After a few minutes, Noelle had calmed down a bit more. That was about when I came to the realization that we were sitting on my bed together, hugging, not really saying anything. And if I had realized that, she surely had as well, and was trying to figure out the politest way to point out that it was kind of weird. So I hastily released her and tried to give her a bit more space. She looked appreciative, but still a little forlorn too.

“Um, right,” I said. “I should…” I racked my brain, trying to think of something appropriate, before catching sight of the sparkly blue of my fingernails. “I should finish doing the nails of my other hand. Yeah. That makes sense. And we can… we can still hang out and talk if you want?”

“Mmm,” Noelle said. She bit her lip lightly, gazing at my hand. “Are you sure you don’t want me to help?”

“Yes. I’d rather do it myself. So that way I get practice, you know?” I winced as soon as the words left my mouth.

“Makes sense,” Noelle murmured, obviously too kind to point out that there wasn’t exactly any reason a guy like me actually needed the practice.

I gave her a sideways glance. She was still fidgeting in place, gazing at my hands as her own fingers aimlessly toyed with the covers on the bed. Her eyes drifted up and met mine, and she looked kind of bashful. “Actually…”

“Hm?”

“Well, maybe I could paint your toenails instead?”

I blinked, suddenly hit by a rush of nervous energy myself. She wanted to… For me? 

“Sure,” I said, a little too fast, before I could get distracted with worrying about what it might mean, or even worse, freaked out about the idea of Noelle seeing my big ugly feet.

When her whole face lit up again, I knew it was the right decision. 

Not too much later, I had finished my part of the job, and handed the polish bottle over to Noelle for her side. It had indeed proven harder to do my right hand than my left, though all things considered, I feel like I did a pretty good job. I turned my hand back and forth, appreciating the color. This really would look good with that dress.

If I was still doing the presentation.

Which… was I? Somehow everything had changed out from under me again. But as nice as this was, and as much as I felt like I had achieved some understanding with Noelle, there was still Dustin to consider. I wouldn't blame him if he want me to get lost, at this point.

I kept from sighing, though, not wanting to bring Noelle down again. She did look to be feeling a lot better. I watched as she carefully painted my toenails, and she looked perfectly happy. When she concentrated, she had a tendency to stick her tongue just a little bit out of the corner of her mouth, which was positively adorable.

I tried not to stare, but what else was I going to think about? The other option was the fact that Noelle was touching me, gently holding one of my feet to keep it still while she carefully did a coat of polish on one toe at a time. Occasionally she’d brush her fingers across the skin there in a way that had to be accidental, but which gave me goosebumps, and—

“Th-this is nice,” I said abruptly, needing to break the silence so my head didn’t just overflow with thoughts.

“It is!” Noelle agreed. “See, I knew a sleepover with you would be fun. Not that this is a sleepover. Just… this feels like a thing you do at a sleepover? I guess?”

“You’d know more than me,” I muttered.

She let out a bark of laughter, but then looked up, looking a bit sheepish. “Yeah, not really. I… never really got invited to that kind of thing.”

“Never?” I couldn’t quite believe that.

“Well... Okay, there was this one time in third grade. I was really excited about it, too, until my dad said I couldn’t go. He didn’t think very highly of the girl who had invited me, and told me not to waste my time. That I should make friends with a ‘better class of people.’”

I grimaced. “Oof.”

“Yeah. And when I tried to explain that I couldn’t come…” A cloud crossed Noelle’s face. “I… I don’t remember exactly what I said, and I wasn’t trying to be mean. But after that point, everyone seemed to think that I thought I was better than them, and to not bother trying to hang out with me any more.” She rolled her eyes. “Which I guess made my dad happy, but left me feeling miserable and alone.”

“That’s awful.”

“Anyways!” Noelle said brightly. “That’s in the past.”

I frowned. I could see through her pretty clearly now, her tendency to put on a happy face when faced with something that had really hurt her. I bet that too came from her past, and her father’s whole monomaniacal focus on keeping up appearances.

I opened my mouth again, wanting to probe a bit more, or say something reassuring, or something that might crack through that uncomfortable facade and try to make her look more genuinely happy again, but she looked up with a glint in her eye, and I think she could tell my intentions. I wasn’t going to let this go though. She couldn’t distract me from—

“So yeah!” she said. “What else is fun in situations like this? Ooh, we should talk about boys. That’s a sleepover thing, right!”

My train of thought drove right off a cliff, plummeting to a canyon floor miles below, where it immediately exploded into flames.

“Wh-wh-what?”

Boys? Like… Boys? Like talking about which ones were… were cute, and that we’d want to look at, or hold hands with, or have them pull us close where we feel cute, and small, and protected in their embrace, and then they trail their fingertips under our chin, lifting it up so that our lips are so close and then…

Wait, we couldn’t do that, right? It wouldn’t be right to gossip about boys. Noelle had Dustin. Unless she wanted to talk about him. In… that same way? Oh gosh, suddenly the mental image I had been trying to fight off suddenly got even more sharper and specific.

I gulped. Wow, it was really hot in my room, wasn’t it.

Thankfully, Noelle didn’t seem to be paying attention to my minor panic attack. She looked distracted herself, gazing off to the side as her lips pursed, deep in thought about something. Suddenly her gaze snapped back at me.

“But that wouldn’t work, would it? Because you…” She hesitated as she looked up at me, tilting her head as she realized how red I had gotten. “You like girls. ...Right?” 

That last question came out sounding uncertain, as if part way through the thought she had realized she had cause to doubt.

“I do!” I squeezed my eyes shut. That much was true. Girls… girls were really good, too. Or, well, ‘too’ implied ‘in addition’ which implied… Okay, that wasn’t the point. The question was if I liked girls. Like I was supposed to, like normal. I cracked one eye open, seeing Noelle looking at me with concern. 

For just the slightest moment I allowed my imagination to run wild, and considered what it would be like if she reached out to my shoulder and pushed me down on the bed, crawling on top of me to pin me into place so that she could do whatever she wanted to me. Then as a sultry self-satisfied smirk appeared on her lips, she would lower herself closer and closer until…

Yes. Yep. Girls though. “Girls are good,” I said out loud, without really meaning to.

Noelle nodded, looking pleased. “Then we’ll have to talk about girls instead.”

“What— like talk about talk about?”

“Yeah!” She grinned deviously. “I’ve never gotten to have a conversation like this. It’ll be… interesting.”

I stared back at her. She looked genuinely excited.

“So tell me, is there anyone you have your eye on?” she asked, wiggling her eyebrows. “Who do you think is cute in our classes?”

Well. Obviously, yes, but… The words left my mouth before I could rein them in. “This isn’t an elaborate way to fish for a compliment, right?”

Noelle’s eyes went wide, and then she glanced away, blushing. “No! I didn’t mean… Not me. I mean other girls.”

I let out a breath. “Oh, okay. I… I don’t know.”

“Oh, come on, you can tell me,” she said.

I bit my lip, thinking hard. If I had to say something... “I guess I’ve always thought Mackenzie Meyer was cute? She wears those headbands and flowery dresses, and it’s… it’s just really nice.”

“Huh.” Noelle looked thoughtful. “Okay, yeah, I can see it. She’s got, like, kind of an adorable baby animal vibe, like you just want to scoop her up and protect her.”

“Yeah, exactly. It’s…” A soft smile crossed my face. “I like it.”

Noelle looked askance at me. “That sort of surprises me though, to be honest.”

I blinked. “Really?”

“Um. Yeah.” Noelle chewed on her lip. She suddenly seemed to be really interested in looking at my toenails again. 

I suddenly felt the stirring of unfocused worry. What had I done wrong? “Noelle? What do you mean? Why does that surprise you?”

“Okay, promise you won’t freak out or be offended by this…”

“I can’t promise if I don’t know what you’re going to say,” I said, already feeling a bit panicked.

Noelle winced. “It’s just… Uh… I’m surprised you’d be attracted to a girl like that, because it’s really more of… the vibe I get from… you?”

I guess the worried feelings suddenly got confused and displaced, because now I felt a little bit weird and fluttery inside. “Oh.”

“Not in a bad way! In a good way!”

“Y-yeah.”

“I figured you would be more into someone, like… I don’t know. Liv Nguyen?”

I thought about that. Liv had a nose piercing and a teal stripe in her hair. She always wore a leather jacket, and was the kind of girl who could probably pin me against a locker even though she was like two inches shorter than me.

I gulped. “Yeah, okay. That’s… She’s also hot, yeah.”

Noelle grinned, nodding. “I’m not saying I think she could push you around, but I’m saying I bet you wouldn’t mind letting her. Though who would, am I right?”

“True.” I felt a blush coming on. “But I do still like Mackenzie too.”

The more I thought about it, the more confused I started to get. When I really considered it, I guess I couldn’t quite imagine myself dating Mackenzie after all. Or, well… I could imagine going on a picnic with her, and it’d be picture-perfect, with one of those checkerboard blankets in a field full of flowers. ...But could I really imagine myself in that situation? Not really. Not as a date. The sort of pathetic thing was that instead what my brain jumped to was Josie there, wearing a pastel yellow dress of her own and one of those big sun hats. Two girls sitting side by side, eating cute little cucumber sandwiches or something. And that really wasn’t the same thing at all. Was it?

“That’s fair,” Noelle said thoughtfully, ignoring me spacing out once again. She smiled ever-so-slightly. “And Mackenzie does have an absolutely great set of tits.”

I choked. “Noelle!”

She blushed but looked defiant. “What? Okay, yes, that’s not the only thing that anyone should care about. She’s smart and seems really friendly and nice. I’m just saying, she also happens to have very good tits.”

“You can’t just say that, though,” I protested. 

“Why not?”

“It’s… it’s rude?” I hesitated, feeling like the words were slipping away from me. “I mean, what if someone said something like that about you?”

She frowned. “I’d be flattered, but my tits are nowhere near as nice.”

“C-can you stop saying that word!”

Noelle rolled her eyes.

“Okay, well…” I mentally grasped for a different example. “What if someone was talking about Dustin behind his back, and they were, like, speculating on the size of his…” I suddenly came to a screeching halt, realizing the disaster I was about to crash into. “...Biceps?” I finished weakly.

Noelle’s eyebrows were through the roof as she looked at me. 

Then she shot me the most positively evil grin. “Why? Are you curious about the size of his… biceps?”

“N-n-no! That’s not what I meant at all!”

Noelle didn’t look like she was going to show me any mercy though. She was still smirking in my direction.

“It’s all the same with you boys, isn’t it?” she scoffed. “Everything turns into a dick-measuring contest in the end.”

The warm embarrassment drained out of me, suddenly replaced by a sick feeling. It was as if she had just thrown a glass of cold water in my face.

I wasn’t sure why it bothered me so much, but... I had been trying so hard to be—no, wait, not even that. I had been actually relaxing, feeling like I didn’t need to try so much to deliberately focus on the socially-correct thing to do or say. That I could just be myself. And sure, that had meant a lot of getting flustered and everything, but it had still felt sort of genuine and nice. Except now I suddenly realized how I had to be coming across. How she saw me. I was just another gross guy, acting like all the other guys did. I should have known better.

The smile dropped off Noelle’s face. “Hey? That was just a joke. Not a good one, I guess.”

“It’s fine,” I said, not looking at her.

She moved a bit closer, scooting next to me where she could take hold of my arm. “Hey, whoa. Are you okay? You don’t look okay.”

“I’m fine. It doesn’t matter.”

“No, it’s like a light switch suddenly flipped off inside you, what happened? What did I say? Did I go too far?”

“No, it’s nothing.”

“Josie…” 

A noise escaped the back of my throat, and I turned away from her. I don’t know what did it, I don’t know what the feeling was, but I tried to lock it down. 

Noelle had noticed though. She froze in place, looking haunted.

“Or is that it? Oh no. I’ve been going full speed ahead with all of the dressing-like-a-girl stuff, and— oh god, and then I insisted on doing your toenails too…” She shook her head. “That has to be making you feel super uncomfortable.”

“No,” I murmured, but too quiet for her to hear. 

She just kept rambling. “It’s like Sam says about dysphoria. And here I’ve just been making it worse. I should use your real name, I don’t know why I keep calling you Josie instead of—”

“No!” I said a little more loudly than I meant to, this time. “It’s not that.”

She looked confused. “It’s not? Then… what is it?”

“It’s nothing.” I tried to smile. “Besides, I’m the one who’s supposed to help you with your problems.”

She shot me a look. “What?”

“Wasn’t that the deal?”

“No,” Noelle said. “There wasn’t a ‘deal.’ What are you talking about?”

“You needed someone to hear you out, to talk to when you’re feeling overwhelmed.”

“Okay, yes, but not just that,” she said insistently. “I didn’t want a therapist, I wanted a friend. I want you to be my friend.”

I looked at her blankly. “No, you don’t.”

“Yes I do,” she said, sounding like if I disagreed again she was perfectly willing to fight me on it.

I glanced away again. “It’s fine, you don’t have to spare my feelings or pretend this is anything more than it is. That’s all I was saying, I understand where things stand. I’ll help you out with your problems and that’s enough.”

“No,” she cut in. “It’s not. I like you, you idiot.”

That stirred up some feelings in me that I was pretty certain I shouldn’t be feeling. But… the doubts crept right back in. “...Why?”

“Now who’s fishing for compliments?” she said, smirking.

I looked away, blushing a bit.

“Because it’s fun talking with you,” she said, smiling. “All of this, I’m having a good time, and it’s helping me feel a lot better.” She paused. “But it’s not like I’m just doing this for what I get out of it. I want you to be happy too. You being happy makes me happy, you know? That’s… that’s what friendship is.”

“Oh.”

She sighed. “But now that I think about it, I’m realizing that I still keep winding up dragging you into conversations and things that I want, without stopping to consider what you want, and that’s not fair at all.”

“I… didn’t mind,” I admitted. “I was having fun too. I just… it really caught me off guard to hear you imply that I’m some sleazy guy who only cares about the size of… Uh…”

“Oh, no,” Noelle said. “No, I don’t think that at all, I swear!” She squeezed my arm. “Josie…” She winced again.

“No,” I said, blushing a bit. “I like when you call me that.”

“Oh. Okay! Well, Josie, I don’t think of you like that. I promise. I...” She paused, her forehead furrowing. “I don’t know how I see you, exactly. You’re… you’re kind of confusing. But whatever it is, I like it. I really do. I like you.”

My chest felt a little tight. “I like you too,” I admitted, trying not to feel weird or guilty about it.

She smiled at me, and this was another one of those really nice genuine ones that warmed me up from the inside.

“Then let’s talk about something else,” she said. “I didn’t mean to make you uncomfortable with that whole conversation. I just thought that you would like…” She stopped, and let out a sigh. “Okay, wait, no. I’m trying to be better about this. Honestly, right? I think that I just wanted to talk about girls on my own and you were a convenient excuse. I’m sorry for treating you that way.”

"Thank you." I blinked. “You… wanted to talk about girls?”

“Maybe,” she said, caught a little off guard. “I don’t know. I’m not really sure why. It was a weird impulse. It’s not like I’ve ever had the chance to before.”

“Oh. Okay.”

“I… I’m not gay or anything,” she insisted. “Girls are just… pretty.”

“Yeah.” I sighed. “They are. And that makes sense.”

“Yeah?”

“Yeah, totally!” In fact, the more I thought about it, the more and more sense it made. “In the same way that I’m not gay, but guys… guys can be really hot sometimes, too?”

Noelle nodded sagely. “Yeah. For sure.” She bit her lip. “In that case, should we actually talk about guys too? You know, just to be fair?”

I considered it. “That sounds kind of fun. But… What about Dustin?”

Noelle shrugged. “Sure, we can talk about Dustin if you want, I don’t mind. He is really cute. Did I tell you that last summer he got this temporary job helping at a construction site, and he used to come over after work, still kind of sweaty and with all these muscles, like, all even more jacked than usual?”

I felt my eyes bugging out a bit. “Um. No. You… You did not tell me that.” I gulped. “But no! I mean, like… Is it really okay to just gossip about boys? Particularly since we should really talk about what you want to say to him. And when you want to do it.”

“Oh,” Noelle said. “Right. You have a good point.” Her voice sank a bit. “I very much do want to apologize and get it right this time.”

“Exactly.” I smiled. “Don’t worry, we’ve got time. We’ll talk through all of it, so you’ll be ready.”

A knock sounded, and I looked up, startled. After a long moment, I heard my mother’s voice, still carefully outside of the barely-cracked door.

“Honey?”

“You can come in,” I said.

My mother hesitated one more moment, and then pushed the door open slightly, her eyes sweeping over me and Noelle sitting next to each other on the bed. Her expression was unreadable. “You have another guest.”

Noelle and I shared a glance of confusion. “I do?” I said.

“Yes,” my mom said. “He said his name was… Dustin, I think?”