“So… um… yeah,” I said. I nervously licked my lips, and swallowed. “This is pretty much it.”

Nora, sitting beside me, gave my shoulder a reassuring squeeze; meanwhile Anna, Elanor, and Vicky, seated across from us at the table in our favourite café, were giving me stares that were equally bewildered and disbelieving.

There was silence, punctuated only by the distant sounds of the café.

A waiter came by and set food and drinks down on the table; he hesitated, seemingly realising just how awkward the atmosphere around our group was, and then left again without speaking a word.

The silence stretched further.

I could almost see the wheels turning in my friends’ minds, as they thought back about what I’d said, and also doubtlessly flashed back to every interaction they’d had with me over the previous seven months.

Again, silence.

And suddenly, I couldn’t take it any more.

“Please say something,” I mumbled.

The silence was broken by Anna snorting loudly. She put her face in her hands, and her shoulders started shaking. “Jesus H. Christ, Lily,” she said, as she began laughing uproariously – and she was soon joined by Elanor and Vicky, too. “Holy shit,” she continued, gasping for breath.

“This is just… Holy crap,” Elanor added. “I mean, I would doubt what you just said, but you swore up and down that it’s the truth, despite how far-fetched it may seem…”

“And it is the truth,” Nora replied. “I believe Lily, at least, since I’ve seen how she was this morning, when she came out to me.”

Vicky, if at all possible, started laughing even harder; our table was getting weirded-out stares by the wait-staff and other patrons. “Yeah, it was a coming out, wasn’t it? After all, this dumb baby…” She took a deep breath to calm herself down, but it failed, and she was still laughing when she said, “I mean, I’ve heard stories about trans people with a thick eggshell, but this thick? Jesus, Lily, you were armour-plated.”

“She was, wasn’t she?” Anna said, starting to calm down. “I mean, I kinda knew it I guess? I did tell you you were a spiky egg when you first talked to me about being trans. I just didn’t know the full extent of it.”

“It is remarkable,” Elanor said, taking a deep breath of their own. “Our friend is a big dum-dum, it seems.”

Friend.

I gulped.

“So, you forgive me? Despite everything?” I asked.

Elanor and Vicky both wiped their tears away and nodded; Anna, however, locked eyes with me. Then, after a moment, she raised her finger. “Hold on, give me a sec,” she said. She reached into her bag, and retrieved a sheaf of paper, which she carefully and methodically rolled up into a cylinder. “Close your eyes.”

I complied.

Anna whapped me upside the head with her makeshift paper club.

“There. Now I forgive you,” she said.

“Ow,” I complained, massaging my head and causing another bout of laughter to ripple through my friends.

“No, but seriously,” Elanor said. “How is it that after a full seven months of ‘lying,’ what made you break down was remembering a shitty eighties movie?”

“Well, I was a bit tipsy at the time, so I don’t remember it clearly, but it was probably the fact that I love Nora so much–”

“Say it again,” Nora said, smiling at me; I smiled in return, leaned forward, and gave her a peck on the lips.

“I love you, Nora,” I answered. “But yeah, I love Nora, and I didn’t want to force her into something she didn’t want to be doing with someone she didn’t want to. Rape by deception, remember?”

“And while I appreciate the thought, that wouldn’t really have been rape by deception, would it?” Nora interjected. “After all, I was fully aware of who you are…” She raised a finger to stave off my objection. “Even if you weren’t, I was fully aware of who you are,” she continued with a smirk, “and that was something I wanted to do. I freely consented to have a relationship – including sexual relations when and where appropriate – with the girl I love.”

“Say it again,” I said, smirking at her.

“I love you, Lily, my beautiful girl,” Nora said, and she leaned forward and kissed me. Deeply.

There was tongue.

After a while Anna started to make gagging noises, Elanor coughed discreetly, and Vicky muttered, “Seriously, you two. Get a room. Goddamn show-offs.”

Without breaking the kiss, Nora glanced over at Vicky, smirked, and sweetly gave her the finger.

“Liiiiiilyyyy, your girlfriend is being mean to me,” Vicky said, pouting

I pulled back from the kiss, and swatted playfully at Nora. “Hey now,” I said, in a mock-scandalised tone of voice, “don’t you be mean to my sister.”

“Fiiiiine,” Nora drawled out.

“Good girl,” I said, and gave her a peck on the cheek.

“So, is this everything you had to say?” Anna asked. “I mean, not that I don’t enjoy hanging out with y’all, but I kinda have a project to get back to, the professor is expecting the semi-final draft of my paper in the next couple days.” She paused. “Wait, hold on, weren’t you planning on writing a paper, too?”

“Uh… I was, actually,” I replied. “It was going to be something about how transition is fake, actually, since even someone who isn’t trans can do it, and use it to increase their social standing.”

It took Anna a few moments to fully understand what my words meant, but then she started laughing again. “And I gather that by ‘someone who isn’t trans’ you mean yourself, correct?” she said, guffawing; I nodded in confirmation, which only made her laugh harder.

“Swear to god, Lily, you’re so dense it’s an actual wonder you don’t have your own gravitational field,” Elanor said.

I pouted. “I’m getting better.”

Anna took a deep breath to calm herself down. “In any case, what are you planning to do about that?”

“Well, I’ve already gathered all the material, so I might as well write it,” I answered. “But I’m going to approach the whole issue of transition a bit differently. I even thought about a title. Not Just a River in Egypt: How Socially-Ingrained Preconceptions Prevent People from Realising Plain and Obvious Truths. What do you think?”

“I think it sounds good,” Vicky said. “If more on the psychological side of things, instead of social studies.”

I nodded. “I hope the professor will overlook that.”

My friends all nodded back. “So, anything else?” Elanor asked.

“Yes, actually,” I replied. “I… I still have to come out to my parents. And I don’t know how they’ll react, I honestly have no idea. Could you…” I paused, and gulped. “Could you all be there with me when I tell them? So I have some support, any way it goes.”

“Of course,” Anna replied. “That’s what friends are for, right?”

Elanor and Vicky nodded in agreement, and Vicky reached over, grabbed my hand, and gave it a reassuring squeeze. “And if anything happens, remember that you’ll always have a place to stay, Sis.”

I smiled at her.

“When exactly would that be?” Elanor asked.

“In two weeks’ time,” I answered. “They’re driving down, so I won’t have to lug all my things along on a bus when I go back home for the summer. I’ve sent my dad a text, asked them to stay over here for a day or two instead of going back right away. ‘So you can do some sightseeing,’ I said.” I sighed deeply. “This way, at least, they’ll have some time to think it over before we have to go home.”

Elanor nodded again. “We’ll plan this thing properly,” they said.

“That we will,” Nora said; she passed her arm over my shoulders, and pulled me into a half-hug.

“Thank you,” I said, looking around the group at each of them in turn – Anna, Elanor, Vicky, and Nora. “I don’t know what I’d do without you.”

“Don’t worry, things will be fine,” Anna said.

And maybe things would really be fine. Or maybe not. I had no idea what the future would bring, but I knew I could face anything and everything coming my way, because I had my friends by my side.

And, if nothing else, I knew who I was.

I was Lily.

And I was a girl.

The End.