I’m currently braless and wearing pajama shorts, so he must have incredibly low standards for restaurant attire.
I return to my room and emerge in a pair of jogging shorts and a T-shirt, with just enough makeup on my face that if one of Thomas’s superfans spies me, there won’t be an online discussion about how bad I look in real life.
Okay, there might be anyway. The truth and what is said about me in Thomas’s comments are two circles in a Venn diagram that rarely overlap.
Elijah groans as he rises. “That should have taken two minutes and took twenty instead. Why can you not leave the house without acting like you’re heading to prom?”
I snatch my phone off the counter. “Because people will talk, Elijah. Jesus, are you ever gonna let this go? I have a well-known boyfriend with a fanatical following, and theyliveto talk shit about me. They comment on my hair, my clothes, my body, my expressions. They discuss plastic surgery they’re certain I had and plastic surgery they think I need—mostly they think if Thomas loved me he’d have bought me implants. So yeah, I’m careful when I leave the house because God knows what they’ll say if I’mnot.”
Elijah sighs, holding the door for me. “The old Easton wouldn’t have cared what a bunch of idiots said.”
The old Easton didn’t care because it was only your opinion that mattered to her, Elijah, but it turned out you didn’t like her either, remember?
I was more certain of myself when I was younger, but that’s because the three people I loved the most all seemed to like me just the way I was.
We wander down the street to a cute little café set on the first floor of an old house. We are seated on the front porch, where the whirring ceiling fans overhead don’t do much to dispel the heat. I’d still prefer to be outside than in, however—I probably should have adapted to the cooler temperatures in Boston, but I really haven’t. Even on a day when everyone else is talking about how nice it is outside, I’m longing for just a bit of the South’s oppressive summer heat. And I’m over Boston’s winter before it’s even begun.
Our coffee is delivered in oversized glass carafes that are scalding hot when we try to pour them into our cups. The waitress is openly eye-fucking Elijah, and though I can’t blame her—even with his second-day scruff and his wrinkled shorts, he’s unbearably attractive—I frown at her anyway.
I order avocado toast, though I really want pancakes and he orders two breakfasts for himself...one of them the very pancakes I’m not letting myself have.
“You know,” he says, once our waitress has departed, “your ex isn’tthatfamous. He has a dumb show on Netflix and that’s it.”
I glance up from my coffee. “What’s your point?”
“My point is that it’s really fucking unlikely that anyone’s going to recognize you or that they’d care if they did.”
He isn’t wrong. Thomas’s following seems huge to me because it’s huge compared to mine. And yeah...he gets recognized on campus and at medical conferences and increasingly at restaurants, but it’s not as if he’s got teenage girls screaming his name outside a hotel or throwing bras at him as he heads to work. And I’ve appeared on his show only a few times, a minute or two in a couple one-hour episodes, but even then Iwas only in the periphery. There are very, very few people who’d recognize me on my own.
And yet.
“How many people do I need to hear talking shit about my appearance before it’s allowed to make me self-conscious?” I ask. “How many times would you personally be able to stand hearing you’re too boring or low-class for your partner before you started making some changes?”
His mouth presses tight. “The world is full of people who lack half your intellect. Why listen?”
“I don’t know,” I reply, though it’s not entirely true. I grew up without access to the same shit everyone around me did. My years of college and grad school have been a continual reminder of that fact. When I don’t know what fork to use, when I don’t know that Montauk is part of the Hamptons, or I pronounceLouboutinwrong...it feels as if I can’t trust my own judgment about anything.
“I’d just rather not hear about it, if I can,” I explain.
“Then don’t,” he says. “You don’t need a public profile, do you? Shut it down or set it up so only friends can comment. You’re allowed to protect yourself, even from stuff that shouldn’t make an impact.”
My mouth opens to tell him that those comments mostly appear on Thomas’s posts, not mine, but then he’s going to ask why Thomas is not blocking those comments. Which makes Thomas, again, sound like a prick, when he is not—he gets comments too, comments he sometimes actually listens to. Like he shaved his beard after he heard about it enough and got a slightly hipper wardrobe.
He’s keeping a lot of balls in the air and one of them is me. Orwasme, anyway. And he was only holding me to the same standards he holds himself to: no alcohol, vigilant sunscreen use, healthy food, a disciplined bedtime. It’s irritating, however,that he did his best to turn me into a TV-appropriate wife who’d age well when it appears what he wants is a hot but short-lived mistress instead.
Our food is delivered and Elijah dumps half his pancakes onto a small plate and slides them my way. “There’s no way you only wanted avocado toast,” he says.
I would like to argue, but they’re covered in strawberries and pecans and, well, fuck it.
If Thomas isn’t holding himself to a single one of his standards, why should I?
As we eat, Elijah responds to work texts and I respond to his sister, who’s asking how the trip is going.
Last night your grandmother said I’m not as pretty as I think I am, that I’m only after Thomas for his money, and then she asked about my dad’s drinking.
Kelsey
You’re not going to call 911 for her, are you? That’s totally fair.
