“And what did they look like?”
“One, my very first girlfriend, was Yu’Pik, like me. So short, dark hair, kinda curvy I guess.” I sighed. “My first and only serious girlfriend, as in a real, lasting long-term relationship, was interracial. Her mom was Vietnamese, and her dad was African.”
“I bet she’s beautiful.”
“She is.”
She waited. “And?”
I shrugged. “And that’s it.”
“You’ve dated two girls your whole life?”
I nodded. “So I don’t think that’s enough to say I have a type.”
“Well, you’re still a guy. So when you go, ‘hey, that girl is hot,’ what do they usually look like?”
“Why does it matter?”
“It doesn’t. I’m just curious.”
How the hell was I supposed to tell her I’d been so hurt, so damaged by trauma, so viciously rejected and shamed that I turned off my sexuality?
I stood up. Paced away, stood facing the wall, hands braced wide on the wall… Fought for some kind of explanation that wouldn’t leave me totally emotionally naked.
“Ink…what? What aren’t you saying?”
I shook my head. “A fuckin’ lot, Cass.”
“So say it.”
“It’s a lot, and it’s old, and I don’t know how to fuckin’ say it. Never told anyone about it.”
She stood up and moved to slide between me and the wall, gazed up at me. “Secret pain.”
I nodded. “Yeah. That shit sucks.”
“So let’s trade. I’ve got secret pain, you’ve got secret pain. Let’s trade.”
“Why?” I asked. “Why you wanna know?”
“Because I like you. I want to know more about you.” She leaned her back to the wall, framed in by my arms and my body. Stared up at me, eyes wide and deep as the universe, drawing me in, closer and closer. “We can make a game of it. Secret for secret.”
“I don’t know.”
“I’ll start.” She ran a hand through her hair, drew it over her shoulder. “Not a secret, since I talked to my sister about it, but I just found this out and it’s as good a place to start as any. I just found out that my fiancé is gay, and was cheating on me with men during our entire relationship.”
“Whoa.”
“Yeah.” A shrug. “Your turn.”
“My parents couldn’t afford to feed me when I was a kid. As a teenager, thirteen, fourteen, fifteen, I ate so much it was impossible for them to afford the amount of food I needed. I joined the football team just because the other parents would feed me. I was popular on the team because I was the star lineman on the offense and defense. I was big, but I could move. So the guys let me hang out with them so I’d stay on the team and help them win. It worked for me because the other guys’ families could afford shit. I played all the way through high school just so I could eat.”
“Wow. I can’t imagine how much food a six-foot-seven teenager must eat.”
“Well, I didn’t reach my full height till I was like eighteen. I was six-four freshman year, six-six by senior year, and topped out at six-seven when I was nineteen. But yeah, you really don’t even know how much food I’d eat. They’d order pizzas, like a dozen of them for the team, and I’d eat three by myself, and that was holding back to not be too greedy.”
“Three large pizzas, just you?”
“Breakfast, lunch, dinner, snacks required a lot of food.” I shrugged. “Of course, while I was active and athletic I was eating a lot and working out like crazy, but after I graduated and quit playing ball, I got fat as hell because I kept eating like that but stopped the intense exercise.”
“You obviously figured that out.”
I frowned. “Obviously?” I patted my stomach. “Ain’t exactly rockin’ an eight pack here.” I poked her stomach, which was a clearly defined, even at rest, eight-pack, vascular and striated. “Not like this.”
She looked at my stomach, explored my torso from chest to sides to waistband. “You’re strong, Ink. Really, really strong. There are many, many different kinds of healthy, different kinds of bodies. Having ultra-low body fat percentage isn’t the only kind of healthy and attractive there is.”
“But that’s your type. You said so.”
She sighed. “Yeah, and maybe I was an idiot.” She touched her own stomach. “This is the result of a lifetime of dedication and sacrifice. Hours and hours and hours of work, every day, to achieve and maintain this, because it’s what I had to be. How I had to look to be lead dancer. Visually, as well as in terms of ability. It was functionally necessary to be like this.” She frowned. “It’s not necessary anymore, and I’m not sure how much longer I’m going to look like this. For one thing, I can’t work out, and for two, I’ve been eating like shit. So you can say goodbye to this in the next few weeks.”
She hesitated, and then reached out once more, this time running her hands up my chest to my shoulders, letting her hands rest there.
“So…” she said, as she looked up at me, as if perhaps to gauge the effect of her hands on my shoulders. “Body image.”
“It wasn’t really image, for me. It was…just the absence of food. The lack. Being too poor to literally afford to stay alive, just because I was so fuckin’ giant. Made me feel like…like a burden.”
Her face crumpled in pain. “Aww, god, Ink. That’s awful.”
“It was a fact. I was a burden to them.” I felt my fists clench. “They’re not bad people, my parents. They did the best they could. Loved me, in a parental sort of way. But they never understood me. I was never…what they expected. What they wanted. I mean, I liked being outside, hunting, hiking, fishing. But I wasn’t…like them. They made ends meet all right, but when I started really skyrocketing in size around puberty, they couldn’t afford me. I was a burden on ’em, and I knew it. I was on my own by fifteen, for all intents and purposes. Slept at their house, but I was fending for myself.”
She sighed. “Wow, Ink. That’s rough.”
“But that’s just background. That ain’t a secret.” I focused on her face rather than the feel of her hands—if I thought about that, I’d take her in my hands and this conversation would be over. “Only shit that’s left to tell is the really heavy stuff.”
“Same.”
I closed my eyes. “Elizabeth Grace was from my neighborhood, my school. My family is…really traditional. Holding on to the old ways as much as possible. Hers was…not. She looked like me, but acted like them. And it was an us and them mentality, where I grew up. But she was pretty, and seemed to like me. We would hang out after school. Walk home together. Have lunch together. Do our homework in the library. Get a burger on the weekends. Wasn’t much beyond that—we were just kids, fifteen, sixteen. Young. I just liked her. Liked that she talked to me, didn’t seem to be scared of me.” Glanced down at her. “You scared of me, Cass?”
She shook her head slowly. “No. I was a little intimidated by how big you are, at first, but not anymore.”