I'm Not A Girl, I Swear [Discontinued]

XLI

"Thad? Can we talk?"

He chuckled. "We can always talk. What's up?"

Nick sat next to him. "Um... It's about that friend of mine that I was telling you about. It's, um... They aren't really a friend of mine..."

"It's you," Thad finished softly. Nick looked up at him, eyes wide. But Thad was just giving him a soft, understanding smile. "I know."

"You don't care?" Nick asked, afraid.

"I care, yes, but I don't mind. We all love you. You can talk to us about anything, especially when you're feeling this way."

Nick looked down, embarrassed. "I, um, I forgot that I told you that bit. How come you didn't tell me you knew?"

"I knew the minute you started talking that it was about you. I didn't tell you that I knew because you were finally confiding in someone and I couldn't scare you away. You pretended it was a different person for a reason."

He nodded. "But... Before I started talking to you about it, could you tell? Was there... I don't know, something different about me?"

Thad paused. "If I'm being completely honest? No. Which, for me, is rare. But when you told me I started looking twice at you, noticing small things that I hadn't before. And I realized why I hadn't seen it before. Nick, the question for you isn't really that you think you're a girl, is it? The question is that you don't think you're a boy."

Nick thought it over, slowly nodding. "Yeah. That's- that sounds accurate."