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I rested my forearms on the head of his seat and leaned into my hip. “Are you calling me mean?”
“Are you saying you want to be around me?”
I scoffed, denying him an answer to that as each of us took a moment before the next rotation. “Don’t you ever feel guilty for being the one who always fucks up?” I picked at my lip with my thumb and pointer, thinking back on all the times my poor life decisions caused Jonah pain.
He stared at the ground for a while, his thick lashes shielding his blinking eyes. “I feel muscular fatigue” was his delayed answer.
I puffed a non-laugh through my nose. Guilt was a feeling that coursed through me often, though I hardly gave it any attention. Generally, I felt rage, disappointment, and utter confusion. But as I worked through those sensations, they began to turn on me. I let a lot of things happen to me. I handled situations incorrectly. I let myself be someone I wasn’t proud of. Someone I wouldn’t have liked if I met her. I constantly admired the people around me, wishing I could be more like them instead of simply being more like them. How could I have failed myself as such?
“I don’t think Thalia ever feels like she’s not good enough,” Aaron continued. “She’s not the type to create problems, she just has a low tolerance for stupidity. Nothing is haunting either of them.”
“Lucky them.”
Aaron shook his head. “No. Because people like that take over a year to get what they want.”
“But maybe waiting is a good thing. Maybe both of them need to be ready so they don’t fuck up like we have. People like us, who are never ready or settled, cause pain for the people who love us. Don’t we?”
We caught eyes once again in the mirror, and it was the first time I’d ever seen a hint of softness in his dark gaze. He thought for a moment before standing from his seat. “All right, Professor K. It’s just a lame crush. We don’t need to get all philosophical.”
I slumped back down on the bench, staring at our two friends happily rotating. Perhaps waiting was a good thing. Perhaps time was precisely what allowed me to be someone other than who I’d been. Perhaps it would let me become a worthy person.
???
Jonah picked me up from the gym, and I asked him if he wouldn’t mind walking home in silence so I could think. Of course, he didn’t mind, and he let me loop my arm through his so I could zone out as we traveled. Mere seconds in, I had completely spaced. He kept me going in the right direction and tugged at me so I wouldn’t hit any obstructions.
I liked Aaron. We had a lot in common already, and that wasn’t something I could often say. Sure, I often met nice people. That wasn’t so mind-blowing to me. What really surprised me, what really made me wonder, was when I met people and got the sensation that they just knew. They just got it. For some reason or another, this stranger was already on my team and always had been.
But he reminded me of things I didn’t really want to remember, too. Had I met him five years before, we probably would’ve been the Bonnie and Clyde of Madrid, running around and stealing pussy from every person we met, drowning our united consciousness in alcohol and tongue strokes. Perhaps it would’ve saved me from hiding behind Javi, but it would’ve destroyed me just the same.
Aaron’s attitude about relationships bothered me. Not in the sense that he was personally offending me, though I was offended. He wasn’t taking home someone new every night or anything like that, but he did tell stories from his past from time to time, and he often made jokes about “chicks loving him.” It kind of made me feel like I was left out of some larger culture because I wasn’t dating around.
I enjoyed talking to Aaron. I enjoyed looking in the mirror. It’s just that casual sex and chatting with strangers didn’t soothe me as it allegedly did him. Touch didn’t make me forget; it made everything worse. It made me jump. Not because I was afraid of it, but because my body locked up to prepare to endure whatever was coming. I hadn’t been able to find a safe place for closeness in a long, long time. But I wanted to. Now, after years, I found myself wanting to.
“Careful,” Jonah said quietly, wrapping his far arm around my torso. He tugged me toward him lightly, helping me avoid a chipped piece of sidewalk.
My attention dragged to him. He smiled at me once before looking ahead of us without another word. Jonah had never made me feel guilty, nor had he made me feel like my mistakes defined me. And he definitely didn’t make me feel left out of the dating scene. If anything, I felt like a freaking guru compared to him. He was simply there, to allow me to fuck up, to act as a sounding board, to act as comfort.
“Do you think I’m bad?” I asked.
His eyebrows ticked inwards. “Bad?”
“Do you think I mess things up?”
“No.” He looked at me. “I think you’re passive, and that’s not a secret to you. I think you’re very good at processing your feelings when things go wrong, but you don’t always put up boundaries so...things go wrong.”
I cocked my head to one side. I’d never really thought about it like that. “And in being that way, I hurt you.”
He looked back down at the sidewalk as he stepped. “Why are you asking about this?”
I explained my conversation with Aaron, and how my past sometimes felt like a block to my future. He rolled his eyes when I told him that Aaron had fully adopted his torment and simply lived in it instead of breaking out of it. I even told him some things I’d done during my relationship with Javi, which I’d kept as a secret with myself for years. The time I got blackout drunk and kissed someone else at the club, sparking a pang of guilt that chewed on my insides. How I would tell him I was going to sleep and put my phone on airplane mode so I could hang out with the girls with no distractions. All the iniquitous little lies that had devoured me and made me wonder if I’d ever be good or healthy enough to maintain a real relationship, or if I’d fuck it all up because I never let myself learn how to face up to things and let go of that which was hurting me.
“Is that why you’ve been alone for so long?” he asked.
“Yes.” The pressure around me caused me to act in false ways in the past, and eventually, I lost myself. So, I remained alone though not really processing any of it, not needing to process it because I hid so well.
“I see it in your eyes sometimes.” I whipped my head to face him. What ever could that mean? He shrugged. “Sometimes you look like you’re not even in there. Like it’s just...emptiness. Almost like you believe your sole purpose is to stay quiet and react to the people around you, but never to speak up.”
I scrunched my nose. “Thanks, Jonah. That made me feel better.” Not.
