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Coming inside his apartment Jerry put his gym bag on the counter in the tiny kitchen. Travis was sitting over on the couch, a large sectional that took up most of the living room. It was one of the few good pieces of furniture in the apartment that Jerry had purchased, but Travis spent a lot of time on it watching tv or our here with his laptop. Like normal Travis didn’t say a thing when he came in through the door, just glanced back over his shoulder and went back to what he was doing. Most of the time he would leave it at that, but he was feeling more confident today. “Hey, so I joined a gym today. Feels good to be working on myself.”

“It is okay to show your feminine side, you feel more confident being feminine.” Jerry hit stop on the music and took out his earbuds as he tried to have an actual conversation with the other person, he shared living space with.

“Yeah? Good for you, just try to stick with it.” Travis got up from the coach and walked over to the outside counter and watched his roommate empty things from his gym bag and put the containers on the counter. Jerry was wearing a pink shirt for a gym called SpaFreu in black letters, incredibly tight women's workout pants and sneakers that were black, gray and pink. He didn’t know Jerry was gay and it didn’t matter much. Though you would think if you were going to live with another person he would have said something about it. Inside the bag he saw a flier and opened it up, glancing at the information for the gym he had never heard of. “SpaFreu, a safe place for women to get in the best shape of their lives and to relax and get pampered.” Travis read out loud and then took another good look at his roommate.

As Jerry turned away from him and bent over to put a container on the counter he got a good look at the butt and in those clothes, and the long hair. Travis’s eyes bugged out, his roommate wasn’t Jerry, it was Jerri! He thought she was a he and was just a tiny twerp. No wonder she wasn’t interested in sports, and he had just been blowing her off. He felt like such a heel, the poor girl had no chest to speak of and he must have added to her low self-esteem by ignoring her. Jerri never even asked for him to clean up after himself in the living room, she just always did it. She was trying to be a good homemaker and he never appreciated it. “So, women’s only gym. You like it?”

Turning around and zipping up his bag Jerry looked at Travis confused as he held up the pamphlet. “It isn’t women’s only, but yeah I do, I feel safe there.” Jerry accepted back the pamphlet that Travis passed him and saw what he was talking about with it being just for women and had a laugh. “They never mentioned that when they invited me in, it has to be old information.” Women only sounded like a good way to get sued for discrimination, and he figured they most likely started that way and just recently changed to being more open. “I didn’t see any men there, but they are already helping me feel more confident in myself. I’m even wearing pink! Can you believe it? Nothing wrong with being a little feminine, heck I have seen a few guys wear pink button up shirts.”

Travis nodded, it was the first time he had seen Jerri wear anything remotely feminine and he was feeling like an awful person for mistaking her gender. “Yeah, it looks good on you. You should wear pink more often, I bet you would look great in a pink dress.”

“A pink dress? No need to tease me, I will go change.” With that Jerry put the gym bag over his shoulder and marched over to his room. The confidence he was feeling now gone and wishing he had just kept his mouth shut and said nothing to the bigger man. Teasing he was used to, at least it wasn’t like back in gym class when he was younger, where the bigger boys would pull his pants down.

The messages from the gym were still new to his mind and hadn’t had a chance to fully sink in and after part of it was dispelled from Travis, Jerry started to wonder about the experience and how strange it all really was. Why did he feel safe there? He had trusted Reina enough to put on pink… and as he went over it in his mind, he pulled up the gym's website. It still had the old information of being a women’s only gym and he wondered if they only invited him in because they thought he was gay. He wasn’t sure what he did to give them that impression, but that would be one way for them to get around being sued. “Shit, I’m going to have to quit. I hope they don’t have a termination fee. Damn it did seem like a place where Reina could help me be the real me.”

After changing, Jerry put the earbuds back in and started on one of the many pending work projects he had. The rest of the day would be work, tomorrow morning he was going to go speak to Reina and quit the gym. At least he got a meal plan out of it he thought trying to count his blessings. If Reina thought he was gay he never really did have a shot with her, but that was his fault for having hope when he never should have to begin with.

“You trust your personal trainer. They want to help you be the real you. It is okay to show your feminine side, you feel mor confident being feminine.” The recording played along with the music.