The Bet - Chapter 42 (Friday – week 6 Part 2 of 8)

The Bet
by Karen Singer

Chapter 42 (Friday – week 6 Part 2 of 8)

Mel sat back in her chair and stared at the back wall of her office without really seeing it. She had some time between clients, but instead of worrying about work issues, she was instead worried about Chad issues. Namely, how little time there was left in the bet and how could she possibly make him totally incontinent with only three weeks to go? It seemed like an impossible task. And yet, she had made a lot of progress on him in the last week. She had shaved ten minutes off of his ability to hold back from the week before, but that still left another eight or nine minutes to go – which was an awful lot!
The problem was, he was so stubborn that he just wouldn’t give in and let her win. He was going to make her work for every bit of it! Well, if he was going to be that stubborn then so could she. Without a doubt, she was going to have to pull out all the stops – use whatever means she could possibly think of! The only problem was, she couldn’t think of anything else she could do.
Frustrated, she picked up one of the file folders on her desk and opened it. She started reading through the technical jargon explaining the reasons behind somebody’s proposal. Then she stopped reading. The paperwork was all about the reasons. It was a tiny idea, not much at all. And it probably wouldn’t help much. But still, it was an idea. She turned to her computer and opened up her email program.

Chad was doing a lot of nothing when he noticed an email coming in for him. He minimized his web browser where he had been looking at skirts today and opened the email – from Mel!

Sissy,

I don’t care how hard you’re working on anything else at work today, find the time to do this!

Write me a paper – due today before you leave work. Minimum of 500 words. No mistakes of any kind. Email it back to me. With this subject: “Why I Deserve To Be Incontinent.”

If I don’t like anything at all about it, you’ll be doing it over and over again till I’m satisfied with the contents. And every rewrite is going to add another hundred words!

I look forward to seeing it as soon as possible.

Chad read the email several times. Ugh! He didn’t have a clue as to what he could possibly put into such a paper. It was just a good thing that he wasn’t doing much of anything else. He closed the email and opened another program to begin writing. He stared at the blank page in front of him for a while… and stared, and stared, and stared at it. What could he write? He had no clue at all.
“Break time, Sissy,” Robins, voice rescued him from the entrance to his cubicle.
He turned around to face her and gladly got up out of his chair.
“What’cha doin?” Robin asked as they left his cubicle together.
“A lot of nothing,” he replied in his girly voice.
“It looked like you were going to write something,” she noted.
He shrugged. “I was thinking about it, but I didn’t know what to write.”
“About what?”
But he couldn’t tell her that. “I don’t know.”
“But you were going to write something anyway?”
“Like I said, I was thinking about it.”
“But you don’t know what you wanted to write about?”
“Something like that.”
“You’re weird! You know that?”
Chad laughed. “More than you know!”
They were fairly early again for break so they each got a doughnut. “I just don’t see how you can eat so much and still stay so thin!” Robin complained as they headed toward the women’s table together.
“Like I said, it’s all the other times when I don’t eat.”
“But I just saw you eat breakfast, and now you’re shoving a doughnut into your mouth too. You’re going to gain weight again!”
Chad shoved the last of his doughnut into his mouth. “I hope so. Besides, you’re having one too.”
Robin finished her doughnut. “Don’t tell anyone!” she giggled. “But really, I can’t believe you’re ruining your diet like this.”
“I was just too hungry this morning,” Chad explained as a few more women sat down with them.
“Too hungry?” one of the women chimed in. “That’s my problem. That’s why every diet I go on never lasts very long.”
Somehow, the main topic of conversation that morning seemed to revolve around dieting and food. Chad just sat back and drank his coffee and listened till someone asked him, “So what diet have you been on, Sissy? You’re the only one here who seems to be really successful at losing weight.”
Chad shrugged and careful to use his girly voice replied, “Most of the time I don’t eat hardly anything at all. It’s just sometimes that it gets to me and I have to eat something else – like today.” He leaned forward a bit. “I got so hungry today that I had to stop and buy a fast food breakfast for myself.”
“And then he just ate one of those doughnuts!” Robin added.
“I was hungry!” Chad explained.
“I know what you mean,” one of the women added. “It was all I could do to resist taking one of those things this morning. I wish they wouldn’t put them out here. They’re too tempting.”
“That’s for sure!” another woman noted. Her reply was a bit muffled though as she stuffed the last of her own doughnut into her mouth. There were some amused chuckles all around the table.
“I just wish that when I cheat,” another woman brought up, “that what I eat wouldn’t destroy all my efforts so much – cause when I cheat, I don’t exactly go for the diet foods – if you know what I mean.”
There was some general murmur of agreement all around.
“Don’t you fix diet dishes at home?” Chad asked.
“Honey, I know the exact calorie count of everything out there. Nothing goes into my mouth that I don’t know exactly how many calories are in it. The problem is, that there’s still so many calories, and so little food! And at home, I have a family to feed. Do you know how hard it is to cook something for a big husband and two growing boys and only have the tiniest portion on your own plate all the time? Every time?”
“Yeah, I know,” Chad replied, thinking about all the nice meals he had created only to be served nothing but baby food later.
“I doubt it Honey! Till you get your own man in the house and have to take care of him, don’t come telling me that you know what it’s like!”
“Maybe he will soon,” another woman laughed. “I saw him and Derek being real chummy outside the building yesterday.”
“Hey, that’s right!” another woman added. “I almost forgot about that. What happened between you two?”
“Nothing much,” Chad replied. “It turns out he’s been avoiding me because Ray is riding his case pretty hard over our date together. Kind of like what everybody else is doing to me!” There was a bit of giggling from the women.
“Oh come on,” one of the women replied. “This is a dream come true for you. Isn’t it?”
“I would think so!” another woman added. “Derek’s a hunk! And as far as I know, you two have been pretty good friends for a long time.”
Chad could see that things were quickly heading in the wrong direction. “No. We’re…” But that’s as far as he got before another women spoke up.
“Oh! It all makes perfect sense to me now!” she announced. “You two have been good friends for a long time. Derek get’s divorced. You get divorced. And now you’re getting a sex change so you and Derek can be together. What do you think girls, does that sound about right?”
Chad tried to protest, but most of the women were suddenly agreeing with her and asking if that was indeed the case.
“No!” Chad tried to protest over and over again. “That’s not it. We’re just friends.” But his protests seemed to get nowhere. By the time break was over, Chad figured that every woman there was thoroughly convinced that that was the case. He only hoped that Derek didn’t get wind of it.
“So is it true?” Robin asked as they walked back to their desks together. “You’re really trying to hook up with Derek? And that’s why you’re doing all of this?”
“No!” Chad replied rather vehemently for the umpteenth time. “You know that’s not it!”
“Well you never did really explain why you’re trying to be a woman now – other than I’ve figured out that you like wearing the clothes. All you ever say is that it’s complicated. And you’ve got to admit, doing it so that you can get together with Derek is fairly complicated. Not to mention that it makes more sense than anything else.”
“That’s not it,” Chad protested once again.
“So what is it? What’s behind it all?”
But Chad couldn’t tell her anything about what was really going on. “It’s complicated,” he finally said – once again.
“Bullshit!” Robin replied angrily.

Mel stared at the computer screen on her desktop. Like she did earlier though, she wasn’t seeing anything other than the thoughts and worries running through her head. What was she going to do about Chad? So little time was left and she had so far to go with him. That silly paper she had ordered him to write a little while ago wasn’t going to solve her problem at all. The most she could really hope for out of it was for him to question further why he should bother resisting – and maybe, decide to just let her win. But it was too much to hope for. Way too much! So what was she going to do? She heard Andrea’s knock at her door. “Come on in!”
Andrea pushed Mel’s door open and carried in another stack of file folders. “Here’s the latest,” she said as she set the folders on Mel’s desk. “Not as many this time.”
“Good! There seemed like an awful lot yesterday.”
“Yeah, but every one of those folders means money coming in!”
Mel sighed. “Very true, very true. But that doesn’t make it any less annoying.”
“Hey, I’ve got to type all this stuff up first. All you have to do is read it and sign it!”
Mel smiled. “And I appreciate it every time.”
“Sure you do!” Andrea replied like she didn’t believe it. But she knew that Mel did appreciate her work and she sometimes even bothered to tell her. “Hey, you seem a bit distracted today. Anything wrong?”
“Does it show that much?”
“Not really… yes, a bit.”
Mel sighed. “I’ve got my back up against the wall with Sissy,” she complained.
“Again? What’s wrong now?”
“It’s just that… I’m running out of time!”
“You mean you’re losing?”
“No! And yes.”
“And what’s that supposed to mean?”
“It means that I’m making progress, but I still have too far to go!”
“So he’s winning?”
“No… and yes.” She let out another sigh of frustration.
“So what are you going to do about it?”
“I don’t know… yet.”
“And what’s your big problem? How do you know he’s winning?”
“He’s not winning!”
Andrea raised her eyebrow questioningly. “He’s not losing either.”
“It’s just that… He’s got way too much control still! I mean, I’ve managed to take most of it away from him, but he works on it while he’s at work – all day! I did manage to strip about ten minutes off his ability to hold back from what he could do a week ago, but he’s still got way too much ability left. And there’s only three weeks left in this bet for me to remove all his control! I’m running out of time!”
Andrea just looked at her for a moment. “You said he works on it while he’s at work every day?”
“It’s the only time he can. I’ve pretty much fixed things now so that he can’t control himself any other time – as long as I keep after him.”
“So if he’s working on it while he’s at work…” Andrea just shook her head. “I guess there are things you’re not telling me because the answer to that one is so obvious that I’m not even going to tell you.”
“It is?” Mel asked as Andrea headed for the door.
“It sure seems like it to me,” Andrea replied as she stopped momentarily in the doorway. “But then like I said, obviously there are things that I don’t know.”
“Like what?” Mel asked. But Andrea had already left. “Like what?” she asked the walls.