Chapter 5: The Naked Wait
The knock wasn’t on the front door.
It came from the sliding glass door to the balcony, two floors up. Hard, percussive, impatient raps on the aluminum frame. The sound cut through the humid silence of the apartment like gunshots.
Lexi froze, the flannel shirt slipping from her fingers. She was still naked, curled on the plastic couch. He’d come around the building. He’d climbed the interconnected balconies. Of course he had. Derek would have done the same.
Another series of knocks, harder. “Open up.” Mack’s voice, filtered through glass, was a low, vibrating growl. It wasn’t a request.
Her body moved before her mind could formulate a lie or a performance. She slid off the couch, the plastic pulling at her skin, and padded across the cool laminate. She didn’t grab a robe. The text had been the first true thing she’d sent him. This would be the second. She reached for the handle, her hand trembling only slightly, and slid the door open.
Mack filled the frame. He was backlit by the orange glow of the parking lot security lights, a mountain of shadow and tension. He wore gray sweatpants and a tight black tee that strained across his chest and shoulders. His hair was mussed, his beard a dark tangle. He smelled of stale coffee and sharp, clean sweat—the sweat of agitation, not exertion.
His eyes, dark and furious, swept past her, scanning the empty apartment with a tactical quickness—checking for Chad, for evidence of a party, for any shred of the life he expected her to be living. Then they snapped back to her, and the full force of his attention landed on her naked body.
Lexi didn’t cover herself. She stood her ground, the night air raising goosebumps on her skin. Let him see. Let him see the whole, ridiculous, manufactured truth of her.
His gaze was a physical touch. It didn’t linger with desire; it catalogued with a brutal, assessing clarity. It swept over the platinum hair, the tan lines, the impossible curves—the breasts that were too perfect, the waist that was too narrow, the hips that flared like a cartoon. She saw the exact moment his brain finished its inventory and his confusion momentarily overrode his anger. His brow furrowed, just a fraction.
“You said you’d explain.” His voice was gravel, each word measured and hot. “So explain. Start with why you’re standing here naked, and why you’re sending me texts that sound like something from a fucking hostage thriller.”
“You knew Derek,” she said, her voice quieter than she intended. It was Lexi’s voice, but it felt thin, like it might tear.
“Don’t you say his name,” Mack snarled, taking a half-step forward, invading the threshold. The space between them crackled. “You don’t get to say his name. You moved in next door, you’ve been throwing yourself at every meathead in the complex, and now you’re sending me cryptic shit about him? What is this? Some twisted game?”
“Yes.” The word left her lips, flat and final.
He blinked. “What?”
“It was a game. A prank.” She wrapped her arms around herself, not for modesty, but to hold the pieces together. “The most fucked-up, elaborate, stupid prank in the history of pranks.”
Mack’s jaw worked. He stared at her, his eyes narrowing. He was listening, but he wasn’t hearing. Not yet. “A prank. On who? Me? Because I didn’t bite? Because I didn’t fall for…” He gestured vaguely at her, his hand slicing the air. “All this?”
A wet, shaky laugh escaped her. “You were supposed to fall for it. That was the whole point. I built this…” She looked down at herself, then back at him, her vision blurring. “I built this to be everything you talked about. Everything you pointed at in magazines. The fantasy. I was going to seduce you. Make you fall for a blonde bimbo. Then reveal it was me all along. The ultimate ‘gotcha.’ Payback for the time you replaced my pre-workout with fiber powder and I spent my entire leg day in the gym bathroom.”
There was a beat of silence. A memory flickered in Mack’s eyes—the shared, stupid laugh of it, years ago. Then it was extinguished by a hotter, darker fire.
“That’s not funny,” he said, his voice dropping to a dangerous whisper. “That’s psychotic.”
“I know.”
“Derek was my best friend.” He took another step into the apartment, forcing her to step back. The sliding door remained open, the curtain fluttering. “He disappeared. No call, no text, nothing. For a year. I filed a missing persons report, you know that? I thought he was dead in a ditch somewhere.” His voice hitched, raw and furious. “And you’re telling me it was so he could… become this? To play a joke on me?”
“Not ‘he,’” she whispered. “Me.”
He stopped. His gaze drilled into her face, searching past the makeup, the filler, the carefully shaped brows. He was looking for topography he recognized.
“What are you talking about?”
The words were a ledge. She stepped off.
“The Cheetos you stole were always the puffy ones, never the crunchy. You do your laundry with that cheap blue detergent that makes everything smell like a public bathroom. You failed your third rep on a three-fifty bench the week before I left because you didn’t tuck your elbows, and I caught it. You cried during the finale of that baking show about the grandma from Ohio. I never told anyone.” She spoke in a rush, the facts tumbling out like stones from a broken wall. “Your flannel shirt. The red and black one. You left it after we went to Miller’s Point. I kept it. It’s on the floor over there.”
Mack’s eyes flickered to the shirt, a crumpled plaid island on the laminate. He didn’t move. His breathing had grown shallow, audible in the quiet room.
He was staring at her now, really staring. Not at the body, but at the eyes. The set of the mouth. The slight, familiar tilt of the head when she was waiting for him to process something.
“No,” he breathed. The word was less a denial than a physical reaction, a recoil.
“It’s me, Mack.”
“Stop it.”
“It’s Derek.”
His face contorted. He shook his head, a sharp, jerky motion. “This isn’t… you can’t… Derek was a two-hundred-thirty-pound powerlifter with a beard you could lose a squirrel in. He drank protein shakes that smelled like wet dog. He had shoulders like a fucking barn. You…” His voice cracked. “You are not him.”
“I had top surgery. And bottom surgery. FFS—facial feminization. A year of hormones. Voice training. Lipo. I spent a hundred and twenty grand and a thousand hours of pain to become this joke.” She gestured to her body, a sweeping, tragic arc. “And the joke’s on me. Because I’m not him anymore. I’m this. And this… this wants things Derek never even thought about.”
The vulgar confession hung between them. Mack looked like he’d been struck. He took an unsteady step backward, toward the balcony, as if the air in the apartment had turned toxic.
“Chad?” The name was a curse.
“A test drive. For the persona. It worked too well.” She couldn’t look at him. “The body works. It responds. It’s… efficient.”
A harsh, ragged sound came from Mack. It might have been a sob, or a suppressed roar. He ran a meaty hand over his face, pulling at his skin. “Why? For a prank? You nuked your entire life. Our friendship. For a joke?”
“It wasn’t just a joke!” The words exploded from her, sharp and loud. “It was… it was the only move I had left! You were everything! The gym, the apartment, the stupid fucking late-night talks… you were my whole world. And I was just your roommate. Your bro. I was in love with you, you dense concrete wall of a man, and you never saw me. You only saw the beard and the bench press. So I thought… if I became the thing you said you wanted, maybe you’d finally see me.”
The silence that followed was absolute. It swallowed the distant traffic noise, the hum of the refrigerator. Mack stood frozen, his expression a devastated blank.
“You were in love with me,” he repeated, the words sounding alien in his mouth.
“Past tense doesn’t really cover it,” she said, exhausted. She finally turned and walked back to the plastic-wrapped couch, sitting down with a defeated slump. The plastic groaned. “Doesn’t matter. The plan derailed. I became the character. Lexi wants dick. Specifically, she wants… well. You saw her with Chad. It’s a whole thing.”
Mack didn’t speak for a full minute. He just stood there, a monument of confusion and shock in the doorway. His eyes were glued to her, but she could feel him not seeing Lexi anymore. He was staring through her, at the ghost of Derek, trying to superimpose one image over the other and failing catastrophically.
He took a slow, heavy step into the room. Then another. He moved like a man in a dream, or a minefield. He stopped a few feet from the couch, close enough that she could see the pulse hammering in his neck.
“Say something else,” he commanded, his voice husky.
“What?”
“Something only Derek would say. Right now.”
She thought. The memories were a storm. She grabbed one at random, from their lowest point. “When your dad died. You didn’t cry for three days. Then we were watching Die Hard, and when Hans Gruber fell off Nakatomi Plaza, you fucking lost it. Sobbed for an hour. I ordered us two large meat-lovers pizzas and didn’t say a word. You ate yours and half of mine.”
Mack flinched as if slapped. A tremor ran through his shoulders. His eyes glistened in the dim light. He swayed on his feet.
Slowly, as if the joints were rusted, he sank down to sit on the floor in front of her. He didn’t sit on the couch. He sat at her feet, his back against the plastic-covered armrest, putting his head level with her knees. He stared at the blank, dark television screen.
“Holy shit,” he whispered, the words brimming with awe and horror. “Derek.”
He said the name to the empty room, testing its fit on the reality before him. It didn’t fit. It shattered.
“Yeah,” she said, the last of her energy bleeding out. “Sort of.”
He looked up at her then, his head tilting back against the couch. From this angle, she saw the boy he’d been, buried under the muscle and the beard and the hurt. “All of it? The… the surgery? Everything?”
“Everything. You want the technical specs? I have charts.”
A choked, desperate laugh burst from him. It was ugly and real. “Christ. A year. I thought you were dead. I got drunk every Thursday—our arm day—and yelled at the ceiling.”
“I thought about you every time I swallowed a pill. Every time a needle went in. You were the target.”
He digested this, his eyes roaming her face with a new, frantic intensity. “And now? You’re really… you’re a…”
“Woman? Legally, medically, aesthetically? Yes. I’m Lexi. Derek’s… gone. He funded the project and then… phased himself out.” She touched her own throat. “The voice is trained. The instincts are different. The… needs. They’re different.”
Mack’s gaze dropped from her face, down the length of her body, and this time it wasn’t a cataloguing. It was a bewildered, painful reconciliation. He was seeing the familiar soul inside the alien shell. The cognitive dissonance was a tangible force in the room.
He reached out a hand, slow and tentative. He didn’t touch her. His fingers stopped an inch from her knee, hovering over the skin.
“Can I…?”
She nodded, once.
His calloused fingertips, rough as sandpaper, made contact with her knee. The touch was electric. It wasn’t sexual. It was archaeological. He traced the contour of her kneecap, a simple, familiar bone he’d probably seen a thousand times in gym shorts, now presented as part of this new, soft landscape. His touch was unbearably gentle.
“This is so fucked up,” he murmured, not looking at her, just at his own fingers on her skin. “This is the most fucked-up thing that has ever happened.”
“I know.”
He left his hand there, a point of contact, a bridge. “What do you want, Lexi?” He said the name. It was the first time he’d ever said it to her face.
She looked at the top of his head, at the familiar swirl of his cowlick. The truth was a simple, devastating thing.
“I don’t know anymore. I thought I wanted revenge. Then I thought I wanted Chad. Now I just want the person who knows what brand of terrible pizza to order when I’m broken.” Her voice broke. “But he only knows how to fix Derek. And Derek doesn’t live here anymore.”
Mack withdrew his hand. He leaned his head back, thumping it softly against the couch. He stared at the ceiling.
“The guy who knew Derek,” he said, his voice thick. “He’s pretty broken, too. His best friend ghosted him and then came back as a… a penthouse fantasy with an identity crisis. He doesn’t know what to fix, or how.” He turned his head, his cheek resting against the plastic. His eyes found hers. They were red-rimmed and lost. “But he’s still here
They were red-rimmed and lost. “But he’s still here.”
The words hung in the artificial chill of the apartment. Lexi watched the conflict play out across Mack’s face, a brutal tug-of-war between a year of grief and the impossible thing sitting before him. She saw his jaw tighten, his nostrils flare. He was rebuilding the world in real time, brick by shattered brick.
She needed to give him a cornerstone. Something undeniable. Something stupid and simple and theirs.
Lexi cleared her throat. She closed her eyes, shut off the practiced modulation, and let her larynx do what it was built to do before a year of straining for a higher pitch. The sound that came out was rough, a little rusty, but deep and unmistakably male. It was the voice that had argued over cable bills and called out failed lifts.
“Bro,” it said, the single syllable gravelly and real. “It’s me. I just have these perfect tits now.”
The effect was instantaneous. Mack jolted as if electrocuted. His head snapped up, his eyes widening in pure, unfiltered shock. It wasn’t Lexi doing an impression. It was a ghost speaking from a throat that shouldn’t exist.
“Jesus Christ,” he breathed, scrambling up from the floor to his knees. He stared at her mouth. “Do that again.”
“Do what?” she asked, slipping back into Lexi’s softer tone, a faint smile touching her lips.
“That! The voice! Do the… the dude voice.”
She obliged, letting Derek’s baritone roll out effortlessly. “You mean this totally awesome, super-manly voice? This what you’re looking for, you big man-baby?”
A strangled laugh burst from Mack. It was half-hysterical, half-relieved. He ran both hands through his hair, pulling at the roots. “Okay. Okay, what the fuck. That’s… that’s your voice. Derek’s voice. Coming out of… you.” He gestured helplessly at her whole form.
“Yeah. Party trick. My vocal coach would shit a kitten.”
“You have a vocal coach.” He said it flatly, a statement of surreal fact. He was still on his knees, looking up at her. “So you can just… switch?”
“It’s like a shitty muscle memory. Doesn’t fit the packaging anymore.” She looked down at herself, then back at him, using Derek’s voice again, lower and confidential. “Seriously, though. Feel these things. The work is unreal.”
It was a dare. A return to their old, crude language. A test.
Mack’s gaze dropped to her chest. He didn’t move. A war waged behind his eyes—propriety versus curiosity, shock versus a deep, ingrained habit of following his friend into bizarre places. His loyalty, that stubborn, granite-like force, won out.
He reached up, his hand shaking slightly. He paused, his fingertips a breath away from her skin.
“Is this… allowed?”
“You’ve punched me in the nipple for losing a bet. Just touch the damn tit, Mack.”
He did. His palm, rough and warm, settled over the curve of her right breast. He held it, not squeezing, just assessing the weight and shape. His touch was clinical, awestruck. “Hell,” he muttered in a low whisper.
“I know, right?”
“It’s… really firm.”
“They’re implants, you Neanderthal. Of course they’re firm. But the layering is top-shelf. Feels real, doesn’t it?”
He moved his hand slightly, his thumb brushing the edge of her areola. A completely different kind of shiver ran through her this time, one that had nothing to do with the air conditioning. She sucked in a sharp breath.
Mack froze. His eyes flew to hers. The clinical spell shattered. He was suddenly, acutely aware of the intimacy of his position—on his knees, his hand on her bare breast, her naked body inches away. He yanked his hand back as if burned.
“Shit. Sorry. I didn’t mean to…” He rocked back on his heels, putting space between them. His ears were bright red. “That was… I wasn’t thinking.”
“It’s fine,” she said quickly, folding her arms over her chest. Derek’s voice was gone. Lexi’s was breathy, tight. “It’s just a body. A modified one.”
“It’s not just a body!” he exploded, pushing himself fully to his feet. He paced two steps toward the balcony door and back, a caged animal. “It’s your body! And you’re… and I was just… goddammit, Derek!” He whirled to face her, pain etching his features. “What the hell do I even call you?”
“Lexi,” she said, the name firm. “I’m Lexi. Derek was the architect. I’m the… occupant.”
“Lexi,” he repeated, testing it. It sounded strange in his mouth. “Okay. Lexi.” He blew out a long, steadying breath, his shoulders slumping. “You’re in love with me.”
“Was. Am. It’s a chronic condition.”
“And you turned yourself into a… a centerfold to prove a point.”
“To get your attention. Which, congratulations, you are now giving me in the form of a panic attack.”
He ignored the jab, his mind racing down a new, alarming track. “Chad. You and Chad. That was… part of the test drive?” His voice was gruff, edged with something that wasn’t quite jealousy but a fierce, proprietary disgust.
“Yeah. And the transmission stuck.” She looked away, shame heating her skin. “The software update messed with the original wiring. I like it. I like what he did. I want more of it. That’s the horrible punchline.”
Mack was silent for a long moment. He studied her—the defeated curve of her spine, the way her blonde hair curtained her face. He saw the echo of his friend in the shame, in the brutal self-awareness.
“You’re a mess,” he said finally, but the words lacked heat. They were just an acknowledgment.
“You’re just figuring that out?”
A ghost of his old smirk touched his lips. “Shut up.” He walked over to where his flannel shirt lay on the floor. He picked it up, shook it out, and held it open for her. “Put this on. You’re shivering.”
She looked at the offered shirt, then up at his face. It wasn’t a gesture of romance. It was practicality. Care. The first solid thing he’d known how to do since he walked in. She stood and turned, sliding her arms into the oversized sleeves. The familiar, faint scent enveloped her, and her throat tightened.
He guided the fabric over her shoulders, his hands lingering for a second. “Okay,” he said, more to himself than to her. He walked to her kitchenette and opened the empty fridge. “You have no food. Of course you don’t.” He slammed it shut. “Get dressed. Real clothes.”
“Why?”
“Because we’re leaving this depressing plastic prison.” He turned, his arms crossed over his broad chest. His expression was set, a decision made. “We’re going to get the worst, greasiest pizza we can find. And you’re going to tell me everything. The whole year. No more excerpts. And then…” He scrubbed a hand over his beard. “Then we’ll figure out what the hell ‘Lexi’ actually wants. Not what the programming says. What you want.”
It wasn’t forgiveness. It wasn’t understanding. It was a rope thrown into a pit.
Lexi stood there, swimming in his flannel, the weight of it both a comfort and a cage. The momentum had shifted. The paralysis broke. He was moving, and he was taking her with him.
“What about Chad? Vegas?” The words felt small.
Mack’s eyes hardened. “Text him you have a family emergency. Which is true. Your family is an idiot who just climbed onto your balcony.” He nodded toward the bedroom. “Clothes. Now. I’m craving that meat-lovers abomination.”
A real smile, weak but genuine, finally broke through. “You’re buying.”
“Obviously,” he grunted, already pulling out his phone. “My best friend just came back from the dead as a hot blonde with an identity crisis. It’s the least I can do.”