Page 2 of Composed at Randy's
Marty raised me after my parents died, by the way. He didn’t have to, but I was eleven, he was eighteen, and we’d permabonded at the fancy art school I’d been attending since I was five.
I know our ages are a bit extreme for us to be best friends, but for us, it just works.
So Marty was my legal guardian when I hit puberty and had the wholeOh god what is happening to me??? Make it stop!!!thing start up.
He made sure I had access to puberty blockers as soon as possible so I didn’t have to worry about getting major changes I’d need to have reversed, which is totally sweet in my opinion. Blockers don’t always work that way for trans folks, but I was one of the lucky ones. Bottom surgery was enough of an ordeal without needing to add top surgery into the mix too. I only required minor intervention in that area.
Anyway, let’s fast forward to right now. I’m twenty years old, a wildly successful artist, trans, and dumb as a bag of rocks.
But I have Marty, Shelly, and Kai to help me out with that last part, so life is pretty great.
Except for today, I guess.
When Shelly informed me that she’d be out of town for a month to shepherd a baby artist through the challenges of spontaneous fame and fortune, I’d been all, “Don’t worry! I have Marty and Kai to help me while you’re gone!”
Unfortunately, my smooth brain completely forgot about that when Kai told me he needed to go home to Japan for a while because his dad had gotten sick and he needed to be there for him and his mom.
I told him, “No sweat! I’ve got Shelly and Marty! Go take care of your family, my dude.”
Aaaaand when Marty had some bigass gay event thing going on in Brazil, I’d forgotten all about Kai’s and Shelly’s situations and told Marty to go have a blast.
Hell, I didn’t even have a housekeeper anymore because Kai made sure he and I kept my place clean. He didn’t believe in housekeepers, so he made me do housework with him. He also made me shower (alone, you perverts), do grocery shopping with him, and water my plants.
He was nice and didn’t make me deal with my own paperwork and bills. He saw that it seriously put a dent in my ability to create art, so he made sure my accountant continued to take care of most of it. Kai took care of the rest.
Kai was super worried about leaving me when he went back to Japan, but he trusted Shelly and Marty, and he was so worried about his dad dying that he forgot to check in with them before he left.
He nearly left burn marks on the carpet as he went.
You’d think that kind of energy would make an impression on a guy, and that I’d remember it, but I was on a deadline, and as I said before, when I’m in Artland, I’m gone.
Sometimes I’m not sure anyone understands exactly how gone I am when that happens.
When I finally surfaced today, two weeks had gone by since everyone had skedaddled, I was out of food, horribly sleep-deprived, and my phone was in a pitcher of water.
Why?
No clue. I think from now on you should just chalk all the weird stuff up to smooth brain syndrome, okay?
So here I am, stumbling down an unfamiliar street in search of food because my stomach is trying to eat its way to my spine.
I can’t call for takeout because my phone is dead as a doornail, and who has a landline these days? Not me, that’s for sure.
My feet are wobbly, and my eyes have thispermanently sparkly and gray at the edgesthing going on, but if I can just get some food in me, I’ll be okay.
Then I can sleep, and I won’t have to worry about Shelly, Marty, and Kai blowing three separate gaskets when they come back and realize I spent weeks completely unsupervised.
Hell, they might even be impressed. Kai might even let me out of his sight for more than ten minutes without calling to check up on me every three. He’ll probably leave the tracker on my phone, though, but that’s just common sense when it comes to me.
Hey, look! There’s a funky neon light on a store front up ahead. Maybe they have food. I wonder if they know it’s really blurry and wiggly. Maybe I’ll warn them about it when I get some food in me.
Man, I’m tired.
Chapter 2
Bael
There’s a sticker of Dwayne ‘The Rock’ Johnson smiling up at me from the backward-facing seat of the limo. It wasn’t there yesterday, and I try not to think about it too hard.
