Chapter 15 #2
“Yeah.” He nodded, not looking like he was going to elaborate until I removed my hands from the keyboard and tucked them under my thighs in wait.
“I looked up to the guys who rode around all day on lawnmowers. It seemed fun. And I enjoyed being outside back then, so… it just felt right.”
“That’s… kind of cute,” I said after a few seconds of silence.
He scoffed. “Yeah, okay, Yara. Next question.”
“I’m not messing with you. I swear.”
“What about you?” He sounded more than ready to turn the attention away from himself. “What did little Yara want to be? Let me guess, Madam President?”
“That’s a little on the nose, don’t you think?” I asked, tone flat.
“I’m right, aren’t I?” He smiled when I hesitated.
“Cute,” he mimicked me. Or at least I thought he meant to mimic me. But there was a bit of softness in his tone that hinted at something honest.
“Okay, but it was only for like two years in elementary,” I defended. “The rest of the time I wanted to be an acrobat.”
“You were terrified of hurdles that one time Coach Connor asked you to try out for the track team,” David noted. “You refused to do the high jump.”
I frowned, surprised he remembered. “You were there?”
“I was on the team, Yara.”
“No, I know that,” I said. “I meant at that practice. I hardly ever remember you being around.”
“You’re not that observant, no,” he said as if I’d given him something to agree with.
My jaw clenched, but I continued. “Tell me about your folks.”
When putting this list together, I realized I hadn’t known a thing about David’s parents.
There had been some drama with him in his freshman year that led his parents to come on campus to pick him up.
I didn’t remember actually seeing them, though.
They were like the teacher in Charlie Brown, headless and speaking fluent gibberish.
“Next question,” he said.
I sighed. “David—”
“Next question,” he said more sternly.
I studied him, seeing hardness return to his eyes. This wasn’t a door I should even pretend to reach for and open.
“Fine,” I said in a low voice. “What do I say if someone brings it up?”
“You’re more creative than you think.” He took a couple more sips of his water.
Surely, I knew who his parents were at some point. Or someone from school had to. I made a mental list of people I was still in contact with from our high school and considered messaging the one with the most discretion.
“These questions are very… surface level,” he broke the silence.
“Isn’t the surface all that we could explore in the…” I made a show of looking at my watch. “An hour and a half since we started dating?”
“Just thought you’d have more hard-hitters.”
“Like?”
“Like my obvious OCD and your potential OCD,” he said. “We, for once, could be a matching set.”
I frowned. The plan had been to gloss over my most secret issue completely in exchange for the easier ones.
I’d rather talk about my poor art skills and my dreams of working somewhere with casual Mondays and a bring-your-dog-to-work policy.
Even my lack of a love life could be on the table—it was a bland meal, but we could pick at it, nonetheless.
The calories were still there. Besides, David usually derived pleasure from shoving food around his plate with no real goal other than to see how it’d hold up.
“Would you like to share your gritty details, or shall I go first?” I asked. When he gestured to me, my stomach turned. I shut my laptop and set it to the side.
“Whenever you’re ready,” he said after a couple of minutes of silence.
“I’m getting there,” I said. “Sorry, it’s taking me a bit to gather my thoughts on something I haven’t even spoken about with a therapist.”
His smile faded. “You don’t actually have to tell me anything. I mostly—”
“I don’t realize I’m doing it most of the time,” I interrupted.
Truth was, no matter how dark and scary this part of me felt, I did want to show it to someone.
Then I could make them agree I was some odd, twisted thing that needed to be looked at and fixed.
I didn’t always plan to hide the picking.
My family believed I stopped doing it after the school counselor in middle school sat me down and said, “You should stop. You’re messing up your beautiful hair.
” After that, I pretended that the pursuit of beauty was enough for me.
It had been for a while. But that was before the accident restarted the cycle.
Who better to tell than the guy who could only stand me in bite-sized pieces? David’s judgment would wash right over me because I’d developed skin that was repellent to his particular brand of analysis.
“One moment I’m thinking a million things at once, and the next I’ve started a new bald spot.
” I shrugged as if I told him I didn’t hand-wash my delicates (I did), or get my yearly checkup (bi-yearly, thank you very much).
“Once I start on the spot, I have to at least pluck three strands. More means better luck… fewer means I’m asking for trouble.
I need the luck so I don’t… fuck things up more than I already have. ”
David nodded, understanding. My stomach was contending with a full-on storm as I tried to read his expression. Admitting fault had me ready to run for the door. I could hide in a closet for the rest of the semester and still want to throw up from how sick inadequacy made me.
“Is a therapist on the agenda?” he asked, gaze never leaving mine. I waited for the joke, the teasing. But all that existed was a sober curiosity.
“Is a therapist on your agenda?” I shot back.
He blinked, unfazed by the hard retort. I’d snapped us back into place, away from this open and warm back and forth that almost felt nice. Could have felt nice if I weren’t so prone to ruining a good thing before it began.
“Here I was, thinking you were handling this so well.” David sighed, disappointed.
My fingers curled into a fist. “I am.”
“How convinced are you really?” he asked. “Are you the kind of person who tries to bring things into existence by sheer belief?”
“Are you asking if I believe in manifestation?”
“Sure, whatever you want to call it.”
I frowned, knowing this was a set-up, but stepping forward anyway. “Yes, I believe that the words we speak—most of all to ourselves— are powerful. You?”
He smiled. “Definitely.”
David’s response was cold water poured down my top in the dead of winter.
“Really?” I asked, confused about where this thread would lead. Surely not us agreeing for once in our lives.
“I’ve spent more than half my life trying to mold my body into a perfect machine for a sport that can and will leave me with permanent brain damage,” he said. “Of course, I believe in positive self-talk. There’s no escaping the mind when it’s the only thing left to keep you company.”
“How astute,” I mused. “Why then? Why do you play a sport that kills the mind?”
He smiled and offered me a one-shoulder shrug. “It’s fun.”
“Fun?” I asked, unconvinced it could be so simple.
“Yes, have you tried that before?”
I sighed and reopened my laptop, typing out how he found the risk of football worth it because of “fun.”
“I think I have enough to convince my family we’re semi-involved,” I decided.
“You sure?” He tilted his head to the side. The softness of his eyes almost showed disappointment. Had he meant to get more out of me? Did he think he’d somehow coax my anxious tics out in the open to be dissected by his icy fingers?
“Positive.” I slipped my laptop into my bag. “Or, at least, for the first event next weekend. It’s dinner at my parents’ place. Business casual. Don’t wear gray.”
“What?”
“Business casual. Don’t wear gray,” I repeated. “My mom hates gray. It’s a bad omen in our house.”
David chuckled and shook his head. “God, what have I gotten myself into?”