Tabitha and Aria!
Kia ora, friendos!
If you follow me on social media, you might have seen that I went to a trans rights rally this past weekend and it was so cool! It was the first thing of its kind that I had ever been to, and admittedly I was nervous about it because I knew ahead of time that there would be cops and other agitators there, but it turned out great in the end. I went with my friend from twitter, Kimberley, and a friend of hers who’s name I have forgotten (sorry Kimberley’s friend!) because I wanted to not be there on my own in case I didn’t see anyone I knew, and so that was really cool. We were there for about an hour or so and we saw so many great signs, and all kinds of different folks from all across the LGBTQIA+ spectrum. I came away from it all thinking I really should start trying to engage more with the local communities IRL because I think I would probably feel more at home than I had previously sort of expected.
With that stuff out of the way, I wanted to give you all a little peek at some more “Tabitha’s Story” stuff coming down the pipe! I haven’t been as active on my computer writing stuff as I want to be for, let’s just say a number of reasons, and I apologise for that but as a side-note, I will be beginning therapy this week! So hopefully some of my brain worms blocking me from working will loosen their grip soon. But in the mean time, I wanted to share this rough draft of a really important early moment in this story - Aria coming out to Tabitha. This is a thing that I really want to get right, so it will probably go through a few iterations before it goes into the final thing, but I’m really happy with what I have so far and I think this scene, or set of scenes, is super cute. I would love to see more representation like this in media, particularly on the big and small screens. So without further ado, here you go: Aria comes out to Tabitha as trans.
Music thumping in her headphones, Aria stared blankly at her phone home screen. Her eyes traced the edges of the icons, the xbox app, the weather widget, but not really taking any of it in. She had a crush and she was doing her best not to think about it. “God!” she suddenly sputtered, throwing her phone down on the bed. She stood up and began pacing back and forward in her bedroom, trying desperately to grab a thread of some other train of thought so she could stop thinking about… her. “Fuuuuck!” Two days earlier, Aria hadn’t even heard of anyone named Tabitha before, and now, suddenly, it was the only name that her mind could conjure. The only name she wanted to speak out loud. The only name she ever wanted to hear again. And it was torture. Aria had fallen for girls before, but never this hard, and never this fast. And she was terrified of the idea that Tabitha didn’t even remotely feel the same way. A million questions and disaster scenarios spiralled around in her brain. Tabitha would be here soon, and Aria had for some reason told her she ‘needed to talk’, and she knew Tabitha would never let it go now. ‘Maybe I can think of something else to talk about?’ she had wondered, but couldn’t come up with anything that she was sure Tabitha wouldn’t immediately see through. Aria looked at the clock on her phone, it said ten-minutes-to-one, almost time to go meet Tabitha. ‘Maybe if I don’t bring it up, she won’t bring it up.”
Upon arriving at the park where the girls had agreed to meet, Aria immediately brought it up. “Tabitha, I have to tell you something,” Aria face-palmed. “What’s up? Jeeze, you look like you’re about to tell me my cat died.” Tabitha joked. “Wait, my cat didn’t die, right?” “N-no-” Aria stuttered. “Okay cool, so what is it? Spit it out, woman!” Tabitha poked Aria in the ribs, playfully. “I’m trans!” Aria shouted a little more loudly than she had intended. Tabitha looked at her wide-eyed for a second, startled by the outburst. “I’m trans…” Aria repeated, quieter and calmly, looking at her feet rather than meeting Tabitha’s gaze. Tabitha’s expression returned to normal, and with a small smirk on her face she reached out to Aria and gently touched her chin, gesturing for her to look up. Aria’s gaze met Tabitha’s, and with that tiny little smirk still on her face she replied, “I know. And I think that’s very, very cool.” Aria appeared to deflate like an air mattress freshly punctured, slumping to her knees on the ground. “Whoa, you okay??” Tabitha was again startled. Aria began to cry softly, and Tabitha was quick to join her on the grass to comfort her.
“Hey, you don’t need to cry, okay? I’m here.”
“I’m crying because you’re here.”
“What do you mean?”
“I mean… you’re so cool, but I was so worried you wouldn’t like me anymore…”
“Because you’re trans?”
“Yeah…”
“That is bonkers, my dude.”
“Why is that… bonkers?” Aria let out a small giggle from behind her tears.
“I am possibly the gayest little bitch in the universe, that’s why. And honestly, I’m a little offended…”
“Oh, I’m sorry…” Aria cut her off.
“Shut uppp. I’m a little offended that you wouldn’t think that I’d be gay for you no matter what.”
“Gay… for me?”
“What… did I just say that?”
“You definitely said the words ‘gay for you’.” Aria perked up a little.
“Uhh, hm, uhm…” Tabitha stuttered and stumbled over her words just long enough for Aria to make a decision. She wasn’t sure how the decision would play out, but she didn’t think about it long enough to play out any negative scenarios, just one big positive one. While Tabitha was still attempting to formulate her next words, Aria reached out to take Tabitha’s face in her hands and she kissed her. For about a third of a second, Tabitha wasn’t sure what had just happened. One moment she was fumbling for a correction, and in the next moment the girl she had had a deep, intense crush on for the last two days was kissing her – so she kissed back. To both girls, it felt both as though the kiss lasted for 1000 years and still somehow over in a second. As the kiss came to its natural conclusion and they separated slightly, looking into each other’s eyes, Tabitha was still searching for words and finally settled on two. “Holy fuck,” she whispered. Aria just smiled and averted her eyes for half a second before looking back with a small giggle. Tabitha’s eyes searched Aria’s face for a clue about what she should say next, but the longer she continued to search, the more she found herself lingering specifically on Aria’s eyes. More words came to Tabitha. “We should… do that again.” Aria smiled and said nothing but a simple “Yes, definitely.”
I hope you liked this little insight to this story, and of course as always I welcome any thoughts, comments, or questions! You can hit me up at the social links or email address at the bottom of the page.
For now, I’m going to head back into the Microsoft Word mines while I feel like I still have some writing to get down on… paper? Analogies! Thanks for taking the time to read, and if you liked this, please consider sharing it? There’s a handy little share button right………………………………………………....here!
Thanks so much for hanging out and enabling this little project of mine! I’ll talk to y’all again really soon. Ka kite anō au i a koe. 💚