“I don’t know where our waitress is,” she said quickly, trying to head off an explosion. “Why don’t Gene and I go to the bar and get our drinks, all right?” She poked Gene in the side. “Move.
“What are you trying to do?” she hissed, when they were out of earshot. “Get yourself killed?”
“Him?” Gene flipped a disparaging hand. “Don’t make me laugh. I’ve seen a hundred like him. Stupid, scared little boys in men’s bodies, trying to cover their own inadequacies with brag and bluster. Small men,” he said significantly, “Trying to act big. Listen.” His fingers danced in a complicated pattern.
“Jesus Christ.” Brad’s disgusted voice seemed to be coming from only a few feet away, even though he and Allison were clear across the room. “You know, Allie, it’s bad enough that I have to put up with that dyke hanging around everywhere we go. But now she drags a faggot along, too? What’s next? Are we going to have the fucking Village People playing at the reception?”
Shanaya didn’t dare turn around, for fear of the expression she would see on Allison’s face. Would she agree? Was her friendship a sham?
“Brad.” Her friend’s voice was soft, but there was steel underneath, like a knife in a velvet sheath. “Shanaya has been my best friend since I was four years old. You’ve been my fiancée for five months.” A deep breath. “Think about that before you bad-mouth her in front of me again.”
“All right.” His petulant tone was much reduced. “But that guy is creepy.”
A giggle. “I thought he was cute. And funny. And you know I need someone to do my hair for the wedding. Mom wants me to go to her salon, but those old women will have me looking like something out of Steel Magnolias, with a great big old beehive hairdo. More like a hairdon’t. I want something new, something sexy, something people around here haven’t seen before.” Her voice grew low and teasing. “After we eat, want to come back to my place and fool around for a while? It’s Mom and Dad’s bowling night. They won’t be back until late.”
“Oh, come on! You’re telling me that’s not a strike? What the hell is that bozo looking at?”
A chilly silence followed, and it was all Shanaya could do to not crane her head around and see what was going on. Eventually, Brad must have realized he had made a mistake, because he finally asked, “Sorry, babe. Did you say something?”
“I asked,” Allison said, her voice colder than Shanaya had ever heard her use with Brad, “if you wanted to come home with me after we ate. But you were too busy yelling at a baseball game three hundred miles away.”
“Sorry, babe. You know how much I hate the Cardinals. But I probably should go home after. I have to finish packing. Bachelor party starts tomorrow, you know, and we’ve got an early flight.” His voice grew smug. “By noon I intend to be on the beach with a drink in my hand.”
“And here’s a drink for you right now, honeybuns,” Gene said as he sauntered back up to the table, Shanaya following. He slid the beer across the polished wooden surface, keeping something pink and fruity for himself. “Now,” he said, batting his eyes outrageously as he sat back sown, “please don’t try to get me drunk and take advantage of me. How would I break the news to my family that my shy, blushing virginity was absolutely ravaged by a big nasty brute like yourself?”
Brad looked as if he were trying to ignore Gene’s vapid simpering, but Shanaya thought she saw a muscle in his eye start to twitch. “So how long will you be away at the bachelor party?” she asked, in an effort to preserve Gene’s life.
“Four days,” he replied shortly. “Leave tomorrow, back Sunday night.”
Four days, she thought to herself, picking up the menu and staring at it sightlessly. Four days to have Gene change me into a man, seduce my best friend, stop her marriage, and alter reality enough that I live the rest of my life with a dick and a set of balls.
“A bachelor party? How delightfully bohemian!” Gene leaned forward, his chin cupped in his hands. “And it will be you and all of your buff, manly friends? Oh, please take me with you!”
“Sorry, man.” The twitch was growing more pronounced. “Wedding party only.”
“Oh.” He flounced back into his seat. Shanaya put a warning hand on his arm. Allison, on the other hand, seemed to be enjoying her boyfriend’s discomfiture, if her merrily dancing eyes were any indication. She hoped Gene would cool it. It was not out of the realm of possibility, she thought uneasily, for Brad to call some of his friends to kick the shit out of Gene on general principles, to say nothing of the way his flirting was getting under his skin. Mayfield wasn’t exactly Louisville when it came to people’s willingness to see gays and lesbians as real people with rights of their own.
Luckily, Gene seemed to catch her hint, because he left off his incessant baiting of Brad and focused on Allison. Her lovely friend seemed flattered by the attention, and soon the air was ringing with their laughter. Shanaya smiled to see her so happy, her blue eyes sparkling and her sweet, mobile face like a stream under the sun – always the same, ever changing. She sighed, her heart aching, as Allison chattered away about the wedding and the honeymoon and a cute little house that she had seen yesterday that would be so much nicer than the apartment that Brad was living in, and was perfect for a baby.
“She’s mine, you know.”
The words were low, but full of sneering hostility. Her head jerked to Brad, who had torn his attention away from his plate of chicken wings and the baseball game.
“I know what you want. And you’re never going to get it.” He leaned forward, picking at his teeth with a thumbnail. “You could strip down naked right in front of her, and she wouldn’t ever notice. Of course,” he said nastily, running his eyes across her body contemptuously, “most men wouldn’t either. Is that why you decided to go lesbo? Because men wouldn’t touch you with a stick?
“Hey,” he smirked. “I heard a good one yesterday. Why do Indian women have a red dot on their foreheads?” He didn’t wait for an answer, guffawing loudly. “It’s so after the wedding, their husbands can scratch it off and find out if they won a gas station or a hotel!”
And that, she decided in an uncharacteristic flare of rage, entitles you to no mercy at all. Gods in heaven, I’m going to enjoy taking Allison away from you.
“Better be careful,” she replied instead, hiding the spike of fury with the ease of long practice. Brad wasn’t the first racist she had met in her life. Or the first redneck shitheel who thought women ‘decided’ to become lesbians. “Aren’t you worried about Allison finding someone else while you’re chasing skirts in Cabo? I’m sure there’s lots of men who would be happy to take your place. Not that it would take much, if what I hear is true.”
“In your dreams. Face it, Shanaya. No matter how much you close your eyes and hope I go away, I’m marrying her in three weeks. And once we’re living together, I’m sure that Allie will have more important things to do than to hang out with you. Give up. It’s over. I won. You lost.”
*****
“All right,” Gene said. “I’ll do it.”
Shanaya rubbed her temples. So gracious of you to agree, she thought. It’s not as if you have a choice, if I decide to get nasty about it.
She sighed and kept her mouth shut. They were back in her bedroom, and the house was quiet. Somehow she had managed to get through the rest of the meal with without lunging over the table to beat the smirk off Brad’s stupid, fatuous face. But the stress was telling on her. Her head was aching, and her muscles felt tied in knots.
“But Shanaya,” the genie’s voice was uncharacteristically serious, without its usual empty-minded foolery. “Are you sure? I spoke with Allison for a long time tonight. She…” he paused. “The light of her mind does not shine brightly,” he said at last.
She bit back a sharp reply. “She’s not stupid, Gene. Don’t judge her based on a couple of hours. I’ve known her my entire life, just about. She could have gone to college, too, if she had put her mind to it. But she’s not ambitious. At least not that way. She’s sweet and soft and loving and decent and caring and kind. She wants everyone to be happy, and she thinks the best about people, even when they don’t really deserve it. So people seem to end up doing the right thing, just so they don’t disappoint her. She has her own strengths, her own wisdom. And it doesn’t have much to do with what you pick up in a classroom.
“But some people won’t do the right thing, because they think they can take advantage of her.”
“Like Brad.”
“Like Brad,” she agreed shortly. Gods, just saying his name made her want to spit. “So all that sweet, shining love will be buried under a coat of slime, and my best friend’s life will be ruined.”
“You know, you could make this easy on yourself. I could just change him into a slug.” Gene waggled his eyebrows. “Appropriate, don’t you think?”
“Very.” She choked back a laugh. “But then I’d have to worry about stepping on him whenever I went outside. No. I want to be a man. If Brad’s gone, someone else will try to take his place. And who knows if he will be worth a shit? I’ll treat her the way she deserves.”
A ghost of a smile crossed the genie’s face. “You do love her.”
She ran a hand through her hair. “Of course I do! Haven’t I spent the last twenty-four hours saying so?”
“Gurl, most people would say damn near anything if it meant a chance to get into her panties. Men and women both. I can do a lot, but I can’t read minds. How could I know you weren’t making up a sob story so you could nail sweet little Allison?”
He pointed at the door to the bathroom she shared with her sisters when they were visiting. “Go and clean up. Take off all your clothes, then come back out.”
Her belly clenched. “You’re going to do it now?”
“No. When you’re asleep. That way you’ll have some time to acclimate. Your subconscious, at least, will be ready for your body to be male, even if the rest of you won’t be.” He waved a hand at her. “Go on. Shoo!”
In the bathroom, she took a quick shower, dried off, and then stood on the tile floor, staring at her reflection in the mirror. Though the night was warm, she was shivering.
Parent Post: In Genie Us by Glaze72 – Chapter 1: Something Old
- In Genie Us by Glaze72 - Chapter 2: She Dreams of Gene Eh?
- In Genie Us by Glaze72 - Chapter 3: A Change Will Do Her Good
- In Genie Us by Glaze72 - Chapter 4: Morning Would?
- In Genie Us by Glaze72 - Chapter 5: Eaten Out