Trying To Reach Out

“Why not?” I asked him, “Why not be friends with me Eddie?”

He shook his head and it was like he was trying to shake me away, “You don’t want to be friends with me.”

I sighed, taking a step back to try to give him some distance because frankly right now it looked like he was about to rabbit. Rubbing the bridge of my nose in frustration I thought of what I could say to try to get him to understand without, at the same time, saying too much.

“I don’t understand why you think that,” I settled on, “I mean, we’re stuck in the same group all week we might as well be friendly, even if we can’t be friends.”

He took another furtive drink from his stash and I felt my mouth go dry. I wanted a drink too, but asking for it was probably over the line.

Emboldened by the drink Eddie narrowed his eyes and I could tell he wanted to get mean, but I didn’t know which direction his energy would be expended.

“Look at you and look at me. The two of us don’t work together. We can’t be friends.”

While I couldn’t exactly look at myself, I could look at him. I knew, for the record, that he was talking in a physical context. That when he said shit like that he was saying that there was some deficiency with himself because Eddie, at his core, believed himself to be marred in some way. Fundamentally unlovable, I guess. Unattractive to anyone in existence.

He was wrong though, but I didn’t know why he couldn’t see that.

Don’t mistake this. I would never describe Eddie as hot or anything like that, but that might be my own bias and my own history and even if I was in a whole new body with a whole suite of brand new and confusing attractions, that didn’t mean they extended to him. Even the dream I’d had about a future with him had been a different kind of attraction, more power and submission than physical need and comfort.

But Eddie wasn’t unattractive. He wasn’t broken like he liked to think he was.

Sure his hair was scraggly and unkempt, but it had the wildness of a poet and an artist about it, all undulating waves and dark unruliness. He had a strong angular jaw that I think he always saw as severe but honestly wouldn’t have looked out of place on a runway, and when combined with cheekbones that were high and defined and eyes that were narrowed and intense and always spitting fire, well the whole affect had the ability to make him turn heads if he wanted to.

Yeah he was a little on the skinny side, but there were people who dug that kind of chic. And there was a wiry strength to him that I knew people absolutely loved, this subtle kind of manic energy about him that made him seem like he was driven and intense and mad with interest, it’s just that interest was always driven so far into hate that the intensity of his vitriol tended to drive people away.

But I’d seen girls over the years fall for him, very clearly and blatantly. In class he was almost always quiet and withdrawn but at times he would burst in with this intense interest and passion and it would be captivating. I’d seen girls give a double take to him, their eyes going a little wide as they reconsidered the quiet kid in the corner and gave a little thought to wondering what that passionate intensity could do if it was focused on them.

Expertise and focus can be powerful aphrodisiacs, if one knows how to work them. There are plenty of men far less attractive than Eddie who had stunningly beautiful women on their arms with them not for their looks, but because they were fascinating people.

Telling Eddie any of this was far too much to say, right now. He didn’t know that I knew him and he didn’t have the years together that I did. If I said anything of the sort it would only serve to drive him away.

But trying to tell him any of it after years of knowing him wouldn’t work either. When I’d tried to point out the girls who were crushing on him after one of his masterful outbursts in class he’d just scoff and count off a list of reasons why he shouldn’t and wouldn’t be doing anything about it, because while Eddie was an expert at a great many things the one thing he was far and above best at was convincing himself that he wasn’t worth a dime and that no one had anything but his worst interest at heart.

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