Lady was sitting in the cafeteria, waiting for Lily to arrive. Sitting across from him was her friend Maria, who was busy looking at her phone. She had arrived a few minutes ago without saying a word and sat down. While Lady didn’t find her unpleasant by any stretch of the imagination, he still found it difficult to talk to her considering he had only met her a week ago. Granted, it hadn’t been long since he had met Lily but considering the circumstances regarding their meeting, he felt their connection was far stronger. “Hey Lady, do you know anything about Project-Con?” She suddenly asked him. While the name didn’t ring any bells, he could more or less put the puzzle pieces together. “No, is that some kind of streaming convention?” he asked, slightly intrigued. “Yea, it’s happening in about a month. Tons of popular streamers will be there, DryCr1tikal, AsmonDimond, Veil, even NekoGirl. It also just so happens that I have two tickets to the event. If you're down.”

Lady considered her offer, but ultimately, it felt wrong to take one of her tickets when he had done nothing to earn it. “Thank you for the offer but I don’t have any way to pay you back, besides, you should take someone like Lily.” She stood up suddenly and leaned over the table placing her hands on his shoulder. “Come on, I got the tickets for free so it’s really no biggie. Also there's no way I could invite Lily, she’s a total normie. You're the only one I can invite and it would be super embarrassing to go alone. Please!” She shook him lightly as he grew flustered and finally relented. “Alright, I’ll go with you. But why do you want to go so badly?” he asked. A big smile adorned her face as she replied, “I’m hoping to meet my favorite streamer, Ladykiller. He’s not part of the roster but somehow, I just know he’ll be there.”

Lady felt his spine tingle as he looked at her. It was a coincidence, it had to be right? Before he could pry any further, the bell rang signaling that classes would begin soon. “I’ll give you the details later, It’s still a few weeks out but I’ll handle getting us there and finding a hotel so don’t worry about it too much.” Maria said as she ran off. It wasn’t until Lady saw her long pink hair disappear out the door that he began to wonder what he had gotten himself into. As he sat in class, he wondered why Lily hadn’t met up with them that morning. It probably wasn’t important but he still found it odd that he hadn’t seen her on the way to school or at school yet.

During his English tutoring, he noticed that the mood between him and Anna seemed to have changed slightly. Ever since school started, she had seemed gloomy or almost frightened around him but now, she was smiling. While he certainly preferred this side of her to her former self, he couldn’t help but wonder what had caused such a quick turnabout. The most obvious answer would be their fiasco the other day. Still, Lady was unsure how such an incident could change her attitude so much. Lady tried to focus during the tutoring but his mind kept drifting back to the morning prior. Her bare skin and slender limbs. Her ample chest wrapped in a fairly mature bra. He shook the image from his mind as he mentally chastised himself.

It was the second time this week he had seen one of his classmates partially undressed. Both incidents had made him painfully aware of how beautiful they were, and reminded him of the distance between them. Lady had been perfectly content with being friends with Lily, Maria, and possibly even Anna and Rachael, but now some part of him wanted more. He wanted to be held by them, to hug them, to do other more adult things with them, even if it was wrong. Their acceptance of him despite his many flaws was more than he deserved and yet, he now yearned for something else. Something more elusive and powerful. Love

Lady had never felt love. He had never experienced that flutter in his heart or heat on his face. There had never been a person that graced his fantasies or appeared in his dreams. Not because he was cold or heartless but because he had been raised without it. His whole life, he had been ignored at best or hated at worst. Even the occasional person to bestow kindness upon the young boy had only done so out of pity. Thus, Lady’s heart had never blossomed as he had been told his whole life, both directly and indirectly, that someone like him didn’t deserve love. “Lady, can you please pay attention.” Ms. Sierra suddenly said.

Lady suddenly realized that he had been staring at Anna. Drawn to her beautiful appearance like a moth to a flame. He quickly refocused as Ms. Sierra continued her lesson. Unfortunately, he once again became lost in his thoughts as the focus of his fantasies and memories shifted from his classmates to his teacher. He had only viewed his visit to her home last week as a gesture of pity, but had it been more. She had sat so close to him on the couch. Even hugged him before he left. But why? How did she see him? Was he just a student to her, or something more? He wanted to know so badly and yet he was afraid of the answer.

Maybe these burning feelings were just lust. Some sick animalistic desire for the opposite sex. To Lady, it was all foreign. The warmth of a hug. The hue of a blush. To many, these things were common, or at the very least, understood. For Lady though, they represented an exciting and terrifying new world. Even just hearing his name said with affection instead of disdain, mockery, or indifference evoked this foreign feeling. Noel, Emma, Lily, Anna, Rachael, and Maria had all been slowly growing closer to him. Now he was confused. He didn’t know who to believe, who to trust, what to do?

“Lady!” two voices suddenly called out in unison. The boy looked up and realized that he had zoned out and was breathing heavily. Both Anna and Emma looked at the boy with concern, inching closer to him. He stood up and backed away slightly. “I’m fine,” he said. “Just a bit tired is all. I’m going to go to the nurse's office if that’s ok. Sorry Ms. Sierra.” Both of them offered to take him but he assured them he would be ok and left. He needed to cool his head down and being near the two of them wouldn’t help. He quickly walked down the empty halls before reaching the nurse's office. The door was open so he let himself in and sat down on one of the beds.

“Oh, are you alright hon?” Lady heard someone ask. He turned around to find an African American woman sitting at a desk, wearing a lab coat. “I’m ok, I just needed a place to rest. Sorry.” She swiveled the office chair around and rolled closer to him. “That’s A-Okay. Sometimes, we all need a little break every now and then. Long as you’re not skipping, feel free to rest here.” Lady thanked her before laying back down in the bed. The room was silent for a few moments before Lady asked the nurse, “Have you ever been in love?” He immediately regretted the question as soon as he asked it but held his breath as he waited for her reply.

“Honey I’ve been in love my entire life. First it was that TV actor on channel 9, then it was Frank Simmons in seventh grade, after that, the Ice cream parlor off Second and main, eventually it was my husband and now, I love working here. Is this about that girlfriend you were with in here last week?” Lady suddenly blushed as he remembered his first real meeting with Lily. “You were there?” She chuckled slightly as she responded. “No, I was delivering some papers to the office. Heard you two as I was coming back but I didn’t want to spoil the mood so I decided to go for a little walk.”

Lady wondered how much of their conversation she had overheard. Hopefully not much. “She’s not my girlfriend, and it’s not about her. I mean, it is but it’s not just her. When I started high school, I thought it would be just like middle school and elementary. I thought I would be alone. But now there are people around me. People that want to talk to me, and spend time with me, and smile when they look at me, and I don’t know why. I don’t know how to interact with them, or what I am to them, or what they are to me, but I don’t want to lose them. I don’t know what to do!”

By this point, Lady was tearing up. He was almost choking on his words when the nurse suddenly poked him on the nose and laughed. “You had me worried for a minute there. I thought you and your girlfriend had gotten into a fight.” Lady didn’t bother correcting her again as she continued. “Humans are social animals. We need other people. There's nothing wrong with wanting to be friends with another person, or loving someone. We need those feelings because that’s what makes us human, even if they're scary. Sometimes, we get too bogged down by trying to put a label on relationships. Girlfriend, best friend, teacher, student, in the end, they're all just labels. What’s really important is that we care about each other and ourselves.”

“It sounds to me like you care a lot about these people and they care a lot about you so just try to have a good relationship with them, no matter what kind of relationship it is. Our feelings and desires are always changing but at the end of the day, we all just want to be happy. So try to make others happy and surround yourself with people that make you happy, Okay?” Lady nodded as he wiped the tears from his eyes. “Thank you miss, I have to get back to class now.” He stood up and offered a small wave as he jogged out the door.

The nurse returned to her desk and sifted through her files before finding the one she was looking for. A young boy she had been warned would likely make frequent visits to the nurses office because of his poor health. She set the file down as she wondered if he would be visiting again. Either for matters regarding health, or matters of the heart.