Chapter 8
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Friends.
Lukas
I want to kiss her. I want, very badly, to sweep Clara into my arms, say disastrously flirtatious things, and then kiss her while she’s a blushing mess. Exercise is supposed to burn the vibrating excess energy inside my body out, but when Clara’s around, every muscle in me only aches for her.
“So the god system makes no sense,” she’s saying, while I mindlessly complete reps I’ve lost count of, watch her lips move, record every word in my mind, and ignore the burn, “which I suppose—to the author’s credit—is realistic.
The real world has so many different belief systems, and they don’t make sense when they collide either, but I’m not trying to read a history book, Karen!
” Clara tosses her hand up with so much flair.
Friiick… She’s so cute. My breaths stutter a little—completely unrelated to whatever rep I’m on now.
She continues, melting me into nothingness as my great big ego makes way for her, her, her.
“I’m trying to pretend it’s possible for me to be chosen by a dragon in a fantasy world.
” Her fingers twist, twist, twist against the pretty blue cloth of her off-shoulder dress.
It’s frilled, and she keeps folding the frills like paper fans.
“Ultimately, your entire library is full of epics with world building so detailed it makes my brain hurt.”
I chuckle; my poor muscles sob. “Yeah, that sounds like Viktor.”
Her lashes flutter. “It’s Viktor’s library?”
“For the most part. What genre do you prefer? I’ll stock some shelves for you.”
Her face explodes crimson, and her head shakes as she releases her dress to splay her fingers, shaking them in full denial and rejection of my love and affection. “No, no. You’ve done so much for me already. I’m sorry. I wasn’t complaining. I like fantasy.”
“What do you prefer?” Careful to keep the weights I’m pumping from clanging, I raise the bar on the lat pulldown. “Romance?”
Her gaze drifts, then she shakes her head again.
“No, really, King. Please. I don’t even like thinking about everything you’ve already bought for me.
” She stands. “I shouldn’t even be down here right now.
I should be making you a protein shake, or a smoothie, something cool and refreshing for after your workout. ”
Yeah, or you could stop thinking it’s your “job” to be my chef, and instead just keep looking at me. “Sit down.”
Her rump returns to my weight bench, and I quell the delight that ripples through my sore muscles. I’m likely at least a hundred reps over what I intended, but I’m going to drag this workout on forever until I’m a puddle of pain and goo. Anything to keep her here, talking to me.
A dreadful thought occurs.
“Now…” Relinquishing the bar to begin a better keep her near me for longer scheme, I stretch my neck and lean forward. “…what kind of romance? Want me to take you to the bookstore? Let you pick anything you want?”
“I…couldn’t.”
“Don’t be selfish, cupcake.”
A spark of pain streaks through her eyes, and I immediately regret my word choice. Who’s been calling her selfish and meaning it? Who could possibly be that stupid? Clara is the least self-centered person I know.
“I’m sorry,” she whispers. “I don’t mean to be. I’m trying not to be.”
“No. I’m sorry, E-clair-a. I’m teasing. You’re not selfish at all. You’re trying to keep from taking more for yourself. But, consider, showering you with gifts makes me happy. Having you ask for things, hearing please, makes me very, very happy.”
Wary, she watches me, thoughts mulling, then she whispers something I don’t think she would have dared to just last week, when I was holding her to help her regulate during a panic attack.
This is progress. Her just being down here in my workout room and talking to me is progress.
It’s proof she’s starting to feel safer.
Safe enough to ask: “Is that because of your…attention cravings?”
Yep. Very much so. My desire to hear people say please is twisted.
It’s my control issues and my ego having an ugly baby.
When someone says please, it means I possess the ability to fulfill or deny their requests.
Placing a person’s fate in my hands is crippling in its allure.
I’m a power-starved mongrel, wishing it weren’t so morally fricked up to tie puppet strings to human beings and make them dance to my tunes.
I want to sing the world into my stupor.
I want to know I’m in power.
And that…is disgusting. Monstrous.
Something I don’t want to admit to.
When I don’t know how to respond, she looks elsewhere and throws up her hands to shake them some more. “Never mind! Forget I asked. I’m sorry. I don’t know what’s come over me.”
There’s something I can answer.
“Safety. You’re feeling more safe here. Speaking your mind is in the rules, cupcake.
You’re doing perfectly.” Resting back against my machine, I let my eyes close.
“I’m sorry I didn’t answer your question—it’s just that the answer didn’t feel pretty in my head.
I’m not proud of how self-centered I am, and I’m worried that you won’t like what you see if I let you see too much of the truth about me. ”
“Really?” she asks.
Keeping my eyes closed, I nod. “I’m painfully aware of how I am.
That is to say, I’m hyperaware of myself.
I scare myself. I don’t want to incite moments that lead to rejection.
Rejection…” My fist clenches against my leg.
“…that horrifies me. I want the assurance that if I bare all my terrible pieces, the person who sees them will adore them as much as I hate them. It’s why I’ve never been in a relationship with a woman. ”
Clara gasps, shocked. “You haven’t?”
I smile. “The media’s had a few misconceptions here and there, but no.
I haven’t ever actually been with someone or gone farther than what you see in my music videos.
I need the emotional depth first, something that suggests I’ll…
still be enough. Even when it becomes clear how repulsive I am.
” I free a tight breath. “I’ve never found someone who’s seemed able to love me as much as I need them to. ”
“You’re…ashamed of who you are?” The question stings with its truth, but Clara—sweet, wonderful Clara—doesn’t leave my poor ego without a tender pat. “You?”
Yeah, I want to say. I’m like my horrific, abusive parents, so of course I’m ashamed. Instead, I tuck that raw truth away, though, and murmur, “Isn’t everyone a little bit ashamed of themselves? Feels like a human condition to me.”
The fascination in her eyes when I finally find the strength to meet them causes my heart to stumble.
Soft, angelic, she reaches for my hand.
I commit the sensation to memory, etch it into the very cells that make me up. She has never reached for me before. This is the first time that she has touched me. Of her own volition. By her own choice.
And it accompanies her saying, “You’re very…odd, King…but I really treasure your mind.”
My brows rise.
She comes aware of herself and jerks away, taking my whole soul with her.
“I just… I mean… The way you think. The way you lay all of who you are out and challenge it, try to understand it. I don’t know what I’m doing most of the time.
It feels like everything inside me is spaghetti or static.
I can’t place many of my emotions or what any behaviors stem from.
Seeing how you can trace reasons and identify why’s…
it’s remarkable. I’ve always liked how you piece together songs and unfold human conditions with such clarity.
” She pushes her pretty hair over her ear as her cheeks tint. “It’s just…yeah.”
It’s just the result of massive amounts of overthinking, paired with parents whose main legacy to their children was you’re gonna need therapy.
The inability to get therapy without having that highly-stigmatized decision blasted around the world meant becoming self-aware through the use of online tools instead.
It’s less remarkable and more survival, I think.
But everyone manages their trauma differently.
“What sorts of things feel like spaghetti?” I ask. “Do you want to tell me about it on the way to the bookstore?”
Clara’s eyes widen, but since this woman is so unbelievably smart and fully understands the assignment after very little prompting, she says, “Yes, please.”
The monster in me revels. I beat it down with a stick. Rising, I skate my fingertips across the top of Clara’s head. “Thank you for honoring me with an opportunity to treasure you. Let me shower off, then we’ll go.”
?
“I think the biggest thing is that everything’s confusing. I feel stupid. All the time. And there’s nothing I can do about it,” the smartest woman I know says.
My grip on the wheel solidifies the longer Clara talks—in not so many words—about how she’s been gaslit and blamed and humiliated her entire life.
To her, people are just imperfect, so having her “imperfections” ridiculed and punished is normal, but—thank everything good—this horror she’s describing has not been normal.
For twenty days.
But, of course, that’s confusing. When you grow up in a world that’s unstable, you get used to it. When it changes, you aren’t so inclined to immediately believe it’s because the world you lived in was wrong; you instead do what you’ve been taught to: pin that wrongness on yourself.
She continues, “All my life, I’ve wished things would be more consistent.
Good or bad doesn’t matter, just the same.
If I’m stupid, can I be the same level of stupid?
All the time? And I know that’s stupid to ask for, because people change and grow, and that’s part of what makes people beautiful, but…
” She flattens her hands against her skirt.
“I don’t know. No one else makes me feel stupid at all in your home, King. Just…me.”