The New Life
Some mornings came with a warm body, wrapping around me like a heavy blanket and a wet kiss to my neck. Yosefin just couldn’t wake me up normally. I rarely woke up on my own or had the alarm do it. I didn’t mind her doing it. The sense of being alone together, far from family, caused her to be more expressive with her feelings. It made her cling more, but she knew how to strike a balance well. After nearly a year of us living together, I hadn’t complained once.
“Morning, honey boo,” Yosefin said while kissing me on the cheek.
Since the first successful month of living together, Yosefin gave me a new nickname, fitting in her words, for a husband. It didn’t take her long to declare that we were semi-engaged. I didn’t think it was strange. Her love for me was like a constantly growing vine. There was no end to how high it could reach. She tried to get me to think of something to call her by for her new imposed relationship status, but I could not find anything other than babe. She was my girlfriend, yet she considered that we should be something more.
“Morning,” I said, pulling her entire body on top of mine so I could squeeze her tight. She giggled the harder I squeezed. “Today is a big day.”
“For you. CGI trailer making,” she said, heading into the bathroom. “Should be fun, huh?”
“Or a pain in the ass.”
“Well,” she said, talking behind the cracked-open door. “If it does, remind me to soothe it. I got gentle hands.” Her joke was corny, yet it made me laugh. I waited on the bed until it was my turn to shower. We tried to make it a habit not to shower together before work. Every time we did, it took us half an hour to finish. Plus, the amazing consequences afterward made staying professional around it other challenging. We were young, enthusiastic, and immature. The slightest look could make us smile.
Once Yosefin got out of the shower, I took mine while she made breakfast. She cooked in her underwear so she wouldn’t waste time getting dressed. Then, only after we ate, she got dressed. The routine worked well. I started copying her just to get the chance to watch her cook. She took wanting to be my wife seriously. Her cooking skills improved. She read various celebrity cooking books to gather as much as she could comprehend to avoid trying to figure out what we should eat. I didn’t dare say it would be okay if we had a time when we didn’t know what to eat. If she was happy, then there was no reason to stop her rhythm.
The morning breakfast special was a cheesy omelet with small cooked ham cubes and spinach. She always took a seat to my right at the kitchen table. When we were in community college, she sat on my left side to avoid our opposing elbows from touching each other. This new seating arrangement had a cute reason. We used our free hands to touch, rub, grab, or soothe each other’s thighs.
We ate until there was nothing but the butter juices left on our plates. I took the job of cleaning the pots and dishes. Since we ate off a few things, I didn’t have to use the dishwasher. I did my job and then went to our bedroom to get dressed for the day. Yosefin was in the middle of putting on panyhoses when I stepped in.
“Planning on wearing a dress?” I said, examining her curvy backside.
“Nah,” Yosefin said. She grabbed a high-tight denim skirt and put it on. “Looking good so far?” I gave her two thumbs up, nodding my head. “Joshy, have I ever worn something you hated?” The second I thought about the time she cut her hair to anger me, she said, “Never mind. I don’t wanna know. Just think about my nice ones.”
“I always do.”
“Yeah, right, dude,” she said, scoffing with a smile. “You only think of one thing.”
“And that is?”
“This beautiful face,” she says, placing her hands flat under her chin. “Ja?”
“You are not wrong.”
Throughout that day, I worked hard, assisting in making a trailer for the gaming company’s MMO. The writing department had me and a team flesh out a small story that gave out the gist of the chaotic fantasy world. Austin was our lead writer. For hours, we plotted scenes with a storyboard. One wall in our studio had the entire scene sketched out.
I took my lunch break early since we completed our task. Austin told us to come back at the same time my break ended. I rushed outside to get Yosefin and me lunch and held off from eating until she came inside the breakroom. Seconds after the lunch break started, she came into the breakroom. Her smile exploded the second she saw me. She walked fast over to me like a missile heading to its target.
“What are you doing here so early?” Yosefin said, holding my right hand gently with both of hers briefly.
“We got the storyboard. Austin gave everyone an early break,” I said.
“That’s so kind of him.”
“How’s your work?” I said, sitting at the table.
“Teditous,” she said, sighing behind a soft smile. She sat beside me on my right side. I soothed her knee while she spoke about her annoying tasks. “They got me working on polishing some landscapes.”
“What’s so bad about it?”
“It’s,” she paused to eat some of her salad, “the fucking glitches I find, man. That idiot rushed to her job.”
“Who?” I chuckle.
“Matilta,” she said seconds before Matilta walked in. I took my hand off her knee to appear more professional around her and keep our commitment to avoid acting romantically at work.
“Hi, y’all,” Matilda said as she walked to the coffee machine.
“Hello,” I said. Yosefin growled quietly out of earshot of Matilda. She kept her head down while she ate her food. Only after Matilda left did she look up. Her entire attitude lifted as if the sun shone upon her. The total switch was funny. “You hate her, don’t you?”
“Dude,” she sighed, dropping her fork in the bowl. “I could write a small novel with the complaints I have with her.”
“That bad, huh?”
“Oh, my god, yes. I have some mean opinions about her.”
Opinions she had. After work, she filled me in on Matilda once we settled into our comfy clothes. She snuggled under my arm comfortably, pinning me in the corner of our couch. Moments like that always felt nice, even if it was for a serious talk. This was a different form of her ranting. I didn’t need to kiss or cuddle to make her speak her mind. All I had to do was listen and respond.
“Something tells me she skipped some classes,” Yosefin said. The more she talked about the girl’s mess-ups, the funnier her irritation got. “Bro, she doesn’t know how to type. I constantly see her stroking the keys like this.” She swung her index fingers up and down on an imaginary keyboard. “Like, what?!”
“Sounds like she might be a bit underqualified,” I said, holding in my laugh.
“A bit?” She said, giving me the side eye. “She sucks dick.” I couldn’t hold in my laugh. It shot out through my mouth as if someone tried to open a shaken soda bottle. “Dude, I swear if I see her making mistakes again, I’m gonna call her out on it.”
“Yosefin, be nice.”
“What would Yose do in this situation?” Her speaking her real name caught me off guard. I didn’t know what to say. “What do you think?” She had a cheeky little smirk.
“I don’t know.”
“I think,” she said, putting her hand over her heart, “he would let it go.”
“Would you?” I said accidentally. “Sorry! I mean, would he?”
“Don’t apologize,” she said, paused for a moment, then stopped smirking. “I didn’t mean to trip you up like that. I’m sorry.”
“Did you want a serious answer?” She shook her head, no. That was all it took for me to think of a lighthearted answer. “He,” I said, pressing my nose against the side of her head, “sounds nonconfidential. Is that still you?”
“No.” The corner of her lips tightened. She frowned, but I knew she wasn’t sad.
“Be nice about it.”
“I’ll be kind like a parent reprimanding their child.”
Reprimanding wasn’t all Yosefin did. During the lunch break, she came into the break room, talking to Matilda. I didn’t hear much as they walked over to the coffee machine. Yosefin dominated the whole conversation. Matilda barely got a chance to speak for more than a few seconds. For a short but turning point of the moment, Yosefin glanced at me while talking to her.
“I gotta go,” Yosefin said, walking to me. “Just watch what you do.”
“Okay, Yose,” Matilda says with some shake in her voice. “I’ll go check what I’ve done before I send them over to you.”
“Please.” Once Matilda walked off, Yosefin muttered something in German. She wouldn’t stop until she saw me watching her. “Was? (What?)”
“Nichts. Essen. (Nothing. Eat),” I said. She popped open her salad box, squirted two packets of ranch dressing into it, and shook the box closed to mix it all in.
“Your accent is getting better,” she said, stuffing her mouth. “That didn’t sound like an imitation.”
“I’m learning from the best.”
“You’re better off learning from a real teacher,” she said, hiding her blushing smile with the back of her finger.
“Nah. I like that one I have. She has great benefits.”
“Oh? And what are those?”
“Free lessons,” I said and winked. Her blush turned redder.
My lessons weren’t all that serious. It was more of our little fun period to spend quality time. Most of the time, I learned phrases she commonly used and some single words. I barely knew how to say the German alphabet. There was no way I could understand it fluently. I was too dumb for it. She knew, yet we kept on with the not-so-serious lessons.
Spending time with her was all I cared about since we moved into our apartment. Her happiness meant everything to me. I nearly lost her during her days of severe depression after her cousin made snappy comments about her mutated appearance. She occasionally reminded me or made references about her special body through light-hearted jokes. One memory I had of those moments was sitting on the couch watching a movie I watched as a kid. I had my legs spread pretty wide for no particular reason other than being comfortable. She walked across me to find a spot to sit down and saw the gap between my legs.
“Why are you sitting like that?” She said, smirking with one brow raised. “Something wrong with your dick?”
“No,” I said, and adjusted my legs to be closer. “It’s how I normally sit.”
“Oh! That’s right. For space, right?” At the moment, I had no idea what she was trying to say. “Space,” she said, circling her hand over her crotch. “It’s big.” She pointed at my crotch after she said that. “Quadruple my size.” The overly exaggerated description of the differences made me chuckle and blush. I became self-aware. I put my legs closer together to make them more parallel to each other. “Josh, don’t do that! You’re gonna crush them!”
“Shut up,” I sighed, laughing my ass off. “They move sideways when they get too close.”
“Wow! Really? I wouldn’t know.”
“How,” I said, and stopped myself once I figured out why she answered that way. “Oh…”
“Yeah,” she snickered.
Another special memory I had of her was during an early morning on the first day of March. One of the strange phenomena she experienced was phantom cramps. They came every month like clockwork. The muscles above her groin and below her belly button got tender. If she didn’t take a pain med the night before, it would sour her mood for the day. That day, she forgot. The pain hit her while she was brushing her hair after showering. She came to the living room, wrapped in her bath towel, holding her stomach, and leaning over.
“Josh, I forgot,” she said. I grabbed the medication from the overhead cabinet to give to her. “Fuck,” she groaned. “Don’t be upset if I act like a bitch today.”
“Maybe I should get fast food.” We planned on going out for breakfast.
“No. I will not let this ruin our plans.” I knew arguing with her would set her off, so I agreed to resume our day.
She brought the medication to the restaurant. Her stomach needed food before she could take it to avoid an upset stomach. The place was packed. Waiting ten minutes to be seated didn’t help her mood.
“God, I’m so fucking hungry,” she mumbled softly after a couple walked by us to be seated. “How long do we have left?”
“A few minutes,” I said.
She crossed her arms tightly across her stomach. Her boobs sagged over her arms, making them look more plumped than normal. Our seating took longer than expected. She told me to do most of the talking to avoid lashing out at our nice waiter. No problem arose. We ate in peace. She took her medication soon after finishing her food. For most of the day, it stabilized her. By that night, her symptoms had subsided. She went back to her typical cheery mood. The post effects drove her libido through the roof. We didn’t make love that night because all she wanted was to be cuddled, kissed, and talked to. I did what she wanted until she fell asleep.
Yosefin was special in many different ways. She acted like many girls I knew and loved for a time. Nothing about her personality was unnatural or forced. As she stated before, her personality came naturally through how her mutations shaped her body. She was a girl by mind and possibly spirit. Even though I knew she wasn’t, and many subtle and direct reminders through my time with her said she wasn’t, I couldn’t help but want her.
I tried to find a real girl. One almost put me in a potentially bad relationship. The other one mostly checked all the boxes I wanted. But, for some reason, my not-so-interesting self became a love obsession. Yosefin made damn sure to remind me of how terribly attracted I was to her. My life has been nothing but pleasant since I stopped denying what I truly felt about her. All my needs and desires were satisfied through so much sporadic and well-thought-out devotion. I was honored like a king of sorts. Rare were the days of uncertainty or sadness. I struck fine gold that day I saw her again, back in college. I wished I had realized how precious she was earlier.
