Page 47 of Screwed (Dad Bod Contracting 4)
I just listen, let him talk. I’m not sure where he’s going with this, but I sense he needs to get it off his chest.
“She made fun of me like it was her sole job in life. Growing up I was teased a lot. Bullied. I’ve always been big, but in elementary and middle school, before I really hit my growth spurt and discovered sports, I was just this tall, gangly, overweight, shy kid who never spoke. And Renée was my protector. She’d attack, verbally and physically, anyone who tried to pick on me, but then she’d turn around and make fun of me. But she always did it with love, and when we started dating and took things physical, she started using psychology on me.” He pauses a moment. “Pavlovian, you might say. She would tease me, make fun of me, and honestly it would get pretty brutal at times, but then she would…um, instigate things. Until I started equating her teasing me with things getting hot physically. Crazy, and something only she would think to do. It was intentional, too. She was sick of me being withdrawn and lacking confidence, so she went on the offensive. Psychologied me out my insecurities from being bullied, encouraged me to try sports, and eventually I…well, I guess you’d say I found myself. Took over the role of her protector, because she had her own hang-ups. She used humor to cover her insecurities over being so tiny.”
“Sounds familiar. I make fun of myself in similar ways about being so tall. Not so much anymore, but I used to. I got teased a lot for looking like a boy. I was always tall, but puberty hit late: I was fourteen before I started filling out. So then I was a boy with huge boobs. My mom messed up a haircut the summer that I got my boobs, and I had to get it all chopped off, so I had, literally, a buzz cut, and these giant new boobs that I didn’t know what to do with. So, to cover my insecurities, to cut people off before they could hurt me, I started making fun of myself.”
James nods. “It was the opposite for Renée. She hit puberty and filled out a little—went from being a literal stick to having some softer edges, some curves, but in all honesty, she was never anything but a short skinny chick. No boobs, like at all, and no butt.” He’s silent a long time. “God, she was beautiful, though. She kept her hair short, and it just suited her. She had these high, sharp cheekbones and a mouth that looked like a million bucks, but that mouth could flay the paint off a barn if something annoyed her.”
I think I’m starting to sniff out where he’s going with this, but I continue to let him play it out at his own pace.
“I was so attracted to her, so in love with her. I’d have killed for her, died for her. I’d have walked through fucking fire for her.”
His love, his pain—it’s so raw, so real, so palpable. I ache for him. I’m not jealous, either. I just hate his pain. I want to soothe it, to comfort him, but I don’t dare. He needs to say this.
“I was absolutely gone for her. I never even saw other women when I was with her. I mean, sure, I’m a red-blooded heterosexual male, and this world is full of beautiful women, so I noticed them. But they were just…people. I don’t know how else to put it. No desire, no attraction. She fulfilled me in every way there could possibly be.”
“She sounds amazing.”
“She was,” he agrees. “And then she died. And I wanted to die with her. I probably would have, were it not for Nina and Ella, and my boys. Those five people saved my life. I don’t think I’d have killed myself, but I think I would have just…died. But I had to keep going for my girls, so I did. I put my nose to the grindstone and set about rebuilding my life. Alone, with the girls. Being a single father. Running a business. Those things have taken up every single spare minute of my time.” He lets out a slow breath. “I never wanted to see anyone else. There were women around, obviously. We’re at Billy Bar a lot, and there’re always chicks around, and some of them have thrown themselves at me pretty hard. But I just…” He shrugs. “I haven’t been able to summon the will to care. It’s like…I don’t know how to put it. Like when she died, I did die, and I had to learn to live again without her. And for the most part, I have. I eat, I get dressed, I work, I spend time with my girls, and I have fun with the guys. But that part of me, the part that feels…well, anything…for women? It’s still dead.”
