Page 5 of Perfect on Paper

“Yeah, heisa dickhead,” Mom mused to herself, then she gave me a sharp look. “Don’tyou tell anyone I said that!”

“I’ll leave it off the agenda at tomorrow’s meeting.”

Mom glanced sideways at me, and her round face broke into a warm grin. I started to return it, then I remembered Brougham, and the blackmailing, and I wilted. Mom didn’t notice, though. She was too busy focusing on the road, already lost in her own thoughts. One of the good things about having a perpetually distracted parent was not having to dodge prying questions.

I just hoped Brougham would keep my secret to himself. The problem was, of course, that I had no idea what kind of person he was. Wonderful. A guy I’d never met properly, who I knew nothing about, held the power to throw my business—not to mention my relationships—into havoc. That wasn’t anxiety inducing atall.

I needed to talk to Ainsley.

TWO

Hi Locker 89,

So, my girl has been driving me fucking crazy. She doesn’t know what the word space means!! If I fuckingDAREto not text her one day, she’ll blow my phone up. Mom told me not to reward her for being psycho, so I make sure I don’t reply til the next day so she knows going off on me isn’t gonna make me wanna talk to her. And when I do reply, suddenly she’s all 1-word answers and passive-aggressive bitchiness. Wtf? Like do you wanna fucking talk to me or not? Now I have to feel fucking guilty because I didn’t check my phone in bio? I don’t wanna break up because she’s actually really cool when she’s not being psycho. I swear I’m a good boyfriend, but I can’t constantly text her just to keep her from losing it??

[email protected]

Locker 893:06 p.m. (0 min ago)

to Dtb02

Hey DTB!

I recommend you look up different attachment styles. I can’t say for sure, but it sounds like your gf might have an anxious attachment style. (There are four main styles, and to summarize: one is secure, where people learned as babies that love is reliable and predictable. Another is dismissive-avoidant, where a person learns as an infant that they can’t rely on others, and grows up finding it hard to let people in. Then you have anxious, where a person learned that love is only given sometimes, and can be snatched away without warning, leaving them constantly afraid of abandonment as adults. And finally, fearful avoidant, where someone is both afraid of abandonment and of letting others in. Confusing!) Long story short, she’s always going to be super sensitive to anything that feels like abandonment, and she’ll go right into panic mode when that happens. We call it “activating.” It’s not “psycho” (FYI that’s not a cool term), it’s a primal fear of being alone and in danger. But in saying that, I totally get how it’d feel smothering when she activates.

I recommend setting boundaries, but also taking steps to reassure her you’re still into her. She might need that more than some others. Let her know you think she’s amazing, but you want to come up with a solution to make sure she doesn’t panic if you don’t text. Come to an agreement you’re both happy with, because your need for space is valid! Maybe you’d be happy to text her before schoolevery day, even just to say good morning, have a good day? Or maybe you think it’s reasonable to send her a quick text reply in the bathroom like, “Sorry I’m in class at the moment, I’ll message you when I’m home tonight so I can reply properly, can’t wait to talk.” Or if you’re not in the mood for talking, message her to say, “Having an off night, nothing to do with you, love you, can we chat tomorrow?” The key is, it should be something you both think will work.

It’ll take some compromise, but you’d be surprised how easy it is to talk an anxiously attached person down from their spiral if you don’t leave them in silence to imagine the worst. They only want to know there’s a reason for your distance that isn’t “they don’t love me anymore.”

Good luck!

Locker 89

At home, Ainsley had not only taken the spaghetti sauce out to defrost, she also had a fresh loaf of bread cooking in the bread maker, filling the house with the delicious, yeasty smell of a country bakery. A sloshing, watery sound told me the dishwasher was halfway through a cycle already, too, and the linoleum floor had a “newly mopped” gleam. Even scrubbed down, though, our house was generally too full of clutter to look clean, and the kitchen was no different. Every counter surface was occupied by decorative knickknacks, from succulents in terra-cotta pots to boxes full of baking utensils to assorted mug racks. The walls were covered in pots and pans and knives hanging from various wooden displays, and the fridge was adorned with magnetsto celebrate every big moment in our family’s lives, from Disneyland trips to a Hawaii beach vacation to my kindergarten graduation to a picture of Ainsley and Mom on the courthouse steps the day of Ainsley’s legal name change.

Since she’d started community college, Ainsley had become preoccupied with “earning her keep” around the house, like Mom hadn’t inundated her with reasons to go to college here instead of L.A. all of Ainsley’s junior year. Mom, it seemed, wasn’t ready to have the house totally empty every other week when I went to my dad’s. Not that I was complaining; not only was Ainsley a much better cook than Mom, but she was, incidentally, one of my best friends. Which was one of the weapons Mom had had in her “convince Ainsley to stick around” arsenal.

I dumped my bag by the kitchen table and slid onto one of the benches, trying and failing to catch Ainsley’s eye. As usual, she was wearing one of her personalized altered creations, a cream sweater with three-quarter sleeves and winglike frills running down the sides.

“Are you thinking of doing garlic bread, love?” Mom asked Ainsley, opening the fridge to get some water.

Ainsley glanced at the humming bread maker. “That’s a good idea, actually.”

I cleared my throat. “Ainsley, you said you were gonna alter one of your dresses for me.”

Now, to clarify, Ainsley had said no such thing. She was good for a lot of stuff, but sharing her clothes and makeup was not, and never had been, her strong suit. It did the trick, though. She looked at me, finally, albeit in bewilderment, and I took the chance to widen my eyes at her meaningfully. “Oh, of course,” she lied, tucking a lock of her long brown hair behind one ear. Her tell. Lucky Mom wasn’t payingmuch attention. “I have a few minutes now if you want to look.”

“Yep, yep, let’s go.”

I didn’t visit Ainsley’s room nearly as often as she made the trip to mine, and I had a good reason for it. Where my bedroom was relatively organized, decorations where they should be, bed made, clothes hung up, Ainsley’s was organized chaos. Her green and pink candy-striped walls were barely visible through the posters and paintings and photos she’d stuck up haphazardly (the only photo that’d been placed with any care was the large, framed picture of the Queer and Questioning Club, taken at the end of her senior year). Her queen-sized bed was unmade—not that you could tell, with the four or five layers of clothes she’d thrown on top of it—and at the foot of the bed, a trunk she kept stuffed full of fabrics and buttons and bits and bobs she was sure she’d find a use for one day sat open, its contents spilling out onto the plush cream carpet.

As soon as I got through the door, I was olfactorily assaulted by the thick caramel-vanilla aroma of Ainsley’s favorite candle, which she always lit when she was planning a new YouTube video. She claimed it helped her concentrate, but my muse didn’t come in the form of a scent-induced migraine, so I could not relate.

Ainsley pulled her door shut. I threw myself onto the bundle of clothes on her bed, gagging as dramatically as I could. “What’s up?” she asked, opening the window a crack to let in some sweet oxygen.

I crawled closer to the window and sucked in a breath. “I was caught, Ains.”

She didn’t ask what I was caught doing. She didn’t have to. As the one and only confidante in the world who knewabout my locker business, she knew very well what I did immediately after school every day.

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