Jane has always been a tactile person, even before we started dating. I met her in a hole-in-the-wall bar downtown, the sort that either gave you salmonella or alcohol poisoning, and by the end of the night she was drunk as hell and draped over me like a blanket. Jane was my first girlfriend, and during those initial months of our relationship, any public affection made me bitter and panicked. My parents claimed to be the hate the sin, love the sinner sort of Christian, but they never managed to get over my sin.
“A lesbian,” my dad said, like it was a curse word. “You think you’re a lesbian. You’ll never find a husband if you say things like that.”
“Yeah, Dad,” I said. “That’s the point.”
I left that house as soon as I turned eighteen, and I never looked back. Even so, holding her hand where others could see sent me spiraling, years of ingrained hatred blaring inside my head. I told her, over and over, that I needed more time. I couldn’t handle the thought of people staring at us, judging us, not so soon after leaving my parents. She always apologized, and promised to do better, but she never did. Touching was an instinct for her, something she barely seemed to notice herself doing.
Other than that, though, we were perfect for each other. She brought me paper mache flowers because I was allergic to real ones, and I made her favorite weird Russian dessert from scratch because she didn’t like how the store-bought ones tasted. I didn’t make fun of her for unironically loving children’s cartoons, and she tolerated my habit of spending way too much money on tiny cat statues. I got used to her public affection eventually, and I was more in love than I had ever been.
Jane has always been a bit unaware of social niceties, a bit too rude and brusque, but the first truly weird thing happened after Jane had a bad day at work. She worked at a fancy coffee shop, and her days were far more likely to be bad than good, but this time it was especially awful. Apparently she had put too much foam in the cup, and a customer had spent a solid twenty minutes yelling at her.
I made all the appropriate sympathetic noises that any good partner makes, and got her some cookies from the cupboard. I thought that was the end of it, but she had a strange request.
“Can I give you a massage?” Jane asked, giving me her best puppy eyes.
“You mean… you want me to give you a massage.” I opened up a new pack of cookies and burrowed further into my blanket cocoon.
“No. I just like cuddling with you, seeing you happy. Please?”
I was a bit confused, but I believed her when she said that it would help, and a massage sounded nice anyways.
“Sure.” I wriggled until I was laying down on the couch, and took off my shirt at her direction.
She’d obviously had experience. Her hands were quick and sure across my shoulders, working me quickly into a loose puddle and pressing every muscle into submission. She talked as she did it, too, quiet words that I never quite managed to hear but were comforting nonetheless.
It happened when I was just on the edge of sleep, when everything was hazy.
“Almost ready,” she said, and took her hands away from my back. I groaned at the thought of her leaving, but she quickly started touching me again. This time, though, it was deeper. It felt like she was reaching beneath my skin and kneading me like a piece of dough. She pressed down hard on my shoulder, and I felt it flatten down further than it should have been able to go, bones cracking softly. Worse than that was when she reached through my skin and wrapped her fingers around my spine. She tapped it once, twice, and then withdrew as easily as pulling her hand out of a bowl of water. The whole time, I was frozen, still half-asleep and caught between terror and an overwhelming sense of rightness.
She continued her strange, invasive massage, and despite everything, I fell asleep. It was comforting, once I got past the weirdness, and I had barely ever been awake.
When I woke up, I was refreshed. My back didn’t hurt for the first time in years, and every part of my body felt new. I found Jane in the kitchen, making scrambled eggs and humming along to a song playing on her phone. She smiled at me when I came in, gave me a kiss, and quickly gave my butt an appreciative squeeze.
“What was that,” I asked, abruptly tired of her pretending that things were normal.
She gave me a confused look. “Do you not want me to touch your ass? I thought you liked that.”
“No, not—I meant last night! What the hell happened?” I wrapped my arms around myself and stepped away from her.
“Are you feeling alright?” Jane put down the spatula, stepping forward to put her hand on my forehead.
I flinched away from her. “Yes, I’m fine, I just…what you did last night, I don’t understand what you did.”
She was concerned by then. “I gave you a massage, darling. Whatever else you’re thinking, I need you to tell me so that I can help you.”
I sighed, letting my arms drop. Suddenly, I wasn’t sure of myself. I hadn’t exactly been thinking clearly, after all. It was probably just a dream.
“Nevermind. It’s fine.” I sat down to eat the eggs, and after a moment, Jane joined me.
I had almost managed to convince myself that I had imagined the whole thing. Weeks had gone past with nothing out of the ordinary, and the memory of that night faded. Really, though, I couldn’t have fooled myself forever.
We always took our time with sex. It was more about being together, for us, than the physical pleasure, although of course the orgasms were nice. On that day, we’d just gotten a new dildo, bigger than any we’d had before. It was halfway inside me, and I was already panting, about five seconds away from tapping out.
“Jane,” I whimpered. “Jane, I think we should have gotten a smaller size.”
She looked up from where she was sitting between my legs. “Nah,” she said. “You got this.”
She pushed it another inch, and it was like something in my body gave way. It wasn’t natural. It was like my whole lower body had become putty. Everything felt soft, my legs, my uterus, my abdomen, and Jane slid it the rest of the way with no resistance at all. Then it all stopped, like a rubber band releasing. Everything snapped back together.
I shoved backwards with a gasp and sat up on my forearms. .
“I knew,” I said. “I knew.”
“I’m sorry I lied to you,” she offered, sounding sad.
“Why did you?” I whispered it, nervous about the answer.
She sighed, resting her hand on my thigh. “I didn’t think you’d understand.”
I sucked in a breath as the dildo shifted inside me, and I made a decision.
“Yeah, whatever. Now keep going, I’m horny.”
“What?” She was incredulous.
I groaned. “I trust you, you idiot. Now get on with it.”
She hesitated for a moment, but did quickly start again. When she pressed her face against my back, I could feel her smile.
It continued like that. She only did it during sex, or when she was feeling really upset, and I continued to fall in love with her.
Jane took the next step while we were basking in the afterglow, over a year after when she revealed her abilities to me. She’d explained to me, later, that the more deeply she changed someone, the harder it was to change them back. Typically, she only reconfigured my skin or muscles, so I knew something was different when she pressed her tongue against my thigh, and my bones twisted around themselves.
“What are you doing.” It wasn’t a question. I knew.
“Oh,” she said, her chin resting on my head and her arms melting into mine. “I’m just hanging around.”
I opened my mouth to say something, I don’t know what, but before I could, she bent her head down and kissed me. Her lips fused into mine and my protests were muffled by her tongue. She pulled back slightly, our noses still stuck together, and breathed my air.
“I love you,” she whispered. “I just want to be with you forever.”
“I love you too,” I said. There was nothing else to say.
She moved forward again, draped herself over me like she had when we met at the bar. I was paralyzed, expectant. I didn’t know if I wanted what she was offering. It didn’t matter. All that mattered was her. Our muscles melted together, our bones splintered and then reformed as one. We prayed with globules of fat as our rosary, received benediction in every stretched tendon. She fell into me, and we wore the same skin.
I can feel her in me, even now. I have my Jane with me, and I’ll never be alone again.