Page 13 of A Flighty Fake Boyfriend
“No, it is. My dad was like this super chill guy, and my mom met him on the beach in Costa Rica when she was in some women’s cult or something, and the next thing you know, they’re both teaching economics, and it’s like whatever made them spontaneous disappeared.”
“Is that so?” I hid my smile. Epic overshared. I liked that because I didn’t have to talk, but it still felt like having a conversation.
He grimaced. “They have these pictures of themselves smoking dope and lying around with half-naked people in yurts. Honestly, it makes me believe in alien abduction.”
“Does it?” In spite of my problems—or maybe because of them—I kept the kid talking. His voice was low and velvety. As soothing as the susurration of the waves behind us.
“Well, not really. But it’s amazing how people change. Some people become concentrated if you know what I mean. As they get older, they become more of what they started out as. Others do a total one-eighty and go the opposite direction.”
That…was very true. “I agree. It’s as if some people believe in a magical maturity line. Once they pass it, they’re supposed to leave behind the things they were passionate about when they were younger.”
“Exactly!”
“But that’s total horse shit.” I was speaking from experience. My “causes” could never take a back seat to relationship building and starting a family. Luis’s wedding to another man was proof of that. “Maybe some people only lose interest in old things because new things take their place.”
“Yeah, but why economics?Blech.”
“Didn’t they also build a stable home and raise a family?”
He shrugged. “You don’t have to turn your back on everything you once believed in to do that. Imagine going from a commune to teaching at a private university.”
“Okay. I can see how that seems like a bit of a backslide.”
He nodded vigorously. “To the dark side. Oh, that’s good. That’s going to be the title of my first memoir—Backslide to the Darkside.”
“You plan on writing more than one?”
“Sure.” His grin was wide and white and impossibly sweet. “I want a record of where I’ve been in case I get lost or do one of those about-faces like my parents.”
“You mean if you should wake up teaching economics?”
“Imagine me teaching.” He shuddered. “My luck I’d end up at some Christian college.”
“Do your parents teach at a religious school?”
“Not unless you count obscene wealth as a religion.”
I laughed. “Some people do. Don’t knock it, though. Without big money where would we find philanthropists?”
“Oh, right.” He leaned against my shoulder. “You work for a nonprofit. Well, money has its uses.”
“It does indeed.” I barely had time to accept the contact of his body before he moved again, but while he’d been pressed against me, a sensation like an electrical shock had torn through me. The contact had been fleeting, but the jolt made me feel strange and vulnerable and exposed—as if I were a hermit crab and someone had torn my shell away.
At a guess, I’d have said Epic was educated and intelligent. He was certainly articulate. The way he used words created comfortable clouds around uncomfortable subjects.
I knew a lot about his family from what he’d said but more from what he hadn’t—that maybe he’d been lonely growing up. He didn’t feel understood by his mother and father nor did he understand them even though he wanted to connect on the level he admired and understood.
He hoped he wouldn’t turn out like them, hoped he wouldn’t simply stop being the man he wanted to be for some goals that weren’t his.
Maybe I was reading way too much into the encounter.
Probably, I was.
Maybe I superimposed my experience on him because he seemed a lot like the kid I’d once been. Not naive by any stretch, but still optimistic. He hadn’t been broken by disappointment after disappointment. It almost hurt to look at him because I knew how the fairy tale would end.
And yet…
And yetI was drawn to him. I was iron shavings, and he was magnetic north.
