Not the Plan

This was most certainly not the plan.

Yes, she was transgender and yes she was transitioning, but the plan was to take things slow so her girlfriend could get used to things before she was fully presenting as a woman. That plan had gone to shit in seconds.

She had gotten antsy. She was tired of going slow. She wanted to speed things along a little, so she had gotten her girlfriend to take her out to get a mani/pedi. Being unemployed, she saw nothing wrong with getting some adorable 1″ acrylics attached. Her girlfriend had objected, but she would have none of it. She wanted to feel pretty for once, so the acrylics had gone on, a nice French manicure. She loved it. Then came the problem.

A call for an interview. That’s all it had taken. Anna had been so excited about it she had agreed immediately to have the interview the very next day. She’d been looking for a job for too long and needed one badly to do things for her transition. She hadn’t thought about what would happen if she showed up for an interview as a man with acrylic nails until she woke up the next morning to get ready.

“I’ll never get the job if I show up like this,” she told her girlfriend. “What am I going to do?”

“Interview as a woman,” Anna’s girlfriend told her.

“Really?” Anna felt giddy at the very idea. She wanted to be a woman, but they hadn’t done much to get her there yet. “I-I couldn’t. I can’t pass.”

Her girlfriend smiled. “I’ll make you pass.”

She was right. After a few hours of work, Anna passed beautifully. She had butterflies in her stomach. This was what she always wanted. To be a beautiful woman. This was how she always felt on the inside. She just never expected that she would be at this point so soon. Her voice needed work, but her girlfriend said it was good enough to pass in a short interview, so Anna stood tall and proud and gone off to her interview.

“Hi, I’m Anna.” She held out her hand for the man to take.

He stood from behind his desk, in his gray Armani suit with a blue tie, and shook her hand. He was young, maybe a few years older than Anna, handsome, with brown eyes that had a certain mischievous sparkle. His smile revealed rows of perfectly straight and white teeth.

“Hi, Anna. I’m Tony. What can I help you with?”

Damn, he had so much charisma, so much charm. Anna didn’t even like boys, or didn’t think she did, but she was really falling for that smile. “Oh, um, you called me for an interview. At 3?”

“Hmmm…I called Tanner for an interview today. I don’t remember an Anna on my list. Are you sure you came to the right place?”

“Yes, I’m sure. I think my little sister might have been messing around and put in Tanner instead of Anna.” She hoped that would work. God, what was she doing here? This was a stupid idea.

He motioned for a chair in front of the desk. “Sit down then, please.” He himself sat down behind the desk and pulled her resume out of a stack of papers on his desk. “Anna, tell me a bit about yourself.”

In her nervousness, she had gone on and on about things, making long answers to simple questions. Tony had sat and watched her with those eyes, smiling all the time, at least seeming to listen to every word Anna said. She didn’t know when she relaxed and just allowed herself to be herself, but she found that at some point she had completely forgotten the circumstances of the interview.

“OMG!” Anna was so excited. She couldn’t keep it in when she called her girlfriend. “It went so well!”

The next day, Tony called back and offered her the job as his executive assistant. Anna jumped for joy and that night took her girlfriend out for a huge, expensive dinner. She was so happy she didn’t notice the look of consternation of her girlfriend’s face.

“So, Anna got the job, right? Not Tanner?”

Anna nodded. “Yeah, I guess. I mean, I interviewed as Anna.”

“So you have to be Anna a lot now, huh?”

Anna shrugged. “I guess. At work, probably.”

She bought a bunch of her own clothes, online, in preparation for starting her new job the following week. Her girlfriend was mopey and distant, but Anna didn’t care. She was giddy and practically jumping for joy. She hardly ate anything all week, such was the state of her stomach.

Her first week went well. Tony made it so easy to just relax and be herself, and everyone in the office was so nice. It was amazing to be interacted with just like any other woman in the office, but something to get used to as well. She had never noticed the casual superiority complex men had until she started working as Anna.

As time went on, her girlfriend only became more distant, but work took up more and more of Anna’s time as she was assigned special projects and raced to keep her deadlines. Anna was also Anna more and more. When it began, she had come home and gotten into her Tanner suit, but now she spent more time at the office and being Tanner was becoming too exhausting. Plus, she had friends at work, and went out for happy hour with them regularly. It was impossible to lead a double life.

Six months into the new job Anna’s girlfriend hit a breaking point.
“I can’t do this anymore. I can’t handle you being a girl all the time. You went too fast. I can’t keep up. We never have sex anymore.” The tears streamed down her face. “I can’t be with you anymore.”

Anna was devastated. They’d been together for years. It was supposed to be forever. Her girlfriends as work did a great job cheering her up the next week. And Tony was surprisingly gentle. She was glad she had such an awesome job with such awesome people.

It was weeks later when Anna noticed that her orientation had shifted. Maybe it hadn’t. Maybe it had been there all along, repressed. Or maybe she just liked Tony. Whatever it was, when he asked her to get some coffee after work one day, Anna couldn’t resist. She wanted to be around him. Hear his voice. Look into his beautiful eyes. She wanted him to smile at her. It was never supposed to be a relationship.

Yet, here it was, six months later, and Anna found herself desperately in love with her boss. She had managed to keep his lust at bay, for now, but how long could that continue? Sooner or later he would find out the truth of her situation. And then what? Everything she worked for would be ruined. She couldn’t let that happen. This was her life, damn it.

Time to own it.