Page 71 of The Comedown

“I owed you one.”

Our eyes meet in the mirror.

“Why’d you call that girl sunflower?”

“Sunflowers absorb radiation.”

Ah. “She has cancer.” Even though it’s not a question, he still nods.

I drop my eyes to my hands, scrubbing between my fingers.

“You lied.”

“Yeah, I do that a lot.”

“You said you don’t read. You didn’t go to college, you barely graduated high school.” During one of our late-night conversations, he told me he struggled in school but didn’t explain why. “If you don’t read, how do you know so much? Do you watch documentaries?”

His amused laugh bounces off the tiled walls.

“I look up stuff on my phone. One thing leads to another, then two hours later I’m learning about a horny lizard in Australia and sunflowers planted at Chernobyl.”

“That’s reading.”

“Okay, Poohbear.”

“Why do you refuse to give yourself credit? For anything?”

He looks up through his lashes, and I shake my head, telling him, “Besides your sexual…competence.”

“Competence,” he mocks, laughing. “Shit.”

“Seriously, you read, you play guitar, you sing, but you hide all of it. Why?”

“It’s not who they want me to be.” He shrugs, grabbing a paper towel.

“Who’s they?”

“Everybody.”

“Not everybody. I want you to be—”

“They want what they see, Collette, and what they see when they look at me is a rapper.”

They. The fans? Or his label? The ones managing his career and life by stuffing them both in the box he’s suffocating in.

Grabbing a paper towel myself, I turn off the faucet with it, then wait until his eyes return to mine.

“Because you told them to. You’re telling people what to see.”

He holds up his still-dripping hands, saying, “I lie.”

“It’s not our job to give people what they think they want. It’s our job to show them what they never realized they needed.”

“And what is it they need?”

“They need to see the narrative that people can only be one role, only check one box, to be silenced already. Rappers. Popstars. Professional athletes. Providers. Mothers. We all can, and should, be complex human beings, with feelings, and emotions, and a full range of what makes us us. Everybody’s allowed to have hobbies, interests, other talents, outside the role the general public sees. Just by escaping the confines we all feel on a daily basis and living authentically, you can show others that are currently hiding what might be the best part of themselves how to live authentically, too.”

“You’re indie. No one’s holding your reins.”