He still wouldn’t cheat on his boyfriend; he never crossed the line with me. But the lines were blurring, and he realized that; sometimes his gaze turned colder, his body stiffened, and the rhythm of his breathing changed. I didn’t like to see him upset. I knew it was my fault.
I became curious about his boyfriend and I asked Jenn to show me his pictures from Rob’s Facebook.
Luca, that was his name, was from Padova, a city near Venice. He was slightly shorter than Roberto and he wasn’t nearly as handsome, but he looked nice. They were pretty together. In the pictures I saw Rob looked like a dork, making funny faces or wearing weird glasses and wigs, and Luca was more laid back and calm. He smiled helplessly by Rob’s side, and I could almost read on his face, “I just love this idiot.”
“I hate him,” I confessed to Jenn at the beach, hiding my face behind my knees. It wasn’t the first time I was experiencing jealousy; when I had a crush on Brian, I occasionally thought I’d want to kill his girlfriend. I hated that feeling; it was consuming. It sucked up all my energy and made me wish that nice-looking man would just disappear from this world. I couldn’t get those pictures out of my mind, and I imagined myself with Rob, in his place. I’d wear stupid heart-shaped sunglasses with him and pull faces at the camera. I wouldn’t care about holding his hand in public. Or kissing him. I couldn’t believe – and I was also somehow relieved – that there wasn’t even one picture of them kissing. If I were his boyfriend, I’d kiss him all the time.
I couldn’t get the thought out of my head, that it should be me.
Jenn removed her sunglasses and said, “James, can I ask you something?” I lifted my head, hoping she’d distract me from Roberto and Luca for a while. She opened her Instagram and typed my name in the search bar. A small knot formed in my stomach when she clicked on my profile. “This is you, right?”
I found it hard to breathe. I had hoped my past wouldn’t follow me all the way to Italy, but I’d been naïve. I was caught in a web. A thousand thin, sticky threads clung to me, connecting me to my past. It was almost too easy to pick one and follow it all the way back home, tracing my footsteps, finding out about the person I had been – about the person I still was. My mouth felt as dry as sandpaper. “Yeah,” I whispered, hoping she would just stop looking at me.
She whistled, her expression surprised. “Wow, were you a model or something?”
I blinked, confused and disoriented. That wasn’t the reaction I was expecting. Then I remembered accounts being blocked, comments deleted, unwanted messages reported. If she dug deeper, I was sure she’d find something. But just being there, barely looking at the pictures, she didn’t see. I was so relieved that I could have cried. “I just have a good camera. And I like playing with lights. It’s nothing special.”
“You haven’t uploaded anything in months. Did you get bored?”
I swallowed some air and said, “Something like that.”
“Have you thought about it?”
“About what?”
“Really becoming a model. You’d do great.”
For a moment, I really wanted to scream at her to shut up. But she didn’t know. In her usual, direct way, she was honestly complimenting me. There was no malice in her voice. “I’m not interested,” I said awkwardly. Jenn dropped the subject and asked if I wanted to go for a swim with her. I truly didn’t feel like it at that point, so I let her go on her own. I took my phone and logged into the app store. I looked at the Instagram app, and I wondered if I should download it again, just to check if everything was still in order… I had been the one who begged Mom to let me keep at least that during my “social media detox,” but now the bare thought of going through the notifications and the messages was too unsettling. I should have switched to a private profile after all. In the end I went to the desktop version and searched for my profile without logging in. That was how a stranger would see me. In pictures of me posing for the camera, I looked really good. I knew I did. Then there were the other photos; food, books and selfies with friends. Friends. That was what it looked like, right?
A warm, big hand touched my shoulder delicately, startling me. “Are you okay?” Roberto said, sitting next to me. He had a pinched expression on his face, and he tapped his finger on my mouth. “James, stop. Your lip will start bleeding.” As soon as he said that, I noticed the pain caused by my teeth sinking into my lower lip and released it. I dropped my phone and found myself throwing my arms around his neck, hiding my face between his neck and his shoulder. “Hey,” he whispered in my ear, gently caressing my back. I could feel all my muscles relax under his fingers. I shouldn’t do this. I shouldn’t make things harder for him. He had a boyfriend. I knew all that, and I hated it, and I hated myself, but his presence by my side was just soothing and reassuring, and it was the only thing in the world that would make me feel less of a mess.
Rob didn’t budge. His body was solid and certain against mine and he patiently waited for me to stop freaking out. When my heartbeat finally calmed down, I released the hug and I noticed his eyes were fixed on my phone. He took it in his hand and stared at the screen. “You look really different,” he said.
I moistened my tingling lips and said, in a low voice, “Do you know that you can schedule a whole month of social media content in less than an hour? Mom does that for work. She’s a social media manager.” He looked at me, encouraging me to continue. “When I was little, I was sickish. In seventh grade I had a bad case of pneumonia and I had to stay in bed for months and repeat the grade. That’s why I graduated high school this year, at nineteen. After the illness, I could never fit in at school. I had just started to figure myself out, and I was scared people would realize and make my life a living hell. I guess that’s the reason I turned to social media. There, I could pretend I was someone else. I could look cool. I could be what I wanted to be. But it’s all lies. This, what you see here, everything is a lie.”
He took a deep breath. “I think everybody does that to some extent.”
“Maybe, but I’m a disaster. At the beginning of this year I made a mess and I was homeschooled again until graduation. I don’t know what I’m going to do from now on. I think I’m taking a gap year. Jenn said I could be a model. That almost makes me laugh. I can’t do anything, and I have no real social skills. The only thing I’m good at is blowjobs. Maybe I should pursue a career in porn.”
Roberto listened to me carefully and put his forehead on mine. “Don’t talk like this about yourself. You can’t have it all figured out at nineteen. I don’t know what the hell I’m doing with my life, and I’m twenty-six! It’s okay to take some time to think about it, and figure out what you really want.” He caressed my cheek with his thumb. “Here in Italy, high school lasts five years and it’s normal to graduate at nineteen. And generally, most people end up doing jobs that have nothing to do with their studies. Like me,” he said seriously. “I studied foreign languages because I thought I wanted to be an interpreter, and now I do illegal organ trafficking.”
“What?”
“I work in the sales department of a luxury fashion brand.”