And looks away.
I could ask my mom to leave.
But something Claire said is sticking with me.I don’t want to be easy. I want to know I’m worth fighting for.
I love my parents. They drive me bonkers sometimes, but I love them.
And I am head over heels for Theo. I don’twantto be.
Unfortunately, I can’t help myself.
He’s everything I’ve been missing in my life and so much more.
But I don’t want to beeasy. I don’t want to bend over backward to make everyone else comfortable. I want to know I’m worth fighting for.
I want to know if he’s willing to fight.
Will I fight for him?
Completely. Absolutely. Without hesitation.
Buthe walked away.
He walked away without giving me a chance to prove it to him.
If this is nothing more than neighborly guilt or neighborly kindness bringing him by, if he’s not all in, then what’s the point of fighting for him?
No matter how much it hurts?
You can’t make someone love you.
“I started on a dare.” His words come out so quietly that they almost don’t register at first. “It—it was dumb. The dare. The dare was dumb. And it got dumber the drunker I got. But I said I’d do it, so I signed up and posted a video of me knitting a heart, naked, while ripping off something I’d heard some radio deejay say about the double standard of having to be nice to extended family at the holidays while they insult your clothes and your car and your job.”
I saw that video.
It made me mad.
Mostly because I grew up going to those family holiday dinners and hating them, and I felt like he was talking about me. About what my parents used to deal with anytime we’d see my mom’s side of the family down in Denver.
“I didn’t think I’d get five followers, but people started talking about it in some corners of the internet, and next thing I knew, I had two hundred. So I posted another video. Same setup. Knitting a heart, dick hanging out, talking about finding where you fit after years of being a perpetual disappointment.”
My heart hurts.
I saw that video too.
Last night, actually.
I should’ve calledanyoneother than Sabrina to sit with me at the hospital.
She made me watch more of them.
I was just high enough on the painkillers to not fight her and just sober enough to remember.
“Then the comments started coming,” he continues. “You see me.Thank you.I needed to hear that today. And for the first time in my life, I was doing something that mattered. Somethinggood. There were women who told me they were leaving their husbands after years of abuse and neglect becauseIconvinced them they deserved love. There were women who told me they were taking the leap and going back to school. Starting a new job. Setting boundaries with bosses and kids and parents. There were dudes who told me I’d inspired them to come out to their families and live their truth. And it kept growing. And growing. And then the money came, and then the paranoia came, and everything kept growing. I kept working construction so nobody would ask why I didn’t have a job and Emma wouldn’t worry about how I was supporting myself until I asked her to do my taxes and had to tell her. I quit knowing who to trust and how to act and if the women who hit on me in bars saw the real me and liked it, or if they somehow secretly knew about my GrippaPeen channel. If they recognized my tattoos or my voice. I was so fucking glad I didn’t put my face on the screen and still paranoid that—”
“That they’d only like you for your money,” my mom interjects.
Theo and I both jolt.
