the head.

“It’s okay, Izzy. You’re a good girl. You don’t have to re­pent to us. Not now, not ev­er.”

Is­abel­la feels goose­bumps bloom on her cheeks as her face heats up. Fran lingers with her hand low­ered for too many long mo­ments, look­ing up at her with long eye­lash­es. Fi­nal­ly, she pets Is­abel­la again, this time a lit­tle more soft­ly.

“Good girl.”

She turns and dis­ap­pears in­to the bed­room again, but pokes her head out to add: “Oh, and you can stick your face in my tits all you want. That’s what they’re there for.”

---

Some­what lat­er, Is­abel­la paus­es for a mo­ment and thinks: Izzy?

---

“You broke in­to his house?”

“I—I mean, if you put it like that… I just climbed in through the win­dow…”

“The sec­ond-sto­ry win­dow,” Fran adds, un­able to con­tain her amaze­ment.

“Well… it… it was open, so…”

At the end of the long day, Fran, Lia, and Izzy are sit­ting to­geth­er on the dingy couch in their ter­ri­ble at­tic apart­ment. The on­ly light­ing comes from the (now-mut­ed) tele­vi­sion and a dim cor­ner floor lamp.

Where Fran is amused, Lia is stunned. She swings one arm around Izzy’s neck and gives her a squeeze. “I just can’t be­lieve you had that sort of thing in you, Is­abel­la!”

Izzy looks at the floor. “Hehe… well… I did­n’t, ei­ther. I think I have a lot of things in me I did­n’t know about.” She shifts her weight around, still gaz­ing down. “A lot of aw­ful things came out of me to­day.”

Lia squeezes tighter, press­ing their heads to­geth­er. “Oh, hon­ey… things are gonna get so much bet­ter for you. You were so big to­day.”

Izzy nods, lean­ing in­to Lia slight­ly. From her oth­er side, Fran wraps her arm around hers and rests her head on Izzy’s shoul­der.

“Now I just wan­na… be re­al­ly small, for a while,” Izzy says qui­et­ly.

Lia smiles wide and her eyes shine with a look of ado­ra­tion Izzy has nev­er seen be­fore. Lia turns to Fran. “She’s so sweet,” she gush­es. “She’s so per­fect!”

“She’s a trea­sure,” Fran nods.

“She’s such a good girl,” Lia cries, squeez­ing Izzy as hard as she can and nuz­zling her with her nose.

Izzy feels like she’s melt­ing. Her friends are so af­fec­tion­ate, so open, in ways she al­ways wished she could be. “I…”

“Hm?”

“I love you. I love you two…” Her voice is muf­fled in Li­a’s ca­ress­ing arm. “Is that okay for me to say?”

Her friends are sud­den­ly qui­et. Fran leans in clos­er, and says, in a more gen­tle and se­ri­ous voice than Izzy has ev­er heard her speak in, “Of course that’s okay, Izzy.”

“Noth­ing in the world is more okay,” Lia whis­pers, pulling away and catch­ing Izzy’s cheeks in her palms.

Izzy re­al­izes, all of a sud­den, that her heart is pound­ing. Her chest is ex­plod­ing with some­thing flut­tery, her head is swim­ming.

She feels like she’s not al­lowed to say this, like she’s not al­lowed to love her friends so hon­est­ly. She feels like she’s get­ting away with some­thing.

Is­abel­la, the reck­less cat in a pink skirt, push­es through and says it again.

“I love you two. I think you’re the most im­por­tant peo­ple I’ve ev­er met.”

Lia stands up abrupt­ly and takes Izzy’s hand in hers. Eyes twin­kling with af­fec­tion, she asks: “Izzy, do you want to come with us to the bed­room? It’s more com­fort­able for cud­dling and… stuff like that.”

Name­less ex­cite­ment runs through Izzy, and she nods. Fran looks ec­stat­ic as Lia silent­ly takes both their hands and walks them to the bed­room.

Izzy has

no

idea

what’s go­ing on any­more.

Some­thing vis­cer­al with­in her feels like this should­n’t be hap­pen­ing, like this runs so con­trary to ev­ery­thing she knows.

Fran and Li­a…

They’ve been her best friends for a long time, but over the past not even two days, they’ve opened up so much. She’s opened up so much, and each time she does, they re­spond. The more hon­est she is, the more af­fec­tion­ate they are. The more she loves them, the more they love her.

For the first time in her life, Izzy is­n’t per­form­ing. She’s not tem­per­ing her wants or her af­fec­tions. And her friend­s… like her for it.

The bed creaks as Izzy sits at its foot. Her hands rest limply at her sides; she’s not to­tal­ly sure what’s go­ing to hap­pen.

“Izzy!”

Fran sneaks up be­hind her and wraps her­self around Izzy, gig­gling. She pulls her back, rolling her to­wards the cen­ter of the bed. Izzy lands lay­ing face-up, and Fran and Lia drape them­selves over her, hold­ing her snug and warm.

“That break­fast to­day was so sweet,” Fran says in a sweet mur­mur. Izzy flicks her ears from the prox­im­i­ty.

“Yeah,” Lia agrees, stroking Izzy’s head. “I wan­na give her lots of at­ten­tion.”

Izzy’s face is burn­ing up. They’re do­ing the thing where they talk about her to each oth­er while she’s right there. They prob­a­bly think it’s just cute, but it makes her feel so —

“Small,” says Fran. “You said you want­ed to feel small, right?”

Izzy nods. “This is good… s—stuff like this…”

Lia blows a cute laugh through her nose. She snakes her arms and leg tighter around Izzy. “Pret­ty girl,” she whis­pers. “Is­abel­la.” Izzy can’t help but smile. No, she’s beam­ing. It makes her so gid­dy still.

Ev­ery­thing right now is per­fect.

Lia gen­tly pulls Izzy’s face to­wards hers. Look­ing in­to her eyes, in a qui­et voice, she asks: “Would you like it if I kissed you?”

Izzy goes bug-eyed.

“Y—”

She re­al­izes be­fore she can stop her­self what she was go­ing to say. How far can this pos­si­bly go?

She glances at Fran, still snug­gled up on her oth­er side. She looks serene.

She

wants to be hon­est. She has a mil­lion ques­tions, but at the same time, an over­whelm­ing need to see how far this goes. How hon­est she’s re­al­ly al­lowed to be.

“Yes,” Izzy says, in the small­est voice.

Lia press­es her lips to Izzy’s. It’s just a light touch, just for a mo­ment. But it’s warm, and soft, and Lia smells so nice. Just for a few sec­onds.

She pulls back and stud­ies Izzy’s face. “How do you feel?”

“Good,” Izzy says, smil­ing timid­ly.

“More?”

“Y—yes.” The hon­est an­swer comes out of her, a lit­tle eas­i­er this time.

Lia rests her free hand on Izzy’s jaw and leans in again. An­oth­er soft, small, safe kiss. But this time, the first kiss rolls in­to an­oth­er, and an­oth­er. Gen­tle press­ings of their lips. Izzy clos­es her eyes and feels it out.

It is­n’t her first kiss. But she and her boyfriend nev­er kissed much. And more im­por­tant­ly, she’s nev­er kissed any­one as a girl. And even though they’re her same lips, it feels so im­por­tant­ly dif­fer­ent. Her chest al­most hurts.

We’re both girl­s…, she mus­es to her­self. Scan­dalous…

Izzy is smil­ing against Li­a’s mouth as they kiss. She’s in bliss. She finds tiny sounds bub­bling up in the back of her throat, and she does­n’t try to kill them.

Lia sud­den­ly licks her up­per lip, then pulls back, grin­ning. “Do you still feel okay?”

“Yeah,” Izzy breathes, dream­i­ly.

She feels a hand on her cheek. Fran, the girl­friend of the girl she just made out with, guides Izzy’s face to­ward hers.

Her blood freezes for a sec­ond as re­al­i­ty comes crash­ing back. She’s about to bolt up­right and scream a se­ries of apolo­get­ic nois­es when Fran’s lips press against her mouth.

Izzy makes a small pip of sur­prise and shuts her eyes as Fran makes out with her. Fran’s lips are even soft­er than Li­a’s, and still taste slight­ly sweet. Fran slips her arms ful­ly around Izzy’s head, cradling it tight against hers, and ten­ta­tive­ly runs her tongue across Izzy’s lips.

She obliges al­most au­to­mat­i­cal­ly. Izzy is com­plete­ly pinned in place by the two girls as Fran ex­plores her mouth. Much less cau­tious than Li­a’s kiss, Fran’s is more im­pa­tient and hun­gry. Izzy wig­gles a lit­tle, but that on­ly set­tles her friend­s’ snug­gles more tight­ly against her. Her body feels fever­ish as she be­comes acute­ly aware of all the places her skin is touch­ing pret­ty girls. Ev­ery­thing is soft and warm, and she can feel the weight of their ca­ress­ing limbs push­ing her in­to the mat­tress.

Fran pulls away, and a pa­thet­ic whim­per es­capes Izzy’s throat. “Still good?” Fran asks, and Izzy can on­ly nod. Her flushed face be­trays how in­to this she is. She wants to stop and talk about all the bound­aries that are rapid­ly ex­plod­ing, but the on­ly pri­or­i­ty she can think about in that mo­ment is feel­ing more lips on hers.

As if on cue, Lia is back to kiss­ing her. Izzy feels like she’s be­ing passed around. She feels gid­dy with ex­cite­ment, but a sense of over­whelm­ing calm runs over her at the same time. Her chest is get­ting tight, her breath­ing is get­ting rough.

A qui­et rum­ble be­gins to form deep in her body.

While Lia kiss­es her, Fran grins like it’s Christ­mas. “Oh my god,” she breathes, “is she purring?”

Fi­nal­ly, Izzy snaps out of her rever­ie and sits bolt up­right, killing her… em­bar­rass­ing noise… and putting some dis­tance be­tween her and her friends.

“J—j—j—j—just one mo­ment,” she chit­ters, pant­ing, her hair a mess. “Y—you two, um, y—you, just, what — what — is go­ing on?”

Fran and Lia look sur­prised and more than a lit­tle re­morse­ful. “Oh, Izzy, I’m so sor­ry,” Lia starts, “I did­n’t mean to make you un­com­fort­able! I should­n’t be so… for­ward.”

“No,” Izzy says, shak­ing her head. “I, I, you did­n’t — make me un­com­fort­able, or any­thing, I… I just mean… is this, okay? D—do­ing this kind of stuff with me?”

“Why would­n’t it be?” says Fran, look­ing be­wil­dered.

“I just mean… I don’t… I don’t want to, like, come be­tween you two?”

“Non­sense,” says Fran, wav­ing her hands dis­mis­sive­ly. “We’d love to have you come be­tween us.” She winks.

“FRAN!!” Lia shrieks.

Izzy just blush­es even hard­er, tail wag­ging ner­vous­ly. Lia re­turns to Izzy, wip­ing the an­noy­ance off her face. “Izzy, there’s no com­ing be­tween us. You are ‘us.’ At least, if you want to be. We both love you. I’m re­al­ly glad you’re watch­ing out for our bound­aries, but don’t wor­ry. You re­mem­ber how I said we’re poly?”

Izzy blinks. “N—no?”

Lia looks mor­ti­fied. “Oh my god, I’ve talked about this be­fore, haven’t I?!”

“No!”

“FRAN!”

“What are you look­ing at me for?” Fran scoffs, look­ing of­fend­ed.

Fi­nal­ly, Izzy can’t help but break out laugh­ing. “S—so… oh. Well… I guess… that all ex­plains it. Ha­ha…”

Lia pats the space be­tween them, beck­on­ing Izzy to come clos­er again, and she scoots back in. Her head is adrift with ques­tions. She looks for one to start with.

“So, um… what kind of re­la­tion­ship does… this mean we have?”

“We don’t have to have any kind of re­la­tion­ship,” Lia says.

Fran nods. “Yeah, you’re not like, ob­li­gat­ed or any­thing. We love you a whole lot! We just wan­na show you in what­ev­er way you, like, feel okay with.”

“We’ll nev­er try to push your bound­aries or any­thing. Noth­ing with­out your ex­plic­it con­sent. It’s all up to you.”

It’s not like Izzy has nev­er heard of this kind of re­la­tion­ship be­fore. But she’s in a bit of a daze. She wants to iden­ti­fy the point where she crossed the line with Fran and Lia from “friends” to some­thing more, but she can’t.

And maybe, Izzy thinks to her­self, that’s kind of the point. We don’t have to have any kind of re­la­tion­ship, Lia said.

Izzy’s feel­ings haven’t changed at all, but if kiss­es and I-love-yous are what sep­a­rate friends from lovers, then maybe the lines were a lit­tle ar­bi­trary to be­gin with. All she knows is that she’s so hap­py to be with each of them, and she wants to show them how­ev­er she can.

Maybe this all makes a lot more sense to her than she thought it did.

“Kiss­ing felt re­al­ly nice,” she mum­bles, pulling the blan­ket up over her legs.

Fran gig­gles and rests her head on her shoul­der. Izzy takes a while be­fore work­ing up the courage to ask, “Is it okay for me to think of you two as… girl­friends? Just, as a word,” she stam­mers, tem­per­ing her words again.

Lia beams at her. “Ab­so­lute­ly!”

“You can be our girl­friend,” says Fran.

Izzy’s chest is start­ing to feel squeezy again. She laughs. “Girl­friend­s… that feels re­al­ly nice to say.”

Lia strokes her head af­fec­tion­ate­ly. “What do you wan­na do now, hon­ey?”

Izzy sinks in­to her friend­s’ — girl­friend­s’ — snug­gles. Hap­pi­ness comes over her like a warm bath and she says, “I just wan­na… take it easy for now.”

Fran flips on their crum­my old tv. “Yeah, sounds about right.”

Chap­ter 3

When Izzy wakes up the next morn­ing, the room is still pitch black. Mind hazy, un­sure why she’s awake, she re­al­izes it’s be­cause the bed is emp­ty.

She bolts up­right, squint­ing in the dark­ness. What’s go­ing on? Is she alone? Pan­ic clutch­es at her chest, but then she fi­nal­ly makes out a tall shape shift­ing by the bed.

“Oh, Izzy! I’m sor­ry, I did­n’t want to wake you up.” Li­a’s voice is qui­et, gen­tle, and mas­sages away the sud­den spike of anx­i­ety.

Izzy is still half asleep. “What’s go­ing on?”

“Get­ting ready for work. Fran al­ready left. I’ll be back around five. Fran gets home a bit lat­er some­times, but it de­pends.”

“Oh… okay.”

Mo­ments af­ter the words leave Izzy’s mouth, she re­al­izes how for­lorn they sound­ed. Be­fore she can apol­o­gize, though, she hears Lia shift­ing be­side her. A hand wraps around hers, pro­vid­ing gen­tle pres­sure. “Let’s have fun tonight, Izzy. Will you be okay on your own?”

“I’ll be fine,” Izzy as­sures her, try­ing to sound con­fi­dent.

Li­a’s hand gives hers a squeeze. “Al­right.”

Then: “Is it okay if I kiss you?”

Izzy flus­ters, in­vis­i­bly in the night. “O—of course! You don’t have to ask.”

Lia gig­gles, then plants a kiss on Izzy’s lips. She smells like per­fume and tastes like sweet gloss.

“I left the keys on the ta­ble!” Lia calls, boots clomp­ing against the thin wood­en floors. “If you wan­na go out, just make sure to be back be­fore five so you can let us in!” Izzy sinks back be­neath the cov­ers and drifts off, feel­ing a lit­tle bet­ter.

---

When the sun has risen, and Izzy with it, she paces about in the emp­ty at­tic, un­sure of what to do with her­self. De­spite her girl­friend­s’ in­sis­tence that she make her­self at home, it’s still hard for her to move around in this new place. It’s cozy, but it’s un­fa­mil­iar. Ev­ery shelf, ta­ble, and wall is teem­ing with his­to­ry that is­n’t hers.

Izzy won­ders. Will she ev­er be­long here too? Will she have a place among the piles of books and clothes and bar­gain-bin filmdiscs?

Of course not, she thinks, not let­ting her­self get car­ried away. She’s adrift right now; re­gard­less of her girl­friend­s’ — well — be­ing her girl­friends, she can’t take ad­van­tage of their kind­ness. And maybe more to the point, she’s scared.

With no job, with no per­ma­nent home, and hav­ing on­ly been a girl for two days, Izzy feels more vul­ner­a­ble than ev­er. She needs safe­ty. She needs some­thing to latch on­to. But if she makes that thing Fran and Lia, what’s to stop this from turn­ing in­to the same sit­u­a­tion she just got out of?

Izzy turns it over again and again in her head as she lies on the rat­ty so­fa.

What­ev­er hap­pens, she can’t let her­self ru­in this thing she has now. She loves and re­spects Fran and Lia too much.

So, to­day, she needs to make choic­es. She has to be big, again.

To­day, she’s go­ing to find a job.

---

Their dis­trict, Mar­ket Square, is a weird place. It’s beat­en and run-down, and labyrinthine from years of un­planned ex­pan­sion. There’s no short­age of tiny strange holes-in-the-wall, fried onion stands and home­made craft shops, if you can find them in the maze of bro­ken brick and bat­tered by­ways. And they all have one thing in com­mon:

They’re not hir­ing.

Izzy is sit­ting awk­ward­ly on an an­cient stained bench, not think­ing about how out-of-place she might look wear­ing a pink skirt with her old boy t-shirt. She’s clutch­ing a hand­ful of pa­per ap­pli­ca­tions from some of the big­ger stores that she was hand­ed as con­so­la­tion prizes — “we’ll keep it on file for when we’re ev­er hir­ing” — but she does­n’t have high hopes about them.

Some­how, she man­aged to fill her­self with con­fi­dence about this out­ing, and some­how it last­ed up un­til the twen­ti­eth or thir­ti­eth place she tried. Now sit­ting here hav­ing lost count, she feels de­feat­ed.

Right now, Izzy is try­ing to hold back tears. She feels like a child. Of course this was­n’t go­ing to hap­pen to­day. She feels like she does­n’t know what she’s do­ing, and she’s an­gry at her­self for ac­tu­al­ly ex­pect­ing some kind of easy vic­to­ry.

She’s been out for hours, now, and she re­al­izes that if she does­n’t find her way back home soon, she won’t be back in time to let Fran and Lia in. So, with a huge sigh, she pulls her­self to­geth­er, rubs her eyes clear, and sets off.

But…

It’s on­ly four, she rea­sons. There’s still time in the day for at least one easy vic­to­ry.

---

Izzy just bare­ly has time to fin­ish pour­ing her stir-fry in­to three neat lit­tle plates and set them on the wob­bly cof­fee ta­ble — Fran and Li­a’s apart­ment lack­ing a prop­er din­ing area — be­fore she hears foot­steps clomp­ing up the stair­well. Feel­ing proud of her­self, she prac­ti­cal­ly skips over to the front door to un­lock it and wel­come her girl­friends.

“Hi,” she calls sim­ply, pok­ing her head out in­to the stair­well. Fran and Lia are to­geth­er, and they hur­ry up the steps with a smile when they see Izzy.

Izzy hov­ers around them as they en­ter the apart­ment, like a child with a se­cret she’s just wait­ing for you to no­tice. The first thing Lia does is stoop to give her a tight hug, then Fran fol­lows, and their jack­ets smell like the cool out­side air. Izzy feels a lit­tle eu­phoric to see them, and a lit­tle em­bar­rassed at how much more at ease she is just by their pres­ence. Fi­nal­ly, as they’re hang­ing their coats up, Izzy can’t help it:

“So…! Um! Do you… smell any­thing good?”

Lia looks at her quizzi­cal­ly, then her eyes open wide. “Oh! Izzy! Did you cook for us again?”

Izzy smiles and nods. “Uh-huh… I tried my hand at mak­ing din­ner this time. I think it came out re­al­ly good!”

For­get how this morn­ing went, Izzy is feel­ing a lit­tle bit con­fi­dent right now. Cook­ing makes her feel pow­er­ful! At least this is one thing she seems to have a knack for. At least it’s one way she can pull her weight a bit. Her friends are shuf­fling ner­vous­ly, look­ing guilty.

Izzy’s smile slips a lit­tle. “Um… I hope this was okay?”

Fran breaks the si­lence. “Oh, Izzy, I’m so sor­ry! We, uh, we ate on the way home al­ready…”

Lia holds up a brown bag. “We brought you some! We were GO­ING to eat to­geth­er,” she says, beam­ing a look at Fran.

Izzy’s smile slips a lit­tle more. “Oh,” she mum­bles, and she can hear her voice creak, so she tries her best to add, “that’s okay! I’ll, um, I’ll just put it in the fridge!” She has her back turned, hasti­ly col­lect­ing up the plates. “I hear it tastes even bet­ter cold, so, it’s okay!”

Once the plates are stuffed in the fridge, she pat­ters around the kitch­enette, try­ing to look busy, find­ing what­ev­er spots she can to wipe down.

Izzy is try­ing so hard not to feel what she’s feel­ing, be­cause she knows she’s an adult, be­cause she re­solved to be as strong as she could to­day. Be­cause she does­n’t want Fran or Lia to know how she lets these things get to her.

Fran is wring­ing her hands be­hind her. “Izzy, I’m so sor­ry… we should have men­tioned we were get­ting food, or like, called or some­thing… it’s still so nice of you to do this, I ap­pre­ci­ate it so much…”

“It’s okay!” Izzy says again, be­cause it is okay. “I’m not up­set or any­thing, I’m fine,” she says, even though it’s okay.

Lia is loom­ing near her now as she re­al­izes she’s just been stand­ing with her back turned, star­ing at the spot she’s been scrub­bing for a full minute. “Izzy,” Lia says, in what Izzy thinks must be the calmest, most re­as­sur­ing voice she can muster, “do you want us to leave you alone for a bit? Do you wan­na talk? Or do you wan­na just do some­thing else?”

Izzy is­n’t good at pre­tend­ing.

---

When they sit her down on the so­fa, it takes her what feels like hours to be able to form words. When Izzy’s emo­tions are swirling like this, she stops be­ing able to say any­thing. Putting to­geth­er any kind of sen­tence feels like build­ing a house of cards. In­stead, she cries. For the first time since this huge mess be­gan, she cries big, heav­ing sobs, and what comes stream­ing down her face are more than just to­day’s events.

For what seems like the hun­dredth time, Fran and Lia are on ei­ther side of her, seem­ing un­sure of how much dis­tance to keep. Fran is dab­bing her face with a nap­kin, Lia is squeez­ing her hand and shush­ing her.

In shud­der­ing breaths, Izzy spills about her dif­fi­cult morn­ing, her wor­ries, her in­se­cu­ri­ty, her fear. About how she feels like she’s on a sink­ing ship with noth­ing to hold on­to. About how weak and child­ish she feels.

She piles on each new thing ex­pect­ing it to be the break­ing point, and when Li­a’s hand does­n’t leave hers, Fran does­n’t stop dab­bing her tears away, she slow­ly wears her­self down, runs out of tragedies un­til she’s sit­ting, qui­et­ly, snuf­fling, emp­tied out.

Once the tears stop and she feels like she’s said ev­ery­thing, the first thing she does — of course — be­cause she’s Izzy — is apol­o­gize.

“I’m sor­ry,” she says, look­ing at the floor.

“Don’t be sor­ry,” Lia whis­pers, lean­ing in and nuz­zling her cheek. “Izzy, it’s okay. It’s okay to feel like this.”

“You’re goin’ through a lot,” Fran says. “It’d be weird if you weren’t cry­ing a pud­dle on the floor.”

Izzy gives a weak smile, but then shifts in place ner­vous­ly. “But I feel like I need to be stronger,” she says. “There’s so many choic­es I need to make, and, and I need to be strong enough to make them, and I… I hate it. I, I just… I wish some­one would de­cide ev­ery­thing for me.”

“Well,” Lia starts, stand­ing up and stretch­ing her tail out. “I don’t know about ev­ery­thing, but I can de­cide a cou­ple things for you.”

Izzy looks up at her, not sure where this is go­ing.

“First… it’s okay for you to be weak. Es­pe­cial­ly at a time like this. Izzy, I can’t tell you how much I ap­pre­ci­ate you go­ing out and look­ing for a job to­day. But, it’ll prob­a­bly take some time. And that’s okay.”

Izzy rubs her arms coy­ly, look­ing from Lia to Fran and back.

Lia con­tin­ues. “I want you to take things at your own pace, ‘kay? Not ours or any­one else’s.”

Izzy drops her head a bit, but she’s smil­ing.

“And sec­ond… I want you to stay here. With us, your girl­friends, for as long as you want. I meant that the first time I said it, and I mean it now.”

When Izzy looks, Fran is gig­gling and nod­ding her head.

“And third,” Lia fin­ish­es, with a big flour­ish, “I want to do some­thing fun to­geth­er this week­end. Some­thing nice for you, ’cause you’ve been such a sweet­ie. Fran? Any ideas?”

“Clothes shop­ping,” she an­swers im­me­di­ate­ly.

“Great idea,” says Lia. “Al­most as if we ac­tu­al­ly al­ready de­cid­ed that this af­ter­noon,” she gig­gles. “Izzy? Would you like that?”

Izzy is blush­ing and sink­ing in­to the couch cush­ions. “I mean… y—you don’t have to do that for me…”

Lia bends over and looks Izzy in the eyes. “It’s okay to say no. But you have my per­mis­sion to be self­ish, Izzy.”

But Lia sure­ly al­ready knows the an­swer, be­cause Izzy can’t stop smil­ing. “I mean… if it’s okay with you… then… that would be re­al­ly fun.”

Lia ruf­fles Izzy’s hair up. “Good girl.” She lingers with her fin­gers in Izzy’s hair be­fore ask­ing, in a more qui­et, gen­tle tone, “Did that make things a lit­tle clear­er for you?”

Izzy nods her head. Maybe when she said she wished some­one would tell her what to do, she did­n’t re­al­ize how se­ri­ous she was be­ing.

All it re­al­ly took was some­one lay­ing it out for her, and things seem a lit­tle more straight­for­ward. She feels a lit­tle more con­fi­dent.

Izzy is good at do­ing what she’s told. And maybe that’s an okay kind of per­son to be.

---

Lat­er that night, Fran pigs out on Izzy’s cold noo­dles and begs her to cook more of­ten.

---

Be­fore Izzy re­al­izes it, she’s spent a week to­geth­er with her girl­friends. Af­ter that first day on her own, she takes things a lit­tle more easy, in ac­cor­dance with Li­a’s or­ders. She fills out the ap­pli­ca­tions she dragged home with her, but de­cides to wait a lit­tle while to send them in. In­stead, she spends her time ex­per­i­ment­ing more with cook­ing, tidy­ing up the apart­ment, and qui­et­ly prac­tic­ing her voice, when no­body’s around.

And in just a lit­tle time, she does find her place among the junk and clothes and cob­webs. She gets used to the leaky faucets, the bath­room door­knob that if you jig­gle it the wrong way it just falls out, the three sep­a­rate blan­kets and six jack­ets that are al­ways strewn mess­i­ly across the bed. She gets used to search­ing through Li­a’s big shirts to wear, gets used to Li­a’s lit­tle as­sur­ances and con­stant friend­ly hand touch­es, gets used to Fran’s thun­der­ous howl­ing laugh­ter at the ter­ri­ble re­al­i­ty TV shows they watch late at night (gets used to the ter­ri­ble re­al­i­ty TV shows, and maybe laughs a bit too — just a bit). She gets used to kiss­ing the peo­ple she loves, here and there, un­til she stops notic­ing her­self do­ing it. She kiss­es them be­fore work, when they get home, be­fore bed. She kiss­es Fran on the so­fa, kiss­es Lia while she cooks.

In a word, she starts feel­ing safe here in her new home.

And then, be­fore she knows it, a whole week has passed, and the week­end comes around again, and this time, when the sun ris­es, she wakes up in a bed that’s full and alive and warm.

Izzy finds her­self snug­gling Fran again, al­though this time she’s wrapped around Fran’s head with her arms, and this time it’s Fran’s face buried in…

…what Izzy sud­den­ly re­al­izes she can start call­ing her boobs, even if they are still flat as a board. She smiles hap­pi­ly to her­self. It’s cute when the ta­bles are turned like this.

She draws back a lit­tle to study Fran’s sleep­ing face. She looks like an an­gel when she’s asleep, con­trary to her mis­chievous, prick­ly de­meanor out of bed. Izzy takes a risk: she leans in… and plants a gen­tle kiss on Fran’s fore­head.

Fran just keeps on look­ing serene.

Sat­is­fied, Izzy turns over in bed to get a look at Lia

who she dis­cov­ers is wide awake, watch­ing her in­tent­ly.

“Good morn­ing, kit­ty,” Lia whis­pers, chuck­ling through her nose. Then, she wraps her arms and legs around Izzy and pulls her in close, squeez­ing her as tight as she can and not let­ting go.

The bed bounces with their move­ments and Izzy’s hap­pi­ly dis­tressed gig­gling. She fi­nal­ly set­tles down, know­ing she’s lost this fight, and squeaks, “I’m caught.”

Lia ruf­fles Izzy’s hair with one hand snaked around her head and nips play­ful­ly at her ear. “Fun day to­day, Izzy,” she says qui­et­ly. “Are you ready?”

“YeaAH?!”

Izzy’s yeah turns in­to a yelp as she feels Li­a’s oth­er hand curl around the base of her tail. She whim­pers and wig­gles, not man­ag­ing to loosen her­self from Li­a’s grip.

Lia is­n’t do­ing any­thing she has­n’t ex­plic­it­ly asked, in the week lead­ing up to now, if Izzy was okay with. But Izzy still feels a rush of ex­cite­ment and trep­i­da­tion. Lia seems a lit­tle too good at the kind of touch­es that make her feel the best. Tight squeezes, gen­tle rub­bing, lit­tle bites… and any­thing to do with her tail.

Izzy rais­es her eyes to look at Lia, who gives her a big, toothy grin.

Izzy feels her­self flush. When Lia smiles like that, her sharp fangs are on full dis­play. Izzy feel­s… some­thing, about that, but she’s not sure what.

Amaz­ing­ly, Fran has­n’t wo­ken up through the bounc­ing and squeak­ing, and they shuf­fle out of bed as qui­et­ly as pos­si­ble, leav­ing her to snooze a bit longer.

They fil­ter in­to the main room of Francesca and Lia and Is­abel­la’s ter­ri­ble at­tic apart­ment, and Lia takes a seat at the so­fa as Izzy starts rins­ing out pans for break­fast.

Lia flips on the TV, but does­n’t re­al­ly watch. In­stead, she keeps her eyes on Izzy and says, “So, clothes shop­ping to­day. You’re sure you’re ready?”

“I’m def­i­nite­ly ready. I’ve been re­al­ly look­ing for­ward to it.”

“That’s good,” says Lia. Izzy can hear her smil­ing.

“I might be a lit­tle ner­vous try­ing stuff on… but I’ll have you both with me, so I’m not wor­ried. I’m sure it’ll be fun. Al­though…”

“Hm?”

“I might miss wear­ing your hand-me-downs, hee hee.”

“Aw.”

“Th—they’re nice, and big, and they smell good…”

Izzy paus­es awk­ward­ly af­ter that, re­al­iz­ing how it might have sound­ed. She glances back at Lia ner­vous­ly and half-ex­pec­tant­ly.

“Oh, just like me,” says Lia, tak­ing the ball and slam dunk­ing it.

Izzy hides her flush­ing face be­hind a pan. “Y—yeah… I like those things a lot…”

“Which things? The shirts, or me?”

“B—both…”

Lia makes a sat­is­fied noise at that. “Same,” she says plain­ly. “I like you a lot too. And I like see­ing you walk­ing around in my shirts.” She winks.

Izzy squeaks. Is she be­ing… flirt­ed with?!

“By the way, I’m flirt­ing with you,” Lia adds.

Izzy is just blush­ing fu­ri­ous­ly, open­ing her mouth to make words, but noth­ing will come out. She tries to keep scrub­bing, but her hands won’t work right. Present­ly, there’s a hint of con­cern in Li­a’s voice when she asks, “Is this okay? I don’t wan­na make you un­com­fort­able or any­thing!”

“Y—yeah,” Izzy chirps, a lit­tle too quick­ly. “It’s, I, it, it’s nice! I get, a lit­tle, ha­ha,” — fan­ning her­self — “f—flus­tered, about it, just a lit­tle, um…”

Izzy peeks at Lia again, and she’s still sit­ting there, all ma­ture and grown-up, look­ing at her with a gen­tle smile.

Izzy tries to re­gain her cool. Two can play at this game.

“A—any­way,” she says, “I’ve been hav­ing a lot of fun with this skirt, so I’m prob­a­bly gonna get some more like it…” — Izzy makes a show of wag­gling her butt — “but what do you think?”

Izzy wig­gles her tail sug­ges­tive­ly and cranes her neck to see if Lia is look­ing, which she is, and Izzy smirks in as­ton­ish­ment that Lia ac­tu­al­ly seems al­most flus­tered. Li­a’s face is all screwed up for a mo­ment, and she tries to say some­thing. “I — I —”

Then Lia bursts out laugh­ing. It’s loud and boom­ing and Izzy re­al­izes she’s nev­er ac­tu­al­ly heard Lia let out a prop­er laugh be­fore now. Izzy sheathes her butt, sud­den­ly wor­ried she looked sil­ly.

Still huff­ing, Lia trum­bles quick­ly over to her and pulls her in­to a tight hug. “Izzy!”

“Wah!!”

“Is this flirt­ing. Were you flirt­ing with me just now.”

Izzy is be­ing squeezed so hard she’s al­most lift­ing off the ground. De­fi­ant­ly, she squeaks: “S—so what if I was?”

“Oh my god!” Lia squeals and spins her around. “I love it! I love it I love it I love it. Please flirt with me more.”

Izzy re­al­izes now that she must not know how flirt­ing works, be­cause this was­n’t the re­ac­tion she ex­pect­ed at all. Stil­l…

She sinks her face in­to Li­a’s buff arms some more and gives her butt an­oth­er play­ful wig­gle. Lia re­sponds by gig­gling hard­er. She plants kiss­es all down the side of Izzy’s neck, nuz­zling her af­fec­tion­ate­ly.

“I like to see you have con­fi­dence,” Lia says, let­ting her go and bump­ing heads.

“Ehe­he… I still don’t know what to do with it when I get it.”

She said it as a joke, but Izzy re­al­izes mo­men­tar­i­ly how lit­er­al­ly true that state­ment is. Blush­ing, she turns her head. “Any­way, I’m Izzy! I’m con­fi­dent and pow­er­ful! Rahh!”

Lia muss­es Izzy’s hair up for the umpteenth time and re­turns to the couch, grin­ning. “Def­i­nite­ly get some more,” she says.

“More what?”

“More cute miniskirts. Your butt looks su­per cute when you wag­gle in ’em.”

Izzy guess­es this qual­i­fies as a suc­cess­ful flirt.

---

Lat­er, af­ter Fran has wo­ken up and the three of them have eat­en break­fast, Lia heads off to take a show­er while Fran and Izzy are left alone.

Izzy paces up and down the length of the apart­ment, as she does when she’s antsy and does­n’t want to ad­mit it. Fran is lay­ing on the so­fa, re­lax­ing, watch­ing her.

“Izzy,” she starts, del­i­cate­ly, “are you sure you’re feel­in’ okay? We don’t got­ta go if you don’t wan­na.”

“I’m fine, I’m fine,” Izzy de­fends. “I’m just… I’m fine. I’m just…” She clears her throat. “I’m just feel­ing, a lot of, emo­tions?”

“What kin­da emo­tions, Izzy?”

“When I fig­ure that out,” she says, spin­ning around again, “I’ll let you know.”

“Izzy —”

A soft hand grabs hers and gen­tly tugs her to a stand­still. Izzy looks di­rect­ly at Fran for the first time, and Fran gives her a warm smile. It’s the kind of ex­pres­sion most peo­ple would­n’t as­sume the loud, in­tense-look­ing rac­coon was ca­pa­ble of giv­ing, but Izzy has seen it, here and there.

Izzy clears her throat again, then says, “It’s like… it just snuck up on me, y’­know? B—be­ing a girl. I—I’m a girl and I’m gonna go buy skirts and like… panties. And I’m she, I’m Is­abel­la, and all that.”

“It sounds like an in­tense feel­ing,” Fran says, lis­ten­ing care­ful­ly.

Izzy nods, feel­ing her­self calm down a lit­tle. “It’s a whole lot. I’m just a lit­tle antsy, I guess. It’s most­ly hap­py feel­ings, re­lief, but al­so, like, uh… ex­is­ten­tial dread??”

Fran squeezes her hand and guides her to sit down next to her on the so­fa. They sit qui­et­ly for a while, be­fore Fran speaks. “Y’­know, like… I’m cis, so like, I wor­ry how much I can com­fort you about this stuff is kin­da lim­it­ed, but… some­how or an­oth­er, I’ve been sur­round­ed by trans girls for years?”

Izzy’s ears twitch to at­ten­tion and she turns her head a lit­tle at those words. Fran con­tin­ues. “There’s Lia, ob­vi­ous­ly. I nev­er knew her be­fore she came out, but I’ve heard sto­ries… and there’s this girl I’m good friends with from work.”

“I think you’ve men­tioned her…”

Fran nods. “Yeah. She’s like, su­per, su­per cool and con­fi­dent as hell — don’t tell her I said that — and I was ac­tu­al­ly the first per­son she came out to? She told me she just like, de­cid­ed one day that some­thing need­ed to change in her, and she tried on some clothes, and then I called her ’la­dy,’ and she was just like, shit, that was it. She fi­nal­ly felt like she got her foot out the door.”

Izzy finds her­self smil­ing a lit­tle, which Fran takes as a sign that she should go on. “She was antsy as hell for weeks, do­nat­ed all her old clothes, I saw her like scrib­bling on some old let­ters and stuff like that… she told me lat­er that she was just like, de­stroy­ing ev­ery­thing about who she used to be in her mind, and it was like a storm of emo­tions. The hard­est part was let­ting her­self do it, she said.”

“I think I get that a lot,” sighs Izzy, feel­ing re­lieved. “I feel like I’ve been do­ing a lot of that this week…”

“It can’t be easy,” Fran agrees. “But I know you’ll come out of this even stronger. And we’ll help you burn what­ev­er’s left be­hind… prom­ise.”

Izzy re­lax­es more and leans against Fran. “Thanks…”

“What­ev­er, cutie. Do you wan­na talk about some­thing else to get your mind off it?”

Izzy nods.

“Hm­m…,” Fran hmms. “So… what did you and Lia get up to this morn­ing?”

“O—oh, like, noth­ing,” Izzy lies, “just like, talk­ing… uh…”

“So I did­n’t hear you two loud­ly flirt­ing when I woke up?”

Izzy hides her face in Fran’s shoul­der. “M—maybe?”

“Oh no,” shouts Fran the­atri­cal­ly, “I can’t be­lieve my girl­friends are flirt­ing with each oth­er be­hind my back~!”

“It was­n’t re­al­ly fli­i­irt­ing flirt­ing…”

“Oh my god, Izzy, you have no idea,” Fran gig­gles, push­ing Izzy to the side. “She keeps com­ing up to me and whin­ing like, ’Fraaan, I wan­na flirt with Izzy, would it be too much for me to say her butt is squeez­able, help me flirt with her…’”

“W—what, no way…”

“She’s sooo in­to you, she wants to kiss you all over,” teas­es Fran as Izzy sinks in­to the couch, blush­ing. “You have no idea.”

Izzy stands straight up and takes a step back, half laugh­ing, half balk­ing. “Come on…”

“Izzy!” — Fran is slid­ing off the couch, reach­ing to­wards Izzy dra­mat­i­cal­ly as if she’s drown­ing — “Help! We like you so much but you won’t be­lieve us! Heeeelp!”

Izzy fi­nal­ly breaks in­to full-on laugh­ter as she reach­es for Fran’s out­stretched hand. “Okay, okay, I —”

Fran seizes the op­por­tu­ni­ty to yank Izzy down on top of her, and they sprawl across the floor, cack­ling and half-snug­gling.

A bit lat­er, when they’ve both set­tled down, Izzy turns her at­ten­tion back to get­ting ready.

“Oh,” says Fran, “it’s like su­per cold out to­day so you’ll wan­na bring a coat.”

Izzy is blind­sid­ed for a mo­ment. “Oh no,” she mut­ters. “I knew I for­got some­thing… my coat is still on the rack back at my ex boyfriend’s.”

“That’s fine, we’ve prob­a­bly got an ex­tra in the bed­room some­where?”

“I’ll go check,” Izzy calls, mak­ing her way in­side the clothes cav­ern.

Their bed­room re­al­ly is a mess. It’s the on­ly part of the apart­ment Izzy has­n’t got­ten around to tidy­ing up, and for good rea­son — there’s ac­tu­al­ly not a sin­gle clos­et any­where in their lit­tle at­tic space, and so their clothes end up hung from the rafters, scat­tered about the floor of their bed­room, piled up on top of the bed and slept on. Izzy sup­pos­es she could fold them up neat­ly and tuck them in a cor­ner some­where, but weird­ly, she finds the chaos of the bed­room a lit­tle charm­ing.

It feels lived in; the piles of clothes and books and junk around her re­mind Izzy of her girl­friend­s’ pres­ence even as she wakes up alone five days a week.

Maybe Izzy’s just too sen­ti­men­tal about things like this, she thinks, as she be­gins sift­ing through the clothes piles, look­ing for a coat.

Fi­nal­ly spot­ting one far in the cor­ner, she hap­pi­ly picks it up. It’s one of Li­a’s, so it’ll def­i­nite­ly fit. It’s an old black and white jer­sey jack­et. Izzy smiles as she imag­ines Lia wear­ing it.

She does­n’t say it of­ten, but her girl­friends are just… so cute.

And then, out of the cor­ner of her eye, Izzy no­tices some­thing on the floor.

At first she thought it was a pink neck­lace or a belt, but when she scoops it up from where it had been hid­den be­neath the jack­et, it fi­nal­ly oc­curs to her that what she’s look­ing at is…

“A col­lar?” Izzy mum­bles out loud.

“Oh, that thing,” says Fran from the door­way, caus­ing Izzy to jump just about a foot in the air.

She fum­bles with the col­lar like a hot pota­to, try­ing not to drop it while she turns around to see Fran chuck­ling.

“Re­lax, kit­ty, it’s fine, don’t wor­ry,” Fran chor­tles, ap­proach­ing her. “I was won­der­ing where this got to, ac­tu­al­ly…”

“Um??”

“What,” says Fran, pluck­ing the col­lar from Izzy’s hands, “haven’t you ev­er had pets be­fore?” She bats her eye­lash­es in­no­cent­ly, hold­ing the col­lar up to her own neck.

“UM???”

Fran laughs even hard­er, pat­ting Izzy on the shoul­der. “Lia bought me this a cou­ple months ago cuz she thought I’d be in­to it, and I got­ta ad­mit it’s cute, but not re­al­ly my thing… There’s a leash around here some­where too.”

Izzy is just stand­ing, face like a boiled lob­ster. Fran sud­den­ly looks re­morse­ful as she adds, “Sor­ry, maybe that was TMI? We tend to be an open book about this stuff but…”

“N—no, it’s fine,” Izzy fi­nal­ly stam­mers. “It’s just, I, w—waah…”

Izzy’s mind is swim­ming with im­ages. Fran wear­ing a col­lar, Lia hold­ing a leash, say­ing “good girl~” the way she says it to Izzy — then, sud­den­ly, Izzy wear­ing a col­lar, sit­ting at her girl­friend­s’ side, get­ting pet, and this is con­fus­ing, this is con­fus­ing, th—this is con­fus­ing —

“You okay, Izzy?” asks Fran, snap­ping Izzy out of her rever­ie.

“I’m just fine! It’s a cute col­lar!”

Fran smiles side­ways and wags her tail. She leans in a lit­tle too close and says, “Yeah, is­n’t it? You can have it if you want.”

Izzy holds her hands up, try­ing to look hum­ble. “Oh, no, I could­n’t…”

“Re­al­ly, we don’t use it or any­thing. But if you wan­t…~”

Izzy takes a clos­er look at the col­lar Fran is hold­ing out. It’s cute, re­al­ly. It’s pink, and it looks like it’s made of faux leather, with a buck­le. Squint­ing in the dim light, Izzy re­al­izes there’s even a lit­tle heart-shaped tag dan­gling off it. It’s even a lit­tle fluffy on the in­side, like it’d be re­al­ly com­fy to wear.

Sud­den­ly, Izzy feels the fa­mil­iar sen­sa­tion of Fran’s lips on her cheek. Fran pulls away and toss­es the col­lar on the bed. “Okay, okay, enough teas­ing. I think I hear Lia any­way.”

Men­tal­ly, Izzy sweeps up cer­tain con­fus­ing thoughts to be an­a­lyzed lat­er. For now, she breathes a sigh of re­lief as she pulls on Li­a’s big jack­et.

She’s learn­ing a lot of things about her girl­friends even still, and it’s a lit­tle bit amaz­ing and a lot over­whelm­ing. But maybe not, she thinks, in a bad way.

---

Lia and Fran know a de­part­ment store with a cheap se­lec­tion, and they lead the way at a brisk pace through the bit­ing wind with Izzy trail­ing be­hind.

It’s the first time they’ve gone out prop­er­ly — at least since Izzy came out, since they be­came girl­friends, some­how. It’s late in the af­ter­noon, and the skies are cloud­ed over. Izzy has her hands in the pock­ets of Li­a’s jack­et.

She al­ways ends up in the back when she’s walk­ing in a group. For what­ev­er rea­son, it makes her a lit­tle more com­fort­able to fol­low than to lead, or even walk side-by-side. As she thinks this, she re­al­izes that, if her life were some kind of sto­ry, some­one would prob­a­bly use that as a heavy-hand­ed metaphor.

Well, it’d be true, any­way. Izzy likes to be led. She likes guid­ance, safe­ty, feel­ing like she’s small. But she feels like that’s a lit­tle naive, that you can’t re­al­ly get that for free, not in re­al life. Peo­ple’s pa­tience is fi­nite; she knows from her last re­la­tion­ship that she’ll nev­er re­al­ly feel se­cure with­out a lit­tle bit of her own pow­er.

She watch­es Fran and Lia, prac­ti­cal­ly walk­ing side­ways as they chat and laugh. She won­ders where each of them get their con­fi­dence, and what weak spots the oth­er cov­ers up. She’s known them long enough to get the sense that they re­ly on each oth­er a lot, but part of her still thinks she’s not all the way “in” on it.

At the very least, Izzy feels a lot bet­ter know­ing that both of her girl­friends have each oth­er, too. Even if she’s a lit­tle weak­er than them, three feels like a strong num­ber to her.

It al­most sounds aw­ful, think­ing about it so prag­mat­i­cal­ly. And yet, it’s com­fort­ing. The love she feels for them is so re­al. The love they feel for each oth­er is so re­al. Would­n’t they all be stronger?

“Lost in thought, kit­ty?” asks Lia, who Izzy re­al­izes has been walk­ing back­wards to face her for some time.

“O—oh, yeah,” Izzy mum­bles. (Has Lia been call­ing her “kit­ty” a lot late­ly?)

Lia grins and holds out her hand. “In case you wan­der off,” she jokes.

Izzy gives her a petu­lant face, but takes the hand glad­ly.

Li­a’s hands are even big­ger than hers, a lit­tle less slen­der and a lit­tle more rough. Out­side of Mar­ket Square, and even with­in, peo­ple like to joke about hands like hers, make them in­to some kind of weapon. But all Izzy feels in Li­a’s grip is strength, sin­cer­i­ty, and the bit­ing cold, wow are Li­a’s hands cold.

Then, a warmer grip tight­ens around Izzy’s oth­er hand, and Fran gives her a play­ful head bump on the shoul­der, and they walk to­geth­er, side-by-side. But like this, Izzy does­n’t feel quite as ner­vous.

Maybe this is al­so a metaphor…? Izzy shakes her head. She should stop think­ing like this, prob­a­bly.

---

One of the few larg­er ware­hous­es left in Mar­ket Square, the 3rd Street De­part­ment Store is ac­tu­al­ly a flea mar­ket more than a store, with a sprawl­ing open plan, hun­dreds of mer­chants, a low ceil­ing, and a ter­mite prob­lem. But with a mas­sive se­lec­tion of clothes, new and used, it’s the hottest place to buy for that re­al “scav­enged” look that’s pop­u­lar in this dis­trict.

What Izzy had an­tic­i­pat­ed, but not ful­ly enough, was the em­bar­rass­ment and trep­i­da­tion she would feel when it came to ac­tu­al­ly pick­ing out clothes. She walks up and down rows and rows, in and out of sev­er­al shops, for al­most half an hour, with­out pick­ing up a sin­gle thing, and it’s not be­cause noth­ing’s caught her eye.

In­stead, ev­ery time some­thing does, she hes­i­tates. It’s not like scroung­ing up a shirt from their bed­room floor. If she picks some­thing out, it’s… a state­ment. It’s say­ing — here I am. I’m a girl, and these are the thigh highs I’m buy­ing. She can pick out some­thing as cute as she wants, as pret­ty as she wants, she can buy these things that have been such myth­i­cal, re­li­gious ob­jects to her for so long, but do­ing that is a state­ment that she wants those things — and that’s so hard, just so hard.

Fran and Lia, bless their souls, are re­mark­ably pa­tient, fol­low­ing Izzy around as she works her way through her on­go­ing in­ter­nal ther­a­py ses­sion.

Even­tu­al­ly, when she’s lost track of how much time has passed or where she even is, she re­al­izes she’s found her­self in a qui­et aisle. On ei­ther side of her are long racks of clothes, and to the ends of the aisle — no one. No one but Fran and Lia.

She’s look­ing at a pret­ty cute skirt.

This one’s an­oth­er miniskirt, thin, pleat­ed, black, dot­ted with can­dy-col­ored flow­ers. It’s got it all, and it’s in her size.

Izzy takes a breath, reach­es a hand out, and takes it off the rack. And Lia and Fran break out in gid­dy ap­plause.

Af­ter that, Izzy’s bol­stered. She’s sinned once — what’s a few more times? She moves through the clothes de­part­ment slow­ly, but me­thod­i­cal­ly. To her col­lec­tion she adds a plain, girly-cut black tee, a bright pink hood­ie (I nev­er re­al­ized the ones for girls looked so much cuter…), a pair of cheap pink ten­nis shoes, black and pink striped thigh highs (this is SUCH a score…), a pack of panties (when no­body was look­ing), a sports bra…

And sud­den­ly, she’s got a whole out­fit, and it’s hers. Pink and black, soft and nice. Izzy feels eu­phoric. She’s fuck­ing high right now. She roves the aisles again and again, be­ing care­ful not to pick out too much, but ev­ery item she adds is like a long-lost friend. Fran and Lia help her look, too. Lia finds a cute pink beanie Izzy falls in love with; Fran grins mis­chie­vous­ly and holds out a pair of frilly, lacy black panties that Izzy push­es away (but then sneaks in­to her bag when she thinks Fran’s not watch­ing).

The on­ly thing that ends Izzy’s spree is the crack­ly in­ter­com an­nounce­ment that the store will close soon, and she re­al­izes it’s al­most nine PM. She pays for ev­ery­thing, and out­side it’s rain­ing, but Izzy does­n’t care. She sprints home in the rain, Fran and Lia flag­ging be­hind. Izzy does­n’t care — she’s strong, she’s con­fi­dent, she’s pow­er­ful, she’s a girl, she’s in­vin­ci­ble, she’s won.

---

A cat, a dog, and a rac­coon, soak­ing wet and freez­ing, pile in­to their aw­ful at­tic apart­ment at a quar­ter past nine, laugh­ing and car­ry­ing shop­ping bags.

Izzy jogs a lap around the liv­ing room, still feel­ing high, and Fran laughs. “Izzy! I’ve nev­er seen you this en­er­get­ic be­fore!”

“I just can’t be­lieve I fi­nal­ly did it,” Izzy says, open­ing a bag and stick­ing her head in. “It feels like a step. I took a step. And it all looks so cute! I’m cute! I want to wear it.”

“Yes, yes,” chuck­les Lia, ap­pear­ing be­hind her. “First, though, you need to take a show­er be­fore you get pneu­mo­nia. We’ll take turns.”

“Yeah,” says Izzy, nod­ding fer­vent­ly. That sounds good. She wants ev­ery­thing to feel per­fect when she puts her stuff on.

When she puts it on…

“Y—you two should go first, though,” Izzy adds. “That way I can have the bath­room… for… y’­know…”

Fran low­ers her eyes and smiles. “Sounds good.” Lia pats her on the head, and they both leave for the show­er to­geth­er.

When they’ve had their turn, Izzy en­ters the bath­room with a bag of clothes, heart pound­ing. She show­ers quick­ly, just long enough to warm up, fluff her hair back up, and smell nice and fresh. When she’s done, the mir­ror’s fogged up, but she’s al­most hap­py — she’ll feel less self con­scious.

---

Panties feel weird.

They hug her a lot more than the box­er-briefs she’d been wear­ing for years, but not in an al­to­geth­er bad way. It’s plain that they weren’t nec­es­sar­i­ly meant to ac­com­mo­date, well, — but the point is, it’s nice. And they’re so cute.

Her thigh highs feel won­der­ful, her skirt feels airy. Her t-shirt feels so, so soft — why don’t they make clothes for men this soft? — and her hood­ie feels warm and snug and looks killer.

She’s wear­ing the out­fit she picked out ear­li­er, and she’s proud of her col­or co­or­di­na­tion, be­cause for the first time in her life, Izzy ac­tu­al­ly looks stylish. Decked out in pink and black, no­body would dare mis­take her for some­one with mas­cu­line as­pi­ra­tions.

---

Fran just sits there, look­ing like she won the lot­tery. But Lia is scream­ing, danc­ing around Izzy. “Oh my god, oh my God, it looks so good on you! Cutie!!”

Lia hugs Izzy so tight she al­most dies, and the hug turns in­to Lia lift­ing her in the air and spin­ning her around. “I’m so proud of you! My girl! My daugh­ter!”

Fran is try­ing to con­ceal a blush, try­ing to keep it cool. “Fuck, I think I’m in love,” she breathes, look­ing on through slight­ly part­ed fin­gers.

“C—c’­mon,” Izzy starts, find­ing her feet back on the ground and al­most fall­ing over from dizzi­ness, “I’m not that cute…”

She re­gains her foot­ing. And then she says, “Ac­tu­al­ly, I am. I’m so cute.”

Lia squeals again and hugs Izzy’s head, nuz­zling the fluffy hair be­tween her ears. “I love this dar­ling,” she coos. Izzy gig­gles, but then finds hands on her cheeks, lift­ing her face up, and be­fore she knows it Li­a’s lips are on hers, and this kiss is pas­sion­ate, like Li­a’s try­ing so hard to com­mu­ni­cate some­thing words can’t. Izzy squeaks, body arc­ing against Li­a’s, and Izzy lets her tongue in as Lia steps for­ward just a tiny bit, guid­ing her back against the wall.

Izzy re­al­izes all of a sud­den that, al­though she’s kissed her girl­friends dozens of times over the past week, they haven’t done any­thing like this since that night on the bed. And god, does she want it. Her body turns to put­ty as Li­a’s fin­gers curl in­to the hair on the back of her head. She takes in a few sharp breaths, but no mat­ter how much she breathes out, she feels like she’s fuller and fuller with some­thing each time. Lia takes Izzy’s low­er lip be­tween hers and nib­bles, then bites, draw­ing a weak lit­tle noise from the back of Izzy’s throat.

Fi­nal­ly, Lia pulls back, look­ing half­way un­done, red­der in the face than Izzy’s seen her. “You’re just so cute,” Lia breathes, but then she looks a lit­tle re­morse­ful and sud­den­ly asks, “A—are you okay?”

“I’m, fine,” says Izzy, who can do noth­ing but smile. “I keep telling you you don’t have to ask to kiss me…”

Lia looks re­lieved. “Right…”

Then Izzy winces, face heat­ing up. She turns her head to the side and tries to si­dle out from be­tween Lia and the wall.

“Are you okay, hon­ey?”

“Yeah, fine, fine,” Izzy says, turn­ing around to try and in­con­spic­u­ous­ly ad­just her erec­tion.

“Oh… S—sor­ry,” says Lia, but Izzy can hear her smil­ing.

Izzy can’t help but laugh. “I—it’s just, the panties, they’re kin­da tight, ha­ha…”

“Ugh, try it with skin­ny jeans, too,” Lia chuck­les, prompt­ing Izzy’s eyes to dart down be­fore she re­al­izes what she’s do­ing.

“Oh my God,” moans Fran from the so­fa, “I can’t be­lieve my girl­friends are over there get­ting bon­ers with­out me!”

That was the last straw. Izzy and Lia start heav­ing laughs for re­al now. Izzy can’t be­lieve how many dif­fer­ent emo­tions she’s feel­ing at once, so she just set­tles on laugh­ter.

When the fits die down, ev­ery­body’s sud­den­ly qui­et, un­til Fran gets up from the couch to whis­per some­thing in Li­a’s ear. What­ev­er she was asked, Lia nods fu­ri­ous­ly, and the two of them turn to Izzy.

“Hey, Izzy?” Fran starts.

“Y—yeah?”

Fran twid­dles her thumbs, look­ing in­no­cent. “We wan­na ask you some­thing, but like, if it makes you un­com­fort­able, you can to­tal­ly say no, al­right? No pres­sure or any­thing.”

“What is it?” Izzy is cu­ri­ous now.

Fran can’t seem to say it, so Lia picks up for her. “Izzy, would you want to… fool around with us, tonight?”

Izzy’s eyes go wide. “You mean, like…?”

Fran nods in­tense­ly. Lia says, “Yeah. But on­ly if you’re okay with it.”

Izzy balks, blush­ing, not sure what to say (if on­ly be­cause she knows ex­act­ly what she wants to say). Smil­ing ner­vous­ly, she says, “A—are you okay with that? I would­n’t wan­na… I would­n’t wan­na get in the way, or any­thing, and like, I—I don’t know if I’m very good at, any­thing, um, I…”

“I wan­na fo­cus on you,” blurts Fran, look­ing se­ri­ous.

Lia has half her face cov­ered in one hand, blush­ing. “Uh, y—yeah, me too…”

“Again, like, se­ri­ous­ly, no pres­sure. We could just… ex­plore, y’­know?”

Izzy’s heart is threat­en­ing to pound out of this di­men­sion. To say noth­ing of her — well.

“I’d… that would… I want that,” she fi­nal­ly says, look­ing just slight­ly to the left of where her girl­friends are stand­ing.

Lia lights up im­me­di­ate­ly. Fran starts grin­ning.

Once again, they take Izzy’s hand and guide her in­to the bed­room.

---

Izzy tum­bles back­wards on­to the bed, and be­fore she can fig­ure out why, Fran climbs on top of her, look­ing like she’s ready for mis­chief. She low­ers her lids and smiles down at Izzy, then licks her lips and leans in.

It’s not Izzy’s lips that Fran kiss­es first, but her cheek. Then comes an­oth­er kiss, a lit­tle low­er, then one on her jaw. “Izzy,” Fran speaks in­to her neck, in a voice that sounds un­char­ac­ter­is­ti­cal­ly plead­ing, al­most needy, “you re­al­ly, re­al­ly, re­al­ly are so pret­ty…”

Fran’s body is pressed flush against Izzy’s, and she’d have a hard time wig­gling free even if she want­ed — but Fran knows that, they all know by now how much Izzy loves to be squeezed, caught, pinned like this…

On­ly this time, Izzy feel­s… a lit­tle more acute­ly aware of ev­ery­thing that’s touch­ing her right now. The con­text of what they’re in here to do makes Izzy pay ex­tra close at­ten­tion to the feel of Fran’s body on top of hers, as Fran leaves more and more kiss­es in the crook of her neck.

Fran nib­bles a lit­tle bit on the curve of Izzy’s neck, and she can’t help but make a noise, rais­ing her arms to clutch at the back of Fran’s tank top. The tighter they’re pressed to­geth­er, the more in­ti­mate­ly Izzy can feel Fran’s breasts press­ing up against her chest, and it’s so warm and nice. Fran’s whole body is soft and chub­by, and Izzy feels so snug, cling­ing to her help­less­ly.

There’s no hid­ing Izzy’s erec­tion any­more. It’s man­aged to slip out of her panties, tent­ing her skirt — leav­ing a tiny wet patch. Izzy re­al­izes all at once that she has­n’t… re­lieved her­self… since she left her ex’s house, and she has a sneak­ing sus­pi­cion that nei­ther have Fran or Lia.

Izzy feels em­bar­rassed, but she’s — sur­pris­ing­ly to her — not as anx­ious as she thought she should be. Af­ter all, she’s pret­ty in­ex­pe­ri­enced. And she’s nev­er done any­thing with girls be­fore. And yet… maybe it’s a sign of how much she trusts her girl­friends, that she feels pre­pared for what­ev­er ends up hap­pen­ing.

Fran pulls back, as if to say she’s had her fill for now, and rolls off Izzy, let­ting her sit up. She tries to puff out her skirt a bit to make her erec­tion less ob­vi­ous, but there’s re­al­ly no point by now.

Izzy won­ders where Lia is, be­fore re­al­iz­ing she’s sat right be­hind her, and then Li­a’s hands close around her and pull her back­wards so that Lia can wrap her­self around the seat­ed girl.

“Okay, kit­ty,” Lia coos, “let’s talk.” Fran scoots in a lit­tle clos­er, as if they’re all about to have an im­promp­tu meet­ing.

“Talk?”

“Yeah, you can tell us what you want,” says Fran. “We’ll do our best not to do any­thing you don’t like, so you should tell us like, what you’re com­fort­able with, what you wan­na do and stuff.”

Izzy’s face is on fire think­ing about it. She’s re­al­ly glad they’re so care­ful, but now she’s com­ing up on the same bar­ri­er as ear­li­er — hav­ing the de­sires is one thing, but ac­tu­al­ly say­ing them out loud…

“I, I don’t know where to start, ha­ha,” Izzy mum­bles.

“That’s okay,” says Lia. “How about we start with… what are you com­fort­able with us see­ing? Or touch­ing? Stuff like that.”

Izzy can’t help but smile — a ner­vous smile, a “oh my god, help me” smile. Her heart’s run­ning a marathon. “W—well… I’m… I trust you, s—so… I don’t mind you see­ing my body… o—or touch­ing me… um… a—any­where…”

Lia squeezes her tighter. “Hee hee, I’m flat­tered to hear that. And same for both of us, too.”

Fran nods. “Yeah, you can…” — she says the next word in an ex­ag­ger­at­ed breathy voice — “ex­plore all you want, if you like.”

Ex­plore… Izzy sighs. That’s a good word. It sounds safe.

“Okay, next ques­tion,” says Lia. “What do you wan­na do right now? Any­thing that feels com­fort­able to you, or like, any­thing that might… turn you on~?”

Any­thing?

“Me and Lia are re­al­ly open to what­ev­er, so we’ll prob­a­bly be in­to it. You can say what­ev­er’s on your mind.”

What might make her feel more com­fort­able, or turn her on…

Oh, no. Some­thing does flash in Izzy’s mind, briefly, but once the idea’s plant­ed she can’t shake it, it’s the on­ly thing she can think about, but she can’t pos­si­bly — she can’t pos­si­bly —

But when Izzy thinks about ev­ery­thing she’s done to­day, how con­fi­dent she was in her new clothes, how she flirt­ed with Lia, bond­ed with Fran… maybe she can cap the day off and voice this tiny, weird thing. Just move her lips, make the sound hap­pen —

“Th…”

Fran leans in and Lia hov­ers over her shoul­der, ex­pec­tant­ly.

“The… the, um…”

What she’s about to say might open the flood­gate to a lot of de­sires she’s kept bot­tled up for a long time, but, but…

“The, um, the col­lar…”

Izzy hides her face in her hands. “The col­lar?” asks Lia, sound­ing slight­ly con­fused, but Fran is beam­ing. Per­haps catch­ing the drift from Fran, Lia gasps. “The col­lar! OH!”

Fran claps and runs her mouth like a mo­tor­boat. “Oh my god, she ac­ci­den­tal­ly found the col­lar ear­li­er and I kind of teased her with it but I had no idea she might ac­tu­al­ly like re­al­ly want to, wear it, oh my god, OH my god I’m gonna die Izzy I love you —”

Lia squeezes Izzy pro­tec­tive­ly. “Well, calm down, let’s not spook her! Izzy, do you wan­na wear the cute col­lar…?”

Izzy still has­n’t peeled her hands from her face, but she nods.

Lia gig­gles. “Of course that’s A-OK. Fran? Do you know where that thing —”

Fran holds it up, smirk­ing. “It’s lit­er­al­ly right here.” Izzy peeks out from be­hind her hands in time to see Fran’s gaze soft­en a bit, and she says, in a more gen­tle tone, “Okay, babe… shall I help put it on you?”

Adren­a­line is run­ning in cir­cuits up and down Izzy’s chest, her heart’s caught in her throat… she feels so em­bar­rassed, but it feels good. Un­able to say a word, she sits up straight, lean­ing to­wards Fran.

Fran press­es a soft kiss to Izzy’s cheek in re­as­sur­ance. Then, she brings the col­lar to Izzy’s neck, loop­ing it around. “Lia? Would you do the hon­or?”

“Of course,” an­swers Lia, tak­ing the ends and care­ful­ly fas­ten­ing the buck­le. Izzy feels the soft in­ner fab­ric tight­en around her neck, just enough to be snug, but not squeeze. “Does that feel okay?” Lia asks.

“Yeah…”

It feels re­al­ly nice. Izzy was­n’t sure what to ex­pect, but it feels weird­ly snug and se­cure, and to think that her girl­friends put it on her…

“So, um,” says Fran, lean­ing in close, “is there any par­tic­u­lar rea­son you want­ed to wear this? Or just a fash­ion thing?”

Izzy wig­gles. Now comes the part where she re­al­ly, tru­ly has to say what she wants… the things she likes.

“I, um… I like… Or, I mean, I would wan­t… um…”

Fran wags her tail, lis­ten­ing in­tent­ly.

“I guess I’ve al­ways had this f—fan­ta­sy of like… be­ing kind of… sub­mis­sive… b—but like, not like in a, like, a BDSM way, I mean, I mean, l—like…”

Lia slips a hand around Izzy’s for com­fort.

“More like… a pet? Um, it makes me re­al­ly hap­py to be sort of, t—tak­en care of… or told what to do… or… is that weird to say? I don’t mean like, a PET pet, but, um, um, ac­tu­al­ly, I do?”

She’s sud­den­ly wor­ried this was a bad idea. Like maybe her new hon­esty pol­i­cy should on­ly go so far. Say­ing these things out loud makes her re­al­ize maybe they’re stranger than she thought, hard­er to ar­tic­u­late than she thought, but —

But Fran can’t take any more. She jumps on Izzy, squeez­ing her tight. “Oh my god, Izzy!”

“Th—this is so cute and good,” says Lia, sound­ing like she’s about to shat­ter in­to a mil­lion pieces.

“I guess I’m say­ing, you can, treat me, like a, pet, if you want to…”

“First of all, not weird at all,” says Lia. “Sec­ond of al­l…”

Li­a’s hand tilts Izzy’s head to the side to let her plant a sweet, lin­ger­ing kiss on her kit­ty’s lips.

When Lia pulls back, she asks in a low voice, “Does this mean you’d like us to take the lead…?”

Izzy nods. “You can… you can do what­ev­er you wan­t… I’ll tell you if I’m un­com­fort­able… s—so…”

Izzy feels like she’s melt­ing. Could she re­al­ly get away with this? It’s the kind of thing she’d al­ways, al­ways want­ed to do, but she — she’s nev­er felt like she was al­lowed to be this vul­ner­a­ble, this open about her wants…

“Well,” says Lia, “what I re­al­ly want right now is to see this cute kit­ty get off.”

Izzy’s dick twitch­es, and her heart near­ly skips a beat. Lia con­tin­ues: “I’m gonna take off your hood­ie… is that okay?”

Izzy nods, sit­ting back up. She does­n’t say a word as Li­a’s fin­gers close around the flaps of her hood­ie and slide it off her. And even though it was the out­er­most lay­er of her out­fit, she still feels a lot more ex­posed. Now with on­ly a thin lay­er of fab­ric sep­a­rat­ing them, Lia pulls Izzy back in­to her arms again, nestling her in her lap. Next, Fran scoots in much clos­er, sit­ting on her knees be­tween Izzy’s legs. As Lia leans back a lit­tle and Fran’s pres­ence keeps her thighs slight­ly part­ed, Izzy re­al­izes her dick is to­tal­ly on dis­play, save for the skirt draped over it.

Vul­ner­a­ble. That’s how she feels right now. But she knows she’s safe — and this is a com­bi­na­tion of feel­ings she’s def­i­nite­ly nev­er felt be­fore. It’s like the slow as­cent to the top of a roller coast­er, on­ly soft­er, warmer, and you can get off when­ev­er you want.

Izzy jumps a bit when Li­a’s fin­gers brush the sides of her ab­domen, then set­tle with her hands pressed flat against her, hold­ing her. Then they drift, run­ning over Izzy’s tum­my, fall­ing down her sides — ex­plor­ing, by touch, the shape of her.

“Is this okay?” asks Lia, with her head nes­tled in the crook of Izzy’s shoul­der.

“Yeah,” Izzy says, sur­prised at the breath­i­ness in her own voice.

In the course of the gen­tle mas­sag­ing, the hem of Izzy’s T-shirt has lift­ed slight­ly, re­veal­ing a slice of her midriff, and Lia takes the op­por­tu­ni­ty to slide her fin­gers over it, run­ning them un­der­neath the shirt, and for the first time skin is meet­ing skin, and Izzy can’t help but shud­der from the sen­sa­tion of Li­a’s cool fin­ger­tips.

Seem­ing­ly un­able to bear sit­ting and watch­ing any longer, Fran gets up on her knees and makes a bee­line for Izzy’s lips. She fi­nal­ly takes her chance to kiss Izzy on the lips, and Izzy re­mem­bers very sud­den­ly the dif­fer­ence be­tween Lia kiss­es and Fran kiss­es. Fran’s lips are soft­er, and her tongue is hun­gri­er, more quick to probe, like she can’t stand to leave an inch of Izzy’s mouth un­ex­plored. Can you top some­one with your tongue?

Izzy squeaks help­less­ly while Li­a’s hands get more ad­ven­tur­ous, slip­ping ful­ly un­der­neath Izzy’s shirt and run­ning up her naked stom­ach. “God, your bel­ly’s so soft,” gig­gles Lia, clear­ly en­joy­ing her­self. Even if Izzy want­ed to re­spond, she could­n’t, not with her mouth oc­cu­pied like this. She squeezes her eyes shut, feel­ing tears welling and will­ing them to go down — she’s not sad, she’s so elat­ed that her body does­n’t know what to do with it­self.

Lia be­gins to touch a lit­tle high­er, then a lit­tle high­er, drag­ging Izzy’s shirt up with her hands, ex­pos­ing her whole bel­ly. And then —

“Mmmh…!”

Li­a’s hands brush over Izzy’s ten­der nip­ples. “Is this okay?” Lia whis­pers, and Fran al­lows their lips to part long enough for Izzy to whim­per some sort of af­fir­ma­tive noise be­fore plung­ing back in.

Li­a’s fin­ger­tips mas­sage the whole area of Izzy’s flat lit­tle boobs, and ei­ther be­cause of how much fore­play they’ve had or the short amount of time Izzy’s been on E, she shiv­ers a tiny bit ev­ery time Li­a’s palms run across her nip­ples.

She’s hav­ing her boobs played with, and she’s so hap­py.

Mean­while, Fran seems to have grad­u­at­ed from let­ting her tongue do the work. With­out ev­er ful­ly with­draw­ing her lips, she cups Izzy’s jaw in one hand, and press­es her thumb be­tween Izzy’s lips, part­ing them slight­ly, play­ing with them. Then her fin­ger is in­side, slid­ing in, meet­ing Izzy’s tongue, pulling her mouth open a lit­tle. Izzy’s not sure what you would call this, but she’s so in­to it.

Now Fran has her mid­dle and ring fin­gers in her mouth, hav­ing fi­nal­ly pulled out of their kiss, and Izzy can’t help but suck on them. Izzy sighs and whines, un­able to speak prop­er­ly; she shuts her eyes and lets the fin­gers do what­ev­er lov­ing they want to.

And then, Lia fi­nal­ly takes Izzy’s nip­ples be­tween her thumbs and fore­fin­gers, pinch­ing them gen­tly, and Izzy arch­es with a pa­thet­ic noise, and a rivulet of drool runs down her chin be­cause she can’t close her mouth.

Now Lia is fo­cus­ing on Izzy’s nip­ples for re­al, and she won’t let up. She brush­es her fin­ger­tips across them, squeezes them be­tween two knuck­les, press­es in­to them with her thumbs. And it feels so, so, so good. Izzy has played with her nip­ples be­fore, but hav­ing an­oth­er per­son do it is some­thing com­plete­ly dif­fer­ent. A flut­ter­ing feel­ing starts to pool in her bel­ly, like her body’s go­ing hay­wire. And Izzy starts to purr.

But this time, she’s too blissed out to stop. It’s em­bar­rass­ing, but Izzy does­n’t care; she just lets it hap­pen. She lets it through; she lets the drool run down her chin; she lets the hap­py squeaks leave her; she lets her cock twitch and ache and paint an ev­er-grow­ing patch of pre on her pret­ty lit­tle skirt. She lets her body do what it wants.

“God, she’s so pre­cious,” whines Fran, sound­ing like she’s bare­ly hold­ing it to­geth­er. “Izzy…”

Fran pulls her fin­gers from Izzy’s mouth and gives her a se­ri­ous look, and Izzy sud­den­ly re­al­izes how flushed Fran’s face is.

“Izzy, I wan­na… I wan­na touch you,” she whis­pers, mo­tion­ing. This time Izzy’s heart does skip a beat, but all she does is nod.

Lia squeezes her. “You’re such a good girl, Izzy.”

Fran scoots back a lit­tle, fall­ing back down on her butt to get a bet­ter po­si­tion. Then, with both hands, she pulls Izzy by the legs so that she falls a lit­tle, the an­gle she’s sit­ting at is a lit­tle less sharp — the tent in her skirt is a lit­tle more ex­posed.

For good mea­sure, Fran press­es Izzy’s thighs a lit­tle far­ther apart, clear­ly sa­vor­ing what she was about to get up to. Izzy whim­pers; she’s so, so painful­ly hard, her body wants this so bad.

Fran press­es one ten­ta­tive fin­ger to the tip of Izzy’s cock, still through her skirt, and Izzy al­most jumps at the sen­sa­tion. When Fran pulls it back, a long trail of pre comes with it.

“God, even I don’t get this wet,” teas­es Fran. “So cute…”

This is it…

Izzy can’t take any more. She wants to be touched, she wants re­lief. Her cock bounces be­neath her skirt from how much she’s twitch­ing. She wig­gles in Li­a’s arms, rest­less.

“P—please touch me,” she says, sound­ing des­per­ate.

Fran does­n’t need to be told twice. She flash­es Izzy a grin, and then, fi­nal­ly, she lifts up Izzy’s skirt, re­veal­ing her at last to the open air.

“Oh my god,” says Fran, “are the­se…?”

Izzy sud­den­ly re­mem­bers that the panties she’s wear­ing are the frilly, lacy pair Fran teased her with at the store — the ones she sneak­i­ly stuffed in her bag. She had­n’t ex­pect­ed any­one to ac­tu­al­ly see them tonight.

Izzy’s cock is stand­ing free, still drip­ping pre, but her balls are tucked snug­ly in­side her frilly panties.

Fran can on­ly hide her face in her hands and groan. “So fuck­ing cute, this is im­pos­si­ble…”

Lia is gig­gling and squeez­ing Izzy as tight as she can. “Oh, you pre­cious girl,” she coos, but Izzy is too far gone. She wants to be touched, and all she can do is sit there. She rais­es her arms to hang on to Li­a’s neck be­hind her. She curls her toes; she feels like she’s about to over­heat and ex­plode.

It’s Lia who takes the first go.

Maybe see­ing how des­per­ate Izzy is, Lia reach­es around and grabs hold of Izzy’s cock, tak­ing it firm­ly in her fist. Izzy’s hips buck im­me­di­ate­ly, and she lets out a heavy sigh at the sud­den re­lief.

“Caught you,” whis­pers Lia in her ear.

And Izzy re­al­ly is caught. At first, Lia does­n’t pump her or any­thing; she just grips her tight, and that makes Izzy feel so vul­ner­a­ble. Lia can prob­a­bly feel her twitch­ing in her fist.

Izzy’s hips buck­le; her body’s beg­ging for it so bad that she’s al­most try­ing to fuck Li­a’s fist, and Lia seems pleased with that. So, fi­nal­ly, her grip loosens, and she starts to pump for re­al.

Izzy heaves a sigh. It’s gen­tle, like Lia is with ev­ery­thing. Her fin­gers glide up and down Izzy’s girly lit­tle cock, pulling down her skin and re­plac­ing it, soft­ly bump­ing her balls — Izzy can feel ev­ery­thing, and so in­tense­ly.

“Does kit­ty like this?” asks Lia, with her chin nes­tled in the crook of Izzy’s shoul­der.

“Yeees…,” Izzy moans. The con­cept of shame has left the build­ing; there’s no room for it in here, in the safe­ty of Fran, Lia, and Izzy’s bed­room.

Izzy shuts her eyes and just fo­cus­es on the feel­ings. Wrapped up in Li­a’s tight em­brace, ex­posed and caught and small in such a good way. She can hear Li­a’s breath in her ear, and it’s calm, but there’s this hint in it — it’s a lit­tle ragged, a lit­tle heavy. Izzy re­mem­bers that she’s not the on­ly one be­ing plea­sured here; her girl­friends want this too, they want to touch her and love her and watch her un­rav­el and cum, and she can feel it. She can feel it in their touch, see it on their faces, hear it in their voice. Izzy is want­ed, she’s at­trac­tive, she’s hot and Fran and Lia are get­ting off on this too.

With that re­al­iza­tion, Izzy’s chest is just — so — tight. She feels so warm all over. And she’s close.

God, she’s so close. Her hips are lift­ing off the bed over and over in rhythm with Li­a’s pumps — but then, sud­den­ly, Li­a’s hand is gone, and Izzy wants to yell, “nooooo,” but stops her­self just short.

Lia hmms. Then she says, “Fran, why don’t you take over.”

Fran’s face lights up, and she glad­ly ac­cepts the pump­ing du­ty, wrap­ping her soft chub­by fin­gers around Izzy in­stead, and Izzy feels so much re­lief, she does­n’t want to stop be­ing touched, she just wants —

Li­a’s hands are back up Izzy’s shirt, this time beel­in­ing straight for her nip­ples, and now she’s play­ing with Izzy’s lit­tle nubs again, and if Izzy thought she was des­per­ate be­fore, now she’s go­ing wild.

Izzy’s mind is odd­ly blank. Ev­ery­thing is fall­ing away, re­ced­ing in­to the dis­tance. There’s just her, and the heart­break­ing waves of warmth squeez­ing at her chest, and the touch­es of her pre­cious girl­friends guid­ing her through it.

“A—aaah,” Izzy moans, “th—this is so good, I’m so close, I’m so close…!”

Per­haps hear­ing that, Fran seems to think for a few sec­onds, then quits pump­ing. In­stead, she shifts quick­ly on­to her el­bows and — oh my God, is she go­ing to —

Fran stops just short of tak­ing Izzy in­to her mouth be­fore she looks up at her, as if to dou­ble check.

“P—please,” Izzy begs.

That’s all Fran needs to hear.

It’s wet, and warm, and it’s just so much. Izzy is hang­ing on by a thread. Fran’s lips, Fran’s tongue, Li­a’s fin­gers still tweak­ing and pinch­ing and flick­ing her breasts — her breasts — her breasts —

“I’m, I’m, I’m gonna cum, F—Fran, aah, I’m com­ing, I’m com­ing —”

Izzy comes hard­er than she thinks she’s ev­er come, and she feels it in ev­ery place that skin is touch­ing skin. The feel­ing re­flects off of ev­ery cor­ner of her body and re­ver­ber­ates in the back of her skull, and by the time she re­al­izes the cute, bot­to­my wail she’s let­ting out it’s too late to stop it. Lia is hold­ing her tight, as though Izzy might fly in­to space if she let go, and Fran is — Fran is tak­ing her cum, and, oh my God, no­body has ev­er done that for Izzy be­fore, and she’s wear­ing a kit­ty col­lar, and she has three bags of beau­ti­ful clothes, and she thinks she might just be the luck­i­est wom­an alive, and she is a wom­an, and she is alive.

When her legs stop kick­ing and her hips stop buck­ing and the waves die down, Izzy is left pant­ing, like ev­ery­thing in­side her just left her body. And then, fi­nal­ly, Fran lets her out of her mouth and swal­lows it.

---

It’s a bit hazy what hap­pens next, but Izzy knows Lia helps her take off her pre­cum-soaked skirt, and they all end up ly­ing down, un­der the blan­ket to­geth­er, and a lot of min­utes pass of Izzy just pant­ing, feel­ing like she could go to sleep or the moon.

When some­one speaks, it’s Fran, and she says, “You did such a good job, Izzy.”

Lia makes a hap­py laugh. “Yeah, I’m so proud of you, kit­ty.”

Izzy feels con­fused. “But I did­n’t do any­thing…”

Fran nuz­zles Izzy’s cheek. “Um, no, you did a whole lot, babe.”

“You got so vul­ner­a­ble, and you trust­ed us a lot, and that’s re­al­ly good and strong,” says Lia.

Izzy does­n’t have the en­er­gy to ar­gue, so she just be­lieves them in­stead, and that feels so good. She’s re­al­ly glad that her girl­friends are proud of her. She’s glad she did a good job. She likes to do a good job. Izzy likes to be a good girl.

She re­al­izes dream­i­ly that she’s still wear­ing her col­lar. Still drained of her in­hi­bi­tions, she asks, qui­et­ly, “Is it okay if… I wear this col­lar all the time?”

Lia sits up straight for a mo­ment to study Izzy’s face for a bit. Then she smiles and lays back down, wrap­ping her arm around the kit­ty.

“Any time you want, Izzy.”

“I hear pet play can be com­fort­ing,” agrees Fran. “It’s such a cute fit for you. You know, I al­ways want­ed a pet, but some­body said —”

“Oh, shush,” laughs Lia. “Look, I’ll let you have Izzy, but you have to prom­ise to walk her ev­ery day.”

“Thank you, Mom.”

Even Izzy is gig­gling now. To­day feels like such a huge pile of ner­vous ques­tions have been tak­en off the ta­ble. To­day feels like a lot of vic­to­ries and lit­tle steps. And as long as she keeps that up, maybe it’s okay for her to be weak. Maybe it’s okay to let her spe­cial girl­friends dote on her as much as they want. And maybe it’s okay to like that — and to say it out loud.

“Thank you for lik­ing me so much,” Izzy whis­pers.

Lia squeezes a lit­tle tighter. “Of course, sweet­ie. We love you.”

“To­mor­row I’m gonna try mak­ing crepes for break­fast.”

Fran muss­es up Izzy’s hair. “That sounds re­al­ly good,” she says, a lit­tle too en­thu­si­as­ti­cal­ly.

And like that, they keep say­ing idle noth­ings back and forth, un­til all three of them drift off to sleep, hav­ing wrung ev­ery last drop out of their sec­ond Sat­ur­day to­geth­er as girl­friends.