“Sometimes, but it’s stupid.” He’s seen enough unfiltered Matthew Prince for one night. I can’t risk him learning more about me than even my closest friends know. Yet he doesn’t drop it.
“I’m sure it’s not stupid.” His voice is gentle for once. “Tell me about it.”
Nobody has ever sat with me like this before, spoken to me like I’m a person when my mental health springs out of control. At least not someone I don’t pay for that express purpose.
Flashes of my first anxiety attack come upon me.
During a particularly important book conference Mom dragged me to, an inflammatory reporter asked me if I ever felt neglected by my parents like the young, dragon-obsessed prince character, Quigley, in Mom’s books. I knew the honest answer was yes, but how could I say that? I was eleven or twelve. I was basically one giant, insecure pimple in the public eye. I didn’t want to cause a problem or a scene, but I also didn’t want to lie. So I froze up.Bad.
Mom didn’t even flinch. She had Sarah Pearson bring me back up to the hotel room, put on a Pixar movie, and order me strawberry ice cream from room service. I thought,Well, at least Sarah is here. I’m not totally alone. As soon as she tipped the bellboy, she was back out on the conference floor.
It took an hour for my heart rate to settle again. I had no idea what was happening. I thought I was dying in some sad hotel in Tampa. When we returned to the city, Monday morning Mom marched me into the office of the nearest child psychologist without a word about what had happened. It was both the right thing to do and the wrong way to handle it.
We’ve never talked about it. It’s the silent expense nobody brings up.
“You still with me?” Hector’s question calls me back to the moment. When I readjust, I find my breathing is less labored, giving me the leeway to be vulnerable without overthinking.
“I plan a fake event in my head. Something silly to get my mind moving.” Already I’m overcome with a color scheme: millennial pink and natural green. A soundtrack of new-age music, lots of lilting flutes and ambient sounds. “Whispers only, please” whittled into light wooden signs.
The right corner of Hector’s lips threatens a smile. If I train my eyes right there, right on those twitching micro-muscles attempting to turn up, I can stay locked into the present. “What kind of event are you planning right now?” There’s genuine, surprising curiosity in the question, which prompts a free flow of frilly ideas.
“A Self-Care Slumber Party with complimentary kimonos and cozy slippers.” Just saying this out loud feels like dropping into a hot spring, worries floating away on the wisps of steam. “Maybe a screening room showing sweet, low-angst romantic comedies.” His smile forms fully. “Complimentary spa treatments, of course.”
“The kind with cucumbers over the eyes?” Hector asks, playfully but not teasingly. “I’ve never gotten one of those, but I’ve always wanted to. Though to be honest, dude, I think I’d be too tempted to eat them.”
“Obviously there’d be cucumbers, both for eating and eyes.” He seems pleased by this answer. “We’d offer 24-carat gold facials, milk baths, and sound therapy with Tibetan singing bowls for energy healing.”
“Sounds…luxurious.” He says it with an almost British accent so it comes out likelux-jour-e-us. I pause to figure him out for a second. For once, I can tell he’s not mocking me. And when I realize that, he succeeds at making me laugh by saying it again, only with a worse accent, which softens me.
I decide to meet him where I’m at because he’s already doing ten times more than any friend of mine ever has.
Even if my vulnerability ends up being entirely misplaced, I need him to keep looking at me like that and listening to me this way because it’s reassuring and nothing like what I’d expect from him.
“It would be verylux-jour-e-us, bringing the world’s best treatments to one place for a serene evening.” Imagining myself at said event does wonders for my internal temperature and my chaotic brain. Stasis comes, slowly but surely. “At the end of the night, everyone could retire to their own personal sleeping pod for heavenly rest after all that sweet rejuvenation.” A yawn tickles my upper lip at the thought of sleep.
Hector laughs, but not at me this time. Not completely. It’s almost as if he thought this exercise was cute, that my yawn was puppy-in-a-TikTok adorable. “It’s not a special sleeping pod, but there is a bottom bunk downstairs waiting for you.” With a twist of his wrist, he checks his watch and uses his phone to clock out on his RideShare app. “We should probably get to bed.”
I agree, and when I go to grab my suitcases from the trunk, he stops me. “You go ahead. I’ll get them.” His smile falters. “Should probably work for that fifty from yesterday, right?”
My body seizes. “I, uh, yeah, about that…” Guilt gnaws at me. I’m not one for apologies. Forever, my parents have instilled in me that sayingI’m sorryis a bad habit that loses you the upper hand in business negotiations. I remind myself that they’re not here and that thisisn’ta business negotiation. This is just two people in a unique situation making amends for two days of bad, rash decisions. My mouth morphs around the unfamiliar syllables. “I’m sor…sorry. I shouldn’t have acted so rudely when I arrived.” I cast my face away so he can’t see how hard I had to work just to say that.
“Thanks.” He breaks for a beat. “Same. I said some shitty things.” He flicks the zipper on the pocket of his coat. Its tinkle sounds like sleigh bells. “It’s just you waltzed in here like you owned the place. Like you were better than me. You’re not entitled to more than me just because you have money.”
There’s a long-lived pain lodged in that truth begging to be excavated. It’s for that reason that I don’t make any more mention of his terse assessment of my outfit before that first handshake. I’m sure he has his reasons for remaining guarded around someone new. I didn’t give him a chance to show me his true self. Instead, I filled in his Mad Libs blanks and, right now, I realize I may have chosen all the wrong adjectives.
Isn’t that my biggest pet peeve—people judging me before they get to know me? I know it’s not the same in any regard, but have I been doing the same to others all along without realizing it? And if so, does that make me a bad person?
Being here is all the answer I need to that question.
“But that’s not an excuse. I took my anger too far just now.” Hector juts his chin toward the car. “I’m not a dick, not usually… I promise.”
It’s hard to pinpoint exactly when I started playing into the tabloid poster-child persona. The one I cultivated over the last few years after stumbling out of the right spots and into the wrong arms. How long have I been breezing through life, offending people for sport? “Take it from someone whoisa dick usually.” I let out a self-deprecating laugh that sounds sadder than I mean it to. “I can tell you’re not.”
Judging by how Hector talked me down just now, helped me find my calm, I have to believe he’s telling the truth. That the Hector I first met was a fluke born of my abrupt, blustery arrival. I do have a tendency to roll in like a hurricane, careless of my own destruction.
“I’m going to try to do better,” I declare. “About my dickishness, I mean.”
At least toward him. At least for now.
