Page 78 of The Hometown Legend

It was big, unwieldy groups of people that made her uncomfortable. It was the lack of control in those situations.

Obviously, he had always felt comfortable in them. He had always been assured he would be met with a positive response.

She wondered if that was the secret. If those formative moments decided whether you felt like you were awkward or not. If you were met with applause or skepticism.

She had always been met with skepticism. At best.

And it was weird now to try to disentangle what she wanted, what she was hoping to get out of this gambit, her date with Mike, everything, and feeling like she didn’t care about popularity.

She had always told herself she was maybe above them because she wasn’t shallow.

But didn’t she like Gideon the same as everybody? And wasn’t she still consumed by the fact that she couldn’t make them all like her? Is that why she’d agreed to go on a date with Mike?

Maybe people were just all the same. Maybe they were all the same and whether or not you were good with a big group or a small group was what determined if you controlled the feelings of other people. Except... She must bring up some feelings insomebody. She had always thought of herself as a beige sweater. But if she made those kids at her school so upset just by standing there, they must’ve been pushing her down for a reason.

This was quite the revelation to be having over thoughts of mandatory PE.

“Do you think that everyone is secretly insecure?” she asked.

“I don’t know about that,” he said, frowning. “But I do think that maybe everybody has that one block in their Jenga tower, the one that’s holding everything up. And if life removes that, they fall apart. In fact, I would say that people like me... That’s even more true. If you haven’t struggled, then I think you often don’t know what to do when you aren’t excelling.”

He was fit, healthy, here—all after his life had imploded. If that wasn’t succeeding, she didn’t know what was. He hadn’t chosen to get injured in a war. But he’d chosen to do all of this since.

“Well if it helps, from my perspective, you look like you’re excelling. I’m not saying I don’t recognize that you have difficulties. But I’m just saying, evenwiththem, you seem like you’re doing well.”

“Thanks,” he said. “I didn’t come here at the worst point of my struggle. Just so you know. I didn’t come here to lick my wounds. They’re pretty well healed up. Cassidy and I split two years ago. It’s just still taken time for us to deal with the house and all that.”

“What was...what was the worst?”

She watched as his expression became guarded. “This part isn’t about me, Rory. It’s about you.”

“We’re helping each other.”

“Right now, this is about you.”

And by now she knew him well enough to know he was stubborn. He wouldn’t share more until he was good and ready.

She cleared her throat. “I’ve always felt like maybe I was uniquely anxious or faulty in some way. Because people look at me and see a soft target. But I didn’t even think of it that way ever. I just thought of it as people seeing a weirdo. And reacting accordingly.”

“I think it’s more than that. I do think people see threats to their power.” He took a sharp breath. “I like to think that I was never a bully.”

“You weren’t. You rescued me from my bullies, remember? Everybody liked you.”

He rubbed the back of his neck. “I’m sure everybody didn’t, though. There was probably somebody who felt like they were pushed into my shadow who didn’t like me. And I am certain that I wasn’t above acting a bit superior when it suited me. I’m sure that I wasn’t the bestallthe time. And for a while there, I was kind of living two different realities. Because when I was deployed, I had a community. I had these men I was in charge of. Their safety, their well-being, that was all that mattered. There was the mission, but my personal mission was to bring them home. I told you when we did basic, I identified everybody’s weaknesses, and I pushed them hard. But knowing their weaknesses meant that I knew them.”

Heknewthem.

And she knew that in that last mission he had lost men.

“So that’s what you think? All those middle schoolers just saw all my strength, and they felt threatened by me?”

“I’m not saying that. But I think that’s probably closer to the truth than there being something wrong with you. And what I’m really starting to think is that it comes for you eventually. You can’t live like that forever. It’s not a question of if the block will get removed. It’swhen. You know, you’ve had things happen, but they happened while you were being built. So you might’ve fallen over a little bit, but you were only a couple stories up. So it wasn’t catastrophic. And you rebuilt from there, and when life knocks you down again, you rebuilt a little further. And a little further. And look at you now? Going to Boston. When that tower crumbled, it kicked my ass. So... I don’t know why people do what they do. I’m not an expert in human nature, I wish I were. I can sense things and people, though. And you’re strong, Rory. I have never seen you as anything else. You’ve never seemed boring to me. Why were you such a target?”

“Braces, glasses. Skinny. Redhead. Freckles. Four eyes, carrottop, you name it. Brace face. Somebody once said that my knees probably had their own gravitational pull. Because they were so knobby.”

He looked down. “I don’t see that.”

“Well, they’re less knobby now. I have a little bit more weight on my body these days.”

---