A moment of what the fuck am I doing here??
Why in the actual hell am I kicking back beers with Chad? Why am I pretending that any of this is okay? I can’t fathom a single reason why I’m not screaming at his face, blaming him for years of insecurity, tears, and self-embittering.
If I had any sense, I’d be storming out of his life for good.
Is it just because he’s hot?
Is that really it? Am I seriously that shallow and desperate of a person, to so hungrily crave the attention of someone as visually gutting and gorgeous as Chad is?
How can I have given in to him so quickly and compromised my own beliefs? My years upon years of rebuilding up my self-confidence after my childhood?
How can I so obliviously let go of what he did to me?
I thought I grew up over the years. I thought I made my peace.
I thought this reunion would strengthen my resolves, show my old hometown how far I’ve come, and bid farewell to it all.
And here I am instead.
Voluntarily standing in my high school bully’s house.
Over a counter covered in beauty products.
As if my mood couldn’t sour any further, my eyes catch sight of a photograph pinned to the wall by the mirror. I lean over the counter to get a better look at it, curious. In the photograph, Chad is huddled up with a bunch of his wrestling buddies.
I quickly realize it’s a prom photo, all of them dressed up in tuxes and bowties. I recognize Robby and Owen on either side of Chad. This picture was taken ten years ago during our senior year. Their eighteen-year-old faces stare back at me, blissful and ready to take on the world.
My face tightens. I don’t in any way share the bliss on their bright, youthful faces.
I didn’t go to my prom.
I didn’t go for a number of reasons.
Chad was one of them.
I zero in on his face in the photograph. The look in his eyes. His bright blue, infinite eyes.
Something in his eyes makes me angry.
Is it that he looked happy?
My friend Salvador has seldom had anything wise or profound to say to me, in all the years I’ve known him. But one time, when I was feeling particularly down about a terrible runway show I just suffered where everything went wrong, Salvador sat me down and put an arm around my back. He told me that everyone fails now and then. Even the greatest designers can be the most insecure, fragile people in the world. They seem strong and confident, but you just have to look in their eyes long enough to see the truth.
Look long enough, and you’ll notice the scars.
Not the kind of scars on your body that anyone can notice.
You see the invisible scars.
Emotional ones. Devastating doubts. Their worst anguishes and humiliations, which cut them deep. The failures they couldn’t avoid. Shattered hopes. Criticisms that marked them forever. You see it all, and you see them as clearly as gaping flesh wounds.
Everyone has them.
You just have to stare long enough.
Why this prom photo is pinned here to the wall in the bathroom, I have no idea.
But the longer I stare into Chad’s blissful, happy eyes, the more I’m convinced of one thing.
This wrestler boy has no remorse.
Salvador is wrong.
To feign having been in here for a purpose, I flush the toilet, then rinse and dry my hands before letting myself out. Steeled with conviction, I come down the hall into the living room.
What I find is Chad turned away from me.
With his shirt off and hanging from his hands.
And his tight, jean-clad buns facing me.
My heart flies up into my throat as I stare at his exposed back, chiseled with muscle and gleaming in the soft amber lighting from nearby lamps. A sharp and spiky tribal tattoo climbs up his back and spills over his right shoulder, like some ancient creature that’s perched there. A bunch of Old English letters trace down his side, which I don’t bother to note what they spell.
Chad peeks over his shoulder, spots me, then grunts as he gives his shirt a shaking. “There’s some damned loose thread or somethin’ that’s ticklin’ my armpit.” He turns his shirt inside-out and keeps examining it. “Can’t find the damned thing.”
I continue to stare at him, internally drool, and do just about everything in the book save dropping my jaw clean to the floor.
I’ve literally forgotten the photo in the bathroom.
What photo?
Growling at his shirt, he half-turns his body toward me, then continues to search for the loose thread.
My eyes take a vacation for two down his gorgeous spread of chest muscles—two proud, tightened pecs that sit atop a smooth, cascading mountain of abs. That vacation ends and a whole new one begins when my eyes visit the brown-belted waist of his jeans, where that sculpted V of muscle points like an arrow down to the goods in those tight jeans.