“Was college any better?”
I smiled ruefully and shook my head. “You ever hear girls talk about the Freshmen 15?” I asked.
Cain nodded.
“Well, for me it was like fifty pounds instead of fifteen and that’s saying a lot for a kid who was already overweight to begin with. And since I was still sixteen, I hadn’t managed to get rid of all that other stuff like the zits and the braces. Add in the fact thatI was gay and my social life was pretty much doomed from the start.”
When I saw his frown, I quickly backtracked and said, “But it wasn’t all bad. I got really good grades and the demands of medical school helped me shed some of the weight.”
“You’re too thin,” Cain suddenly said. His words caught me off guard.
“What?”
“You’re too thin,” he repeated as his eyes swept my body. I felt my insides light up at the move and I had to remind myself that he wasn’t looking at me the way I really wished he would.
“Well, being on the run will do that for you,” I joked, but he didn’t smile. I dropped my eyes and felt my cheeks warm with color. “What about you?” I asked. “I doubt you were ever even a pound overweight in your life,” I said jokingly.
Cain was quiet for a moment and I realized I’d crossed some invisible line. I opened my mouth to apologize, but he spoke before I could say anything.
“I was really big into athletics,” he said. “Soccer, football, basketball, didn’t matter – as long as I was moving and it kept me out of the house, I was good.” He shot me a glance as he said, “I could have used someone like you.”
What?
By now I was sure my cheeks were positively flaming and I was actually glad I still had some lingering bruising that might hide the proof of my embarrassment.
“For what?” I choked out.
“Tutoring. My grades were for shit. Almost got held back my freshman year.”
“Did you find one? A tutor I mean?”
Cain shook his head. “It wasn’t a priority after that.”
The cryptic statement made no sense to me, but I didn’t ask him what he meant because I could tell from the dark look in his eyes that he wasn’t about to expound on it.
“How about college? Maybe you ended up with the Freshmen 1?”I said jokingly, hoping to draw back some of that lightness I’d seen in his eyes for the briefest of moments.
“Didn’t go to college.” I saw his fingers start to flex and un-flex and I found myself needing to remind myself that he wasn’t Eric. His agitation wouldn’t result in me with a split lip or bruised cheek.
“How come you stayed away from home for so long?” Cain asked.
The switch back to me wasn’t ideal, but something about talking to him helped relax me.
“A few months after I met Eric, I brought him home to meet my parents…before I knew what he was really like. I thought myself so completely in love with him that I was blind to everything else. But my family didn’t suffer from that affliction and instead of hearing what they had to say, I cut them out of my life.”
“They didn’t like him,” Cain said.
I shook my head. “They saw things I refused to. Like how he’d put me down, how he talked only about himself, how he ordered me around. I was angry with them for not seeing how good he was for me. When he said things about my weight, I saw it as him caring about my health. When he put down one of my accomplishments, I saw it as him saying I could do even better. When he talked about himself, I just saw it as him being more interesting than me. I was just so blind,” I murmured.
“Why?”
The bluntness of his question caught me off guard, but when I looked at him, I didn’t see any judgment in his gaze. He looked…curious.
“I guess because he was the first person who ever truly wanted me. I mean, I knew my family loved me and stuff, but I felt like he saw me without the unconditional love that your family sees you with and he liked what he saw. He chosemedespite all my flaws.”
“Flaws?” Cain asked, his voice low.
“My weight, my awkwardness, my oversensitivity to things…he was always encouraging me to overcome those things to help me be better,” I explained.
