Addison

Me and my friends Iris and Leo usually ate lunch outside but today I convinced them to eat with me in the cafeteria. My reasoning for wanting to eat there definitely didn't have anything to do with my crush on Katlyn McLean, definitely.

"It smells bad in here." Iris complained

She was wearing a simple white sun dress patterned with pink flowers. Over it she wore a plain black cropped sweater. Her wavy light brown hair was loose with the front pieces pulled back to frame her face perfectly. Her skin was of course perfectly tanned from all the time she'd spent on the beach during summer break. Leo was like the exact opposite of her. His plain white shirt was covered in stains and his sweatshirt was even worse. He had spilled spots of paint in every color imaginable on his blue jeans. His bleach blonde hair with streaks of pink and blue was unruly and wild. His skin was pale as if he had never even seen the sun before. Despite being completely different, those two were best friends.

"All I can smell is your perfume." Leo teased

Iris kicked him lightly in the shin as we walked over to a table. I spotted Katlyn a little ways away standing near a girl I didn't know. They walked over and talked to a boy named Hunter who was in my orchestra class. His teal hair was bright compared to anyone else's in the cafeteria. As far as I knew he was the only person in the school with dyed hair.

"You should talk to her." Iris said, noticing me staring

"I can't, she'll just think I'm weird."

"Don't you have ELA with her?" Leo asked

"Yeah. But we sit on other sides of the room."

"You should talk to her anyway." Iris said "You've been watching her for months and still haven't spoken to her."

"Maybe" I shrugged

That was the end of the conversation. I didn't want to say more and they didn't want to push me. They talked for the rest of lunch while I sat in silence occasionally butting in to add something. Soon lunch was over and I headed to ELA. When I walked in the first thing I noticed was the board said 'NEW SEATS'. I checked the seating chart near the door and found my spot. Soon someone came and sat next to me. I glanced up to see none other than Katlyn McLean. She smiled at me as she sat down.

"I'm Katlyn but you can call me Kat." She said

"I'm Addison or Addie. What do those pins on your shirt mean?"

She was wearing two pins on her shirt in the shape of hearts. One was pink, yellow, and blue, the other was pink, white, purple, black, and blue.

"This one" She pointed to the one with three colors "Is the pansexual flag and this one" She pointed to the one with five colors "is the genderfluid flag. I'm both. Right now I'm male but sometimes I'm female or non-binary. If you don't know at any moment you can use they/them pronouns for me."

I realized I had been misgendering him this whole time and mentally kicked myself.

"It's cool that you wear your flags as pins. Maybe I should get a bi one."

We both laughed. His laugh was calm and floated through the air like a melody. I was definitely a little obsessed. We didn't talk the rest of class but occasionally he caught me glancing at him and vice versa. When class ended we waved goodbye to each other. I sat through my last class in a daze just thinking about his smile. When school finally ended I practically ran home and immediately pulled out my phone.