I am nonbinary. I’m not trying to find my way. I’ve been there all along. It’s been other people who have made me question myself. Made me think I wasn’t exactly who I am. Others’ expectations and perceptions became my own. Well, fuck that. I just needed to realize that the journey is the destination.

That doesn’t mean I won’t feel masculine and refer to myself with masculine terms if they fit me at any given time. I am exactly who I am, someone who rejects binary labels because they simply don’t fit, like too-tight clothes that were never made for me. I let out an easy breath because Leila inadvertently made me realize that I don’t have to rationalize who I am. Not to her. Or anyone. Maybe not even to myself because I’m allowed to be a living, breathing contradiction, if that’s who I am.

She sighs. “It doesn’t matter.”

She’s right. It doesn’t matter … to her. It never will. And that has to be okay. I can’t make other people care. I’m not surprised she doesn’t want to know me beyond who she thinks I am. Once upon a time, I wanted more from her, but now I don’t. I’m done justifying my identity. I don’t owe her—or anyone—that conversation. Nobody is entitled to more of me than I want to give.

“So quick bright things come to confusion,” she says again. “And before you know it, the world you thought you knew is gone.”

“It feels like the end of the world—and I get that feeling because we’re both very dramatic people, and everything is our apocalypse. But it’s not the end of the world. You’re going to be fine, regardless of what I do or what your father says is ‘acceptable.’ You’re going to live.”

She doesn’t say anything at first. Then, she adds, “I wish I knew how it ends for us.”

It’s not an apology, nowhere near one. But I’m starting to think that I don’t need one.

“I don’t think the ending is important,” I say. “It’s what we do on the way there.”

She gazes out the window. “I think between the spring play, focusing on my one major—business—and now a minor in sculpting, I’ll be okay.”

“You will.” I teeter on my heels, ready to leave.

“So will you,” she says. “Are we good?” The way she looks at me with puppy-dog eyes, makes me think she wants more, something beyond an ending. A new page, another story. It’s the Leila Casablanca Method of indirectly asking if there’s a future for our friendship. In true Leila fashion, she’ll never just come out and say she misses me.