Page 6 of Teddy Tea Time

“Let me look into it,” I blurt out before she can start the sales pitch. “I’ll check for papers at the house and ask my brother if he knows what his dad would have wanted. Can I have a week? I know my brother would want to say goodbye to him, but I don’t want to ruin the last week of third grade for him.”

For the first time since she came into the room, the doc actually looks like there’s a person beneath her mask of indifference. After handing me some pamphlets on organ donation, I’m left alone in the room with my father’s body. The whoosh of the ventilator pushing air in and out of his lungs is the only sound as I finally let the tears fall from my eyes.

“Why didn’t you want me, Daddy?” I whisper after God only knows how long holding it inside my heart. “Mom always said you left us when she found out she was pregnant. That you ran off because you didn’t want a kid. Was that even true? Did you even know I existed?”

How much of what she said was a lie?

A soft knock from behind jolts me from my thoughts, and the nurse asks me if I need anything, reminding me that visiting hours will be ending soon. Glancing at my phone, I realize I have been standing here for hours. Shaking my head, I grab my helmet from the chair, and head down to my bike. As much as I wish I could be strong, I need…

I need my big brother.

Before starting my bike, I give the voice command through the Bluetooth in my helmet to place the call. It rings through until I get the message that the voicemail has not been set up yet. Considering I set up his voicemail three months ago, this tells me he broke another phone and didn’t want to tell me about it. Instead of giving up, I call again. And again.

On the third attempt, he finally answers.

“Baby Bear, I just got off a double and Steve’s been riding my ass hard.”

While I feel bad for interrupting his sleep, I have no one else to turn to that would understand. Some of my friends had shitty parents, but they don’t understand the pain of wondering why they weren’t wanted enough to keep. They don’t understand not knowing who they came from. They can’t understand it.

“Jackie,” I barely get out, my voice cracking on the name I haven’t used since he was a teenager. “I don’t know what to do.”

6

ASH

“We thank you for your interest in the position, but we have decided to go with another candidate at this time.”

Well, that makes forty-seven rejections in the past two weeks, one hundred something over the last six. The remote work sector is extremely competitive right now, especially in my field of real estate escrow and title work. Even companies that allow work from home as an option still want their employees to be within a geographic radius, which makes no sense to me. It’s not like I will have to commute to the office.

Flopping back on the couch in a full-on manspread, I sigh audibly. My severance pay is about to run out, and Pennsylvania unemployment is only paying about sixty percent of what I had previously been making, minus whatever I pull in from the bartending jobs. While I can still exist on that for the next few months, combined with my savings, it’s looking like my previous job situation was a fucking unicorn that I’m not going to be able to find the likes of which ever again.

“Have you tried using your given name on your resume?”

My mother’s words keep echoing in my ears with every rejection. I’ve gone by Ash since I was in middle school. That’s when I realized that I was different from the other students. I had always liked girlish things, but my parents had always just assumed I was effeminate as a boy. Looking back, they were really open minded in comparison to a lot of my peers’ parents; however, they never really understood me.

Hell, I never really understood me – not until the last few years. I spent most of my life waffling over whether or not I was transgender. I had days where I truly was a woman in my mind, so when I would have days where that identity did not feel right, it felt like I was being a fraud in the community. It took so long to reconcile with myself that I am not a trans woman, nor am I a cis man. I am a gender fluid person, having days where I am a man, woman, or neither.

My dad seems to have come to accept my truth in his own way, introducing me to others just as his “kid” rather than saying son or daughter. But my mother…

As a kid, I was introduced as her son. In middle school, she went all in when I told her I thought I wasn’t a boy. She got me put on hormone blockers early enough that I didn’t really develop any overly masculine traits through the puberty years. Of course, it also helps that Dad couldn’t grow a beard if his life depended on it, and his genes are strong in me. In college, I went off the blockers. It’s not that I wanted to be a man, but I quickly realized that it was easier to navigate life as an adult if I presented myself as a man outwardly.

That’s how I managed to get every job prior to this, except for the bartending jobs. Ashton Reginald Harper is obviously a man’s name – a rich white man’s name – and unfortunately, that has more pull in the corporate world than Ash R. Harper which could be someone of almost any gender and ethnicity.

Fuck this. I refuse to go back to being Ashton from nine to five and Ashley for my mother while never feeling right with either. If I wasn’t pinching my pennies, I would totally be moving forward with the legal name change that I kept putting off.

Noise outside has me being the nosy white bitch that I am, and I grab the broom with a need to suddenly sweep the deck attached to my mobile home. From there, I notice the whole crew from Kink Manor making their way over to the trailer next door where Jackson Franklin is piling things up outside. While he’s not the most responsible neighbor, he’s been a million times better than some of the assholes I’ve lived next to in the past before getting the invitation to move to Manor Drive.

“What the hell is going on, Jackson? I never agreed to you moving into the house,” Eli grumbles as soon as he is within earshot. “And why the hell did you ask us to pack up Jace’s room?”

Setting the broom aside, I head down the steps to join the crowd of neighbors that have come outside. We are all a family here on Manor Drive and moving in or out of the neighborhood is a big deal.

“It’s not my story to tell, but Jace needs space separate from…well, frankly from any kind of kinky fuckery… Don’t shoot the messenger!” Jackson dodges the kick from Lucky before picking up a box that he had stacked on his steps. “He was gonna move away completely but I convinced him to take my trailer and I would take his room in the house. It was the only thing I could come up with on less than an hour of sleep!”

We all seem to reflect on what Jackson has shared with us. Jace is a cornerstone for a lot of us. He’s that solid presence we rely on. If he were to move away, it would leave a chasm behind.

He’s the resident handy man.

He’s the guy we call when a kitten is stuck up a tree.