It Will All Work Out (Intersex gxg)

Chapter 30

"I think you hit your height limit," Kate said as she measured me in the gym. "You've been 5'3" since last summer, but you've put on a lot of muscle. Depending on what body type you want, you could switch things up now for more flexibility and endurance or keep putting on muscle."

"What do you think I should do?" I thought about all the work I'd been doing at home and here in the gym, and was glad that had really paid off, but I wasn't sure what my goal was any more. Defending against Nicky seemed like something I should already be past.

She gave me a smile and a shrug. "I can't answer that. When you first started here you said you wanted to be like that girl you were crushing on. She was in great shape and confident. I think we still need to work on your confidence, though you're getting there, but you're certainly in the kind of shape that would make a lot of people jealous. Amy says you're her best student in kickboxing, and your body fat looks to be right where you want it." she pointed to my boobs as she joked. "Seriously, the confidence will come, but the rest I think you met your goals on."

She was probably right about that, but I did feel like the confidence was coming. Things may not have worked out with Shay, but dating Maddie was making me feel warm in the dead of winter. Our New Year's Eve had turned out wonderfully, as I gave her the overdue plushie from Christmas, and she gave me a pair of warm pink pajamas. It ended with us spending the night in her full-sized bed, snuggled up under the blankets and sharing a lot of kisses. We never went any further than that, with both of us admitting that it was too fast. This was really our second date, and we were both 15, so we knew we had time.

And yet just spending time with her made me happy, and that certainly helped with the confidence. I knew Shay would be graduating this year, but she hadn't had to do anything to protect me in a while, and I felt good about doing that on my own now. The bullies had never been too physical anyway, other than the stupid water incident, so avoiding them was still the best solution. They weren't going to try anything in the library when I was right next to the librarian, and Maddie would be near me for that too. They might try things in the hallways, but that would all be on some of the security cameras, so they would have to be creative out of school like how they screwed with me and Shay.

Yeah, I still wondered what might have happened had she just trusted me to know, and not gone and been with that other girl, but that didn't matter anymore. Maybe my confidence would already be there, or maybe we would have broken up in another way. I guess I'd never know though. That ship had been torpedoed by conniving bitches and stupid mistakes.

But with Maddie, things were easy. There was no Nicky or Lynn with their comments, no Leigh and her looks, and no gaggle of others to giggle at the bullshit jokes. There was just Maddie and I, and that was fine. She didn't have any tight friends, she was still working on that, but a couple of her freshman classmates would occasionally join us in the library. We didn't have a lot of classes near each other, but before and after lunch I was able to walk with her, hand in hand, with no worries. I saw Shay on a couple of those walks, and the look on her face was heartbreaking, but I couldn't do much about it. She'd hurt me twice before, and Maddie was healing my heart every day.

I was still sticking with my plan to ask her to be my girlfriend on Valentine's Day, cliches be damned, because it was the perfect time. By the time the day rolled around, we'd had two more dates. Once, we spent a Saturday at her place again, though this time we made our own pizzas. That turned out to be both silly and tasty, as we made crazy designs with the toppings before baking. The second time we went out to the movies just to check out the latest marvel movie and stuffed ourselves on popcorn.

The day before Valentine's Day, I got half a dozen of the Crumbl Cookies in assorted flavors, and another plushie, this one a pink bunny. I had them all in my backpack when I made it to the bus stop, where Shay once more kept her distance while looking at me with downcast eyes. I hated the way things were between us, because every time I saw her, my heart still thumped, and it hurt. I just hoped It would be better once she graduated and she was around me less. I didn't know how I could be her friend while still feeling like that. I wanted to, I missed her, but I was terrified to allow her back into my life.