Secretz

I'm a general contractor, with my own successful company. Mostly we build and remodel houses -- and I'm good at what I do, if I do say so myself. So, naturally, when I stepped on my girlfriend's kitchen floor, and felt that one spot with just a tiny bit more give than the rest of the floor, I knew it instantly.

"Water!" I exclaimed.

Jenny blinked, pausing in the act of pouring me a glass of wine to regard me with a confused expression. "Water? You...didn't want any wine?"

I shook my head, already in the process of doffing my jacket. I stamped my foot on the spot -- you couldn't actually see the slight sag when I put my weight on the offending part of the tile floor, but that didn't matter. I could feel it. "No, no, I mean under the floor -- you've got water damage, Jen. Leaking pipe, probably."

"Oh," she said, looking surprised, then confused again. "Wait, what are you doing, Ron?"

I cocked my head, pausing in the act of rolling up the sleeves of dress shirt. "Well, I'm gonna go take a look, of course. Where's the crawlspace entrance?"

"What?" Jenny exclaimed.

"You know, the little hatch that goes under the house? In older houses it's often outside, but yours is probably on the floor of a closet somewhere, maybe the master bedr--"

"I know what it means!" she interrupted, placing her hands on her hips. "We're on a date!"

"But...there could be rot!" I protested.

"Is the floor going to fall in right now?" she demanded.

"No, but--" I began.

Rolling her eyes, she grabbed my arm and pulled me back towards the living room. "Then I'll call someone in the morning! Between your work schedule and mine, we hardly see each other, lately. I know you love to fix things, and I love that about you, but you don't need to fix this right now!"

I reluctantly assented. And, despite the specter of a potential black mold infestation looming over Jenny's house, we had a lovely evening. Jenny promised she'd have the floor taken care of before it became a problem.

But this was the house where the woman I loved lived. And it had a flaw. I couldn't stop thinking about it. Mold is no joke, it can make you sick. It made me angry.

So, the next morning, after checking in with my crew on the job, and leaving my current client in their capable hands, I drove by Jenny's house. She had gone to work already, and there was no plumber's truck there, either. I was relieved, as I hopped down from my work truck and retrieved my toolbox. It was bad form to horn in on someone else's job, but since she hadn't called anyone yet, I could just assess the problem myself, and see that it was fixed properly.

I used my key and went inside, and quickly located the hatch into the crawlspace. I know, this might sound obsessive. But damn it, there could have been rot. In my girlfriend's house! The crawlspace was deeper than I expected, practically a shallow basement. I could stand up straight in it -- though I'm shorter than average.

As soon as I got to the space beneath the kitchen, it was clear what the problem was -- or what it had been, at any rate. There had been a crack in the water main, though I could see this had recently been sloppily patched with a piece of unidentifiable scrap sloppily spot welded over the fissure in the pipe.

I was so fixated on this unconscionably shoddy repair that it took me a moment to realize that the pipe was nestled amongst a disorderly pile of heavy gold bars. They had clearly been neatly stacked at one point, and the collapse of this pile of heavy ingots onto the pipe was likely what had caused the crack in the first place.

Looking around, I realized that this single collapsed stack was only one among many other still-standing vertical towers of precious metal ingots, including large amounts of gold, silver, and platinum. It was more wealth than I'd ever seen in one place, but I didn't have much time to contemplate that.

"Hi, Ron." Jenny's voice said from behind me, hesitantly.

I whirled around in surprise, and she gave me a wan smile.

"You have the key to the door, but this place has a lot of alarms." she explained, gesturing around the crawlspace. Her smile faded. "I was going to tell you, but...I just didn't know how."

"Tell me what? That you're..." I gestured around, raising my eyebrows, still awed by the sheer amount of wealth surrounding me. "Fabulously rich?"

She chuckled. "No, I know you better than that. It's just that I'm...I'm different, Ron. I guess it's time I showed you."

And then she changed. Her form expanded to practically fill the crawlspace as she crouched on all fours. My eyes couldn't even take all of her in at once without looking left and right to see the whole expanse of her, her glittering golden scales, strong yet slender limbs, and strangely delicate-looking membranous wings.

My girlfriend...was a dragon. And I was standing in her lair.

She lowered her great reptilian head until it was level with mine, and rumbled, softly, her deep growl of a voice still distinctly feminine in character. "I am not sorry for what I am...but I am sorry for not telling you."

Slowly, I lifted a trembling hand, and ran my fingers over her elongated muzzle.

"What you are..." I whispered, hoarsely. "Is the woman I love."

I lifted my head, and planted a kiss on her broad snout. I was taken aback as her draconic transformation reversed, and she embraced me fiercely as a human woman, tears leaking from the corners of her eyes.

"Ron..." she half-sobbed. "I...I never thought you'd take it like this!"

I laughed happily, my voice muffled by her bosom as she held me tight. "Well..."

I gently pushed her back, and looked up into her eyes. "The truth is...I haven't been entirely honest with you, either."

She blinked. "What?"

I cleared my throat, awkwardly, and nodded.

"Have you ever noticed that I...excuse myself to visit the restroom a bit more often than normal?" I began, hesitantly.

She smirked. "What, you have IBS? Considering my secret, I don't really mind that you've been hiding a tender tummy."

I shook my head. "I don't go to the bathroom for that... I go there to use this." I produced an object from my pocket, and placed it in her hand. She looked at it with a furrowed brow.

"An...electric razor?"

I nodded. "I have to use it at least a dozen times a day. Sometimes more."

Jenny blinked at me. "But...why?"

I cocked my head to the side. "Seriously? Jen, I'm four-foot nine."

"I know. You've got achondroplasia, right?" she said, with a shrug. "I don't care -- I mean, who am I to judge someone based on size?"

"No...not exactly." I corrected. Then, steeling myself, I finally let go of the secret I'd held onto all my life.

"Ah'm no a dwarf, lass..." I said, dropping the standard midwestern American accent that I'd carefully cultivated, over the years. "Ah'm a dwarf."

*****

THE END.