“We can report the agents,” Wyatt says.

“What agents?” He doesn’t know what he’s talking about. “It won’t do anything.”

“I am sorry, Neil.”

“Stop apologizing. Just stop talking about it, please.” I don’t need his apology.

“I just didn’t think they’d be such assholes about …”

“About me being trans?” I finish for him. “Yeah, welcome to my world.”

I stand up.

“Where are you going?”

“To get some breakfast,” I say. “You stay here with our stuff.”

Wyatt looks like he wants to say something else, but I don’t give him the chance. I just start walking, finding the nearest Starbucks. I get it; he didn’t know that that would happen. Hell, I didn’t realize it would be that bad, even though when I first started looking up information about transitioning, there were whole articles written by trans people about their awful experiences in something as simple as the TSA line, or when they were getting food or shopping for clothes in the men’s section over the women’s.

But Wyatt doesn’t get it. He’s cis; he’s never had to deal with this. And the last thing I want is some cis dude breathing down my neck, making a big deal about apologizing so he isn’t contributing to the problem or whatever’s running through that frizzy blond head of his.

I just wish Wyatt would stop apologizing and stop trying to get me to fight back. That never does anything.

I’m just one person; what can I do?

I also know he didn’t mean anything by it. He’s just trying to help.

I peer over the crowd behind me, staring at the way he’s sitting there. He looks sad, and suddenly I feel bad for calling him out. And not the kind of bad I felt when I was figuring out the trans stuff, scared of correcting people on my pronouns, making them feel uncomfortable even though they’d made me feel worse by misgendering me. I know what happened isn’t Fowler’s fault. And I shouldn’t assume that he’s fucking up just because he’s cis.

That doesn’t mean he’s any less annoying, though.

Always getting high grades, correcting my French when I’m studying out loud, doing his homework and class projects like the perfect little student. I doubt he knows what it’s like to disappoint his parents, who probably love him, who don’t have a problem with him being queer because they are too. Wyatt’s grown up only knowing that queerness is natural and not something surgical that’s talked about like a disease with a cure.

I wonder if he knows just how lucky he is.