“What? What did I say?” Zach protested.

Maria sighed. “Look, maybe you don’t know much about, like, gender, but I think it’s pretty clear what’s going on with our friend here.”

“You mean he’s, like, wearing some girl clothes? It’s not exactly a huge shock. Dude’s always been kind… uh… not sure what the word is.”

“I feel like I’m not gonna like any of the options,” I said.

“Can you stop saying dude so much?” Jenna said. 

“Huh? Why?” Zach asked.

“Because it seems to be upsetting them!”

“I-it’s fine. I don’t mind,” I said.

“Okay, bro,” Maria said. I couldn’t stop myself from wincing.

“Okay, jeez, sorry. What do you want me to say instead?” Zach said.

All eyes turned to me. I shrunk back under all the attention. At that moment, I did not wish to be perceived.

Just then, I was saved by a knock on the door. Zach got up to answer. “Pizza’s here!”

A moment later, my mouth was blessedly full of cheese pizza, preventing me from giving up any of my secrets. Sadly, the pizza didn’t last long, as Zach virtually vacuumed up most of the pepperoni. There was plenty of salad left, though. Unfortunately for me, it seemed to have some kind of anchovies mixed in, so I just stuck to the pizza. The perils of being vegetarian. But at least Maria and Jenna ate some of it.

As I was finishing the crust of the last slice of cheese, Jenna turned to the other two. “Look, you need to chill the fuck out. If our friend doesn’t want to come out, you shouldn’t pressure them. If they don’t want to talk about it, then just fucking drop the subject.”

“Sorry,” Zach said. “I don’t really know much about LGBT type stuff. I hope I didn’t do anything offensive or whatever.” He glanced over at me. I pretended I didn’t notice.

“I’m just trying to help!” Maria said. “I know the world in general puts a lot of pressure on people to be in the closet and to repress stuff and not transition. I just wanted to try and counterbalance some of that.”

Jenna sighed. “Look, I know you mean well, but–”

I found my mouth moving of its own accord. “Jenna, I appreciate you defending me, but I… didn’t really mind, honestly. It was embarrassing but… not entirely in a bad way? I don’t know if that makes sense.”

Maria raised her eyebrows. “Oh, so you’re a bottom. I should have known.”

“Damn, back to talking about tops,” Zach said. “Okay, sincerely, though, what terms should I be using for you? I feel like I can’t say dude now but I don’t know what I’m supposed to say. Also, I’ll still probably end up saying dude a bunch from force of habit, but I’ll try not to.”

I sighed. This really hadn’t been how I wanted to come out to people. I’d had an idea that I’d wait until I’d been on hormones for about a year and then have a big party where I wore a dress and makeup and blew everyone’s minds with how good I looked. I didn’t want people to see me trying and maybe failing to look like a girl before then. But at this point it seemed like the uh catgirl was pretty well out of the bag.

‘You can say she and her and girl. Stuff like that.” I mumbled.

“What was that?” Zach said. “You gotta speak up.”

“Girl!” I almost shouted.

There was a brief awkward silence.

“Is this technically a gender reveal?” Maria asked. “I don’t have any explosives on hand.”

“You two suck,” I said, but I was smiling. “You know what? Maybe I will borrow that suit after all.”