Eventually, Ryan just bit the bullet and came out. No one seemed too surprised, and most people found it extremely unthreatening. Despite how outgoing he might be, no one but his closest friends knew a whole lot about Ryan. If you could be both flamboyant and reserved, that was him.
The lack of reaction was refreshing, as was his newfound freedom from girls getting crushes on him. Kelsi, the drama club's pianist, quit looking at him too long. That one cheerleader with the pointy nose who looked like a bird didn't ask him how his night was every morning in homeroom anymore. And some senior with a .001% body fat ratio winked at him once in a while. Ryan didn't wink back, but he would smile, because hey, it was nice to finally be noticed by someone you'd potentially be attracted to.
The one person Ryan really, really wanted to react hadn't said a word. Chad talked to him as much as he had before and acted as though nothing had changed. If it were anyone else, that'd be great. But he wanted Chad to ... well, he didn't know, exactly. Congratulate him? Hug him? Maybe tackle him and admit his feelings? Ryan knew Chad didn't have any of those. At least, he didn't have any of those for Ryan. It still seemed that Chad wasn't interested in anyone. Still no girlfriends or discussion of crushes in the locker room or, well, anything.
One day, Chad finally took Ryan aside and said something.
"So, dude, I don't know if you've noticed, but no one's been talking about girls around you here." They were in the locker room. They'd both straggled, maybe out of pure laziness, maybe, Ryan hoped, out of more than that.
"Yeah, I did, actually," Ryan said. "Could you go ahead and tell them that they can talk about girls in front of me? It's not like I'm disgusted. I mean, think about it. It doesn't gross you out if a girl talks about a guy, does it?"
"No."
"So why should it bother me if you talk about girls?" Ryan paused. "One thing, though. If you could all continue avoiding talking about my sister..."
Chad laughed. "Sure thing, man."
From there on in, Chad smiled at Ryan more, said hi to him more, generally acknowledged that he existed more. Ryan wasn't sure what exactly had changed, and why that conversation had caused it. But he didn't really care, considering that Chad was now almost his friend, or something like that. Maybe eventually they'd be real friends, then good friends, and then what? The possibilities were ... well, Ryan thought, they still weren't really possibilities at all. But it did give him something nice to think about the next time he took his pants off.