In a brightly-lit corridor, we met the maître’ d, a young woman standing behind a podium with a book of reservations. As soon as she saw us, I could see the blood drain from her face. I was starting to love seeing that expression. After all, there was plenty to take in, from her hooves to her breasts, to her ears, to her height. And of course, her tail was whipping back and forth from her excitement.
“Hi, I have reservations for two under Helton,” I said. When out with the girls like this, I wasn’t allowed to use my real name.
The young woman didn’t know how to react. She simply stared at Betty with her mouth opening and closing.
“Do you have a nice quiet table you could seat us at?”
Finally, she reacted.
“Uh, I, uh… we have a rule about wearing shoes in the restaurant.”
“Oh, you can’t see them from here.” Betty raised one of her hooves, revealing rubber cleats on the bottom. “Horseshoes count as shoes, right? Well, cow shoes in this case.”
“I… need to speak to the manager. Please excuse me for a moment.”
She went into the restaurant, leaving us to wait.
“Is this what it’s usually like?” Betty asked.
“You’re the first hybrid to ever eat here. They’re just surprised.”
“Should I leave a Yelp review? Lorraine said that’s something people do. I don’t know what it is though…”
“Meh, let’s wait until after we eat.”
Another couple then entered the corridor, an older couple, and they stiffened up when they saw Betty. “Hello,” she said. They didn’t respond.
“Have you two eaten here before? Is the food good?” I asked.
The maître’ d then returned with a waiter, the man doing his best not to stare. “Right this way, please.”
We followed him through the restaurant and passed the bar. So early in the evening, only about a third of the tables were occupied, but everyone was staring. The waiter led us to a small table in the corner with windows all around and we took our seats and gave us drink menus. He forgot to give us the house special, but I could forgive him since his eyes were glued to Betty’s rack. Had she worn a tank top and showed off some cleavage, he might have locked up like a fainting goat.
Once he was gone, I turned to Betty. “You sure handle the looks well.”
“They’re kind of rude, but also funny. I just wish they’d answer questions when asked.” She looked at the menu. “Ok, what am I supposed to pick?”
“Whatever you want, whatever is familiar. They probably have the same wine you and Elise typically drink.”
“And they bring it to the table?”
“That’s right.”
The waiter soon returned and took our orders, switching our drink menus with dinner menus. This time, his eyes fell to Betty’s tail, hanging out of the back of her chair. When he left, Betty began to laugh.
“He would be so easy to break. A pathetic little whelp like him? A few minutes and he’d beg for the honor of kissing my hooves.”
“Sometimes I forget that you still have that sexy dom side to you.”
“Well let’s just say I learned the pecking order,” she replied, rubbing her leg against mine. “Ok, so help me out with this menu. A lot of these words don’t make sense to me.”
“They do that to make their meals seem fancier. Let’s see… I think you might enjoy the lamb salad with vegan charcuterie. I’ll get… the crispy roast duck.”
“You’re not going to order a burger?” I looked up from my menu at her. Her smile had vanished. “I bet everyone at the mansion is eating one right now.”
“You knew?”
“Of course I knew. Why else would you take me, the only cow in the mansion, out to dinner? You wanted me out of the way.”
“Betty, that’s not it.”
“I bet it will happen again next week. Lorraine will take me out so you’ll get a turn to eat my friends and family.”
A knot was forming in my stomach. “Betty…” I didn’t know what else to say.
She glared at me for a few moments and then burst into laughter. “Relax, I’m kidding. You are still so much fun to mess with. Like you said, I still have a dom side.” I gave a sigh of relief and laughed with her. “But thanks for taking my feelings into consideration. I don’t really mind if you or others eat beef as long as I’m just not around for it.”
“I’ve actually always wondered about how you felt. I mean, I’m sure you can imagine how many cows get eaten in this country.”
“Back before we transformed, Tobi would spend all his time in the barn with us, hunting for rats and mice. I know that animals get eaten. I eat meat after all, I mean, now that I am what I am.”
The waiter returned with our drinks, a Long Island ice tea for her and a light beer for me. I couldn’t drink much since I was driving. We gave our orders and he again departed.
“So how long do we wait before we get our food?”
“Typically, the better quality of food, the longer it takes to prepare, at least I hope that’s what will happen. They want to give us plenty of time to talk to each other.”
She took a drink from her tall glass. “So how exactly do you expect this all to end?”
“What do you mean?”
“What do you think the next step will be? I know the hybrids from the zoo are supposed to stay with us for a month, but then where will they go? Or will they want to stay with you and Lorraine/ Maybe you and I never go back to our homes and we all live in the mansion together forever.”
“I prefer to go under the assumption that there won’t be an end. In the real world, there is no such thing as a happy ending, just a pleasant status quo that is inevitably interrupted and ended. Whatever happens next will simply be the end of another chapter. I suppose… the true ending I want is to lie on my deathbed, surrounded by you and the girls, after a long and easy life.”
“But do you think it’ll go the way you want?”
“According to the Multiverse Theory, there is an infinite number of dimensions in which every possible event and outcome has happened, and in that infinite, there is an infinite number of infinites. There are an infinite number of dimensions where hybrids occur naturally, dimensions where I don’t have this ability, dimensions where this exact series of events has happened, except we’re all the opposite sex.
That means there is also an infinite number of universes in which everything turns out perfectly, that I get to die of old age after a happy life without tragedy or misfortune. I like to live my life believing that maybe I’m in one of those universes, that even when things go wrong, it’s still possible for the rest of my life to be smooth sailing. There are an infinite number reasons why things might go wrong, but also an infinite number of reasons why they might not. I guess I just have to hope the odds are in my favor.”
“I barely understood any of that, but it was very pretty.”
“Thanks, I came up with that when I was in my cringey freshman stage in high school.”
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