Nico & Tucker by Rachel Gold

Author:Rachel Gold [Gold, Rachel]
Language: eng
Format: epub
ISBN: 9781594935381
Google: escUvgAACAAJ
Amazon: B0714QKDXP
Goodreads: 32072937
Publisher: Bella Books
Published: 2017-05-16T03:00:00+00:00

Chapter Seventeen

Nico

I couldn’t sleep with Tucker down the hall. I wanted to crawl in bed with her. Or get her to crawl into mine. Not for anything intense, just to be close to each other. But I was scared.

Flirting I could do. Kissing I really liked. Relationships were so much harder. Not that I’d had a lot of them—only three. The one in junior high was for show. And another one almost didn’t count because I was in costume the whole time. I’d met her in costume and wore that same costume every time we got together.

Ella was the only relationship I’d had with someone who knew all about me. It was the easiest one and the hardest.

I’d met Ella during my first year of high school. Our moms met at a therapy center info session for parents of trans kids. Mom was there because there wasn’t a group for parents of kids with intersex traits. And I’d gone from presenting male to presenting female, so that was close enough.

Mom and Ella’s mom decided we should meet, but getting us together was dicey. How do you go to your trans daughter and say “I want you to meet this intersex kid whose mom is cool” without sounding like a giant meddler?

Mom took me to one of the big parties Ella’s mom was always having. With all the people around, Ella and I could hide from each other if we wanted. I went to the party plain-faced and butched up clothing-wise, wearing one of my brother’s old, ratty jeans jackets, cargo pants and boots.

At thirteen Ella was a tiny slip of a person. She had short hair and liked to wear layers: a T-shirt over a long-sleeved shirt with another shirt to go over that if she got chilly. She was hiding the fact that she didn’t have breasts. She looked like a sad elf who’d fallen out of her tree and gathered up a bunch of human clothes for security.

Before we got there, I wasn’t sure how I’d feel about meeting her. But the minute I saw her, I was taken with her broken little elf look.

“Hey, I’m Nehal but most people call me Nico,” I said and she introduced herself with her boy name, which I won’t repeat here because it’s not relevant to who she was or is.

We got awkward for two or three hours while we tried to figure out if we had anything to talk about other than gender. She liked reading books, hiking, historical dramas—boring stuff. I danced, I moved, I watched cartoons, I went to conventions in costumes, and when I wasn’t miserable, I collected friends like metal to a magnet.

We tried to talk and gave up. Tried again and failed.

I ended up in the basement rec room watching Doctor Who with a couple of the grad students from Ella’s mom’s department. Ella came down and sat with us.

“What is this even about?” she asked after a while, about the TV show.

“It’s about Rose,” I said.

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