Exotic

~ epilogue two: all wrapped up in you ~

I sat in my closet, facing off with myself in the mirror. The boy in it looked half-done.

I'd prided myself over the last month by never second-guessing my decision on what I was going to wear to my school prom, but I'd known the doubt would hit me at some point. I'd just hoped it would have been sooner than the night of, with the $40 falsies already glued to my lids. My anxiety had impeccable timing.

The dress was a majestic gold colour with an off-the-shoulder neckline and asymmetrical hem. The skirt was overlayed with tulle the same colour as the bodice, spilling out from my waist and falling to my modest nude Gladiator heels, loaned from Zsa Zsa along with the gold-leaf I'd used to speckle my smoky eye with. My lipstick was also gold and beginning to taste like lead on the tip of my tongue.

Stunning? Undeniably. But I was also undeniably Miles.

The choice to forego a wig, padding and contacts had been somewhat self-imposed. Sephora Utah was still an enormous part of my life, my performance persona, my drag alter ego. Disappearing into her easy glamour and overzealous confidence still gave me a rush like nothing else. But when I'd decided to wear a dress to my school ball, it was important to me that people saw me behind the illusion. The easiest way to do that was just to be me. No alias, no character, no false bravado. Just Miles Stewart in a gown, and the most expensive face of makeup I'd ever applied.

I watched the boy in the mirror comb his bangs this way and that with his fingers, trying to get used to the feeling of his everyday hair matched with the extravagance of the makeup below. The two should have clashed awfully, but I didn't hate the combination. Sure, the flatness would take some getting used to, as would the impulse to toss golden locks that weren't there over this shoulder and that, but it didn't look bad. I looked just like I did in the back room of Crescendo before a show, before I fully became the Sephora Utah experience. The itch to 'finish' the look just wouldn't stop, and neither would the churning in my stomach. I shouldn't have eaten dinner before getting ready.

A knock came on the closet door, tentative. "How are you going in there?"

I released my knees, flopping dramatically out into a starfish on the carpet, staring up at the ceiling. "Just a minor crisis. I'll be right in a minute."

Reece paused for long enough that I thought he'd left me to my agonising before speaking again, sternly. "You're not lighting candles in there are you?"

I hastily extinguished two with a licked thumb and forefinger. "No."

"I can smell the smoke. It's a fire hazard," he continued, boarding on his lecturing tone but with the hesitance his attempts at parenting had always come with. I'd come to understand his discomfort with the entire notion. We were mostly equaled in the house now, and any paternal moments came in the form of gentle requests and unsolicited advice. Claps on the shoulder. Agreeing to disagree on the new shade of the living room (eggshell white with a chartreuse feature wall). Driving lessons in the university parking lot, his hand hovering near the steering wheel as I fumbled with gear changes by never grabbing it. Cups of coffee outside my door in the morning, and sometimes outside his when I woke up first. Little gestures like that, rebuilding the fissures in our relationship. These days, it was something akin to functional. Warm, even.

"I am trying..." I emphasised, "... to relax."

"Listen to whale noises then. Wax doesn't come out of carpets easy," he retorted. "How do you look?"

I let my eyes fall closed. "Incredible. But also, you know. Like a boy wearing a dress."

"That was what you were going for, right?" Reece asked, and when I huffed indignantly, he quickly amended. "Incredible, I meant. Not the... you were going for incredible, right?"