Page 38 of Follows with Intent

“No, it doesn’t.”

“Yes, it does. And it’s intimidating. Here you are, you speak five languages, and you read like twenty more, and you’re writing this paper about stuff I can barely wrap my brain around, and it’s—it’s incredible.”

Nico tried not to. Then he smiled. He shrugged.

“This is going to sound so stupid,” Jadon said, “but how did you get interested in this stuff? I mean, how did you even learn about it in the first place.”

“Like, when I was a braindead model, how did I ever manage to stop doing coke and blowing agents to start a rigorous investigation of Kierkegaard’s theory of the aesthetic?”

Jadon’s face closed.

“I’m sorry,” Nico said. “I didn’t mean that. I—it’s automatic.”

“It’s all right.”

“Jay, I’m super sorry. I hate doing that, the knee-jerk response. It’s so immature. It’s a good question.”

“I know you weren’t braindead.” Jadon’s expression softened. “For God’s sake, you were at Columbia.”

“Yeah, well, that doesn’t always mean as much as you think it does,” Nico said with a grin. “But thank you. I guess I was…I guess I was in a bad place, actually, although at the time, I didn’t realize it. I was in my second year. At Columbia, that’s when you have to declare your major. I had no idea what I was going to do. I was picking up modeling jobs as fast as I could, convinced that was…I don’t know, the right thing to do. My parents.” He stopped. He felt hot, and he found the tab of the zipper on his sweater and clutched it. Stop, he told himself. This isn’t cute, not on anybody. So, stop right now. But the words kept tumbling out. “I’d moved off campus and into an apartment that the modeling agency provided. Three of us to a room. In bunk beds, my God. And it was a shithole. And I never knew when I was going to get paid, never knew when I was going to have money, and the other guys were such bitches, and I got so weird about food, which, yeah, it was definitely the start of an eating disorder, even though the other guys made it all seem so normal.” He stopped. Tried to. It was like trying to brick up a dam as the water came pouring through. “One time, I heard one of the guys say we were just hangers for the clothes, and that’s right. You’d show up for a shoot, and they’d take one look at you and send you home. Or you’d wait hours to be considered—because for that job, they couldn’t go by the agency photos—and they’d say, ‘Too brown.’ Or ‘Too tall.’ Or, I swear to God, ‘Too skinny.’ And I started having these epic meltdowns. It was this vicious circle, because then I’d be nervous the next shoot, or I’d make myself sick, or God. And then one day—” Stop, he thought. This is when you have to stop. “—one of the assistants for the photo shoot took out a measuring tape and started checking my wrists and ankles and calves. I shit you not. And they had this whole discussion while I was standing there about the ratios, calf to ankle, wrist to ankle, if they could find a way to make it work because I wasn’t what they wanted. And I stood there, listening to them, already starting to meltdown. They sent me home, and I stayed in bed for two days. And there was this voice in my head, telling me how shit I was, how worthless, how ugly.”

“Nico—” Jadon began.

But Nico spoke over him. “But this other part of me, this part of me that was trying to stay alive, was reminding me that at one point, I’d been proud of the fact that I was smart, that I did well in classes, that I had goals and ambitions that had nothing to do with whether my fucking calves were too big for my fucking ankles.” He shook his head. “Thank God I hadn’t dropped out of school. I’d been going to classes, although I was doing terribly in most of them, and I decided I was going to start getting good grades again. It was a lifeline; I can see that now. I took fewer jobs. I stayed in the library as long as I could because I didn’t want to go to that apartment. I was in a philosophy elective, and we were reading Kierkegaard, and it was like he was talking to me. Despair and angst, being confronted with your failure to live up to your potential.” Nico waited until his throat relaxed enough for him to continue. “At semester, I moved into the dorms, which felt great as a sophomore. I declared a philosophy major. I kept taking modeling jobs, but it was a job now. And holy shit, I cannot believe I said all of that out loud. If you need to run for an exit, I think there’s a fire escape that way.”

Jadon didn’t smile, though; he watched Nico with an unsettling intensity, the silence growing until it prickled. When he spoke, his voice was rough, “I am so sorry.”

“It’s okay. It’s fine, actually. I’m fine. I’m here now, and I’m happy—well, I’m not unhappy—and I learned some heavy shit about myself, which is apparently the whole fucked-up purpose of life.”

“But I’m sorry you had to go through that. I’m sorry you were alone. And I think it’s amazing that you took all that pain and suffering and found a way to use it to make yourself stronger.” His voice softened. “I think you’re amazing.”

“You should think I’m crazy,” Nico said. “Or nuts. Or psycho; a lot of people like to tell me I’m psycho.”

The only answer was more of that intensely earnest study.

“Now you’re supposed to tell me the tragic secret of your childhood,” Nico prompted.

Jadon laughed quietly. “No tragic secrets, unfortunately.”

“Bullshit.”

“Scout’s honor.”

“God, of course you were a Boy Scout.”

“Actually, I wasn’t. My moms wouldn’t let me.” His voice took on an amused note as he added, “Trust me, I asked.”

Jadon wasn’t sure what had been most surprising, in those under-the-cover-of-darkness conversations via text: learning that Jadon had grown up on an organic farm outside of Iowa City with two moms, or that Jadon seemed so surprised by Nico’s surprise when he’d learned it. In hindsight, Nico recognized the hippie-ish thread to Jadon’s character—the quirky T-shirts about tea and beets and Santa Fe; the sneaking suspicion that Jadon aspired to drive a Subaru; the improbability of how well Jadon and Shaw had fit as a couple (which, yes, Nico had done all sorts of snooping about, to the point that Emery had started to get suspicious about all the questions).

“Why?”

“Why did I want to be a Boy Scout? Or why wouldn’t my moms let me?”

“Both, I guess.”

“My moms have strong opinions. I guess I should say strong beliefs. They’re the ultimate hippies—anti-war, anti-corporation, anti-government. As an adult, I can look back and see that they were two young women trying to figure out how to run a farm with zero experience, zero money, and a brand-new baby boy. I mean, it’s ridiculous; one of my moms was an honest-to-God debutante. What did she know about farming? And, of course, they were terrified about raising a boy.”

“Because they’re lesbians?” Nico asked doubtfully.

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