Ten Trends to Seduce Your Bestfriend
: Chapter 37

Byron took a quick shower while I dressed in a hurry, mentally preparing myself for the uncomfortable, unpleasant conversation that was sure to follow. But, as it turned out, we didn’t have time to talk before the first interview.

His manager called his cell. Then she called mine when he didn’t answer, informing me that we had only fifteen minutes before the first appointment. When I’d expressed surprise, since the schedule had us starting at 8:00 a.m., not 7:30 a.m., she explained that they’d had to shift the schedule up to accommodate two more magazines. The magazines had sent their initial requests to the Jupiter Awards team instead of to Byron’s publisher, hence the mix-up.

As he dressed, and while making our way to the elevator, Byron hurriedly filled me in on where he’d disappeared to after the interviews yesterday, and how the terrible interviewer, Harry Lorher, had harassed him.

“I’m sorry about last night, about our fight.” He kissed the back of my hand once the elevator doors closed. “I’m embarrassed to admit, but I believe I may have been a tad dramatic.”

I squeezed his fingers. “Don’t be. Although it was difficult at the time, I’m glad you said what you did. I needed to hear it.”

“Even so, I believe much of my anger stemmed from the interaction with Mr. Lorher, and I shouldn’t have been so harsh. Please forgive me.”

“Of course I do.” I lifted to my tiptoes to give him a kiss, which he quickly deepened by wrapping his arms around me and holding me close.

He only pulled away when the doors opened and a ding sounded, announcing our arrival.

“Damn,” he said, resting his forehead against mine for a brief second. He straightened, and then we walked out of the elevator together. “Okay. Let’s go.”

He looked so grim, and it made me sad. Even though we’d made up this morning, things still felt somewhat unsettled between us. I hated that he had to deal with the pressure of the interviews in addition to our fight. Not just that, but he looked exhausted.

“Did you get any sleep last night? Where did you go after you left?”

“I was able to grab a few hours, and I came here.” Byron lifted his chin toward the door to the big suite, his feet slowing as we approached. “I took a chance that no one was using it at night, and I was right.”

“If no one is using it, why didn’t you just stay up here the whole time instead of the smaller one?”

“This one was booked by my publisher specifically for the interviews. I didn’t like the idea of having people walking in and out of the room where I slept, so I asked Pamela to book me a different room.” He pulled a key card from his pocket, waved it in front of the lock, and then we were back in the place Byron least wanted to be.

It was just as difficult to watch the second day as it had been the first. Each interview the same as all the others. But boring was definitely better than someone like Mr. Lorher going off script and harassing Byron about his mother.

Lunchtime came and went, but instead of being dismissed like yesterday, Byron had to work through it to accommodate the two new additions to the schedule. Each exchange might’ve been scripted, with the interviewers not allowed to deviate from the questions, but I marveled at how, even when exhausted, he was so incredibly polite with each person.

It might not seem like such a big thing, but on the sixth hour of the second day of interviews, the fact that he still said please and didn’t allow himself to show any outward signs of impatience, felt significant.

So when the newspaper reporter finished ahead of schedule and hastily said their goodbyes, I jumped at the chance to walk over and put my arms around him, giving his shoulders a tight squeeze. We had ten glorious minutes, definitely enough for me to take his mind off the fact that he had another four hours left.

He grabbed my hips and sat me on his lap. “Sit here. I need it.”

Smiling, I allowed him to rest his cheek against my breasts like he’d done yesterday. “What can I do?”

“You feel so fucking good,” he said, the words almost a groan as he nuzzled closer. “Talk me out of paying Pamela another twenty-thousand-dollar bonus to clear everyone out of the room.”

I laughed, trying to replace a subject that might distract him and settled on a topic I’d always wanted to tease him about. “So, don’t you think it’s a little on the nose? Your name is Byron, you’re tall, dark, and brooding, and you’re a writer.”

“It’s a family name,” came his terse reply. “My grandmother named me.”

“If your name had been Albert, would you have become a theoretical astrophysicist?” Sifting my fingers through his hair, I let myself enjoy the soft texture of the silky strands. “Or if your birth certificate had listed Babe, would you have become a baseball player?”

He sat still for a moment, as though giving my questions serious thought, but then leaned away and angled his chin to look at me. “You’re teasing me.”

“I am.”

He smiled, mostly with his eyes, apparently understanding my aim to distract him. “Thank you.”

Returning his smile, I began playing with his hair again. “But really, why did you become a writer? You could’ve been anything.”

“Not a baseball player.”

“Okay, but a theoretical astrophysicist, yes.”

His gaze moved to somewhere over my shoulder and lost focus. “It’s . . . easy. To me. Writing fiction is much easier than anything else I’ve tried.”

“So you wanted to do something easy?”

“I was tired of failing. So, yeah.”

“What are you talking about?” I leaned back to catch his eye. “When have you failed?”

“Every day, when I was expected to interact.”

“You mean with other people? You felt like you failed when you had to interact with other people?” I whispered, glancing around us to ensure we weren’t being overheard. I was certain he wouldn’t want anyone to hear this.

“I didn’t feel like a failure, I was one.”

“That’s harsh.”

“It’s the truth.”

“I don’t—” I cut myself off before I could finish the thought. He was pretty terrible at interacting with people. But a failure?

“Fred. You don’t have to always try to make people feel better. I’m okay with my failure. Everyone fails.”

“You’re okay with never interacting with other humans? You’re fine just always being alone? Always? I don’t believe that.”

“Many writers I’ve talked to feel dissatisfied with themselves, their relationships, how they interact with the world, how the world interacts with them. Learning is easy, applying what I’ve learned is easy. But working in an office, in corporate or academia, would require me to interact with people—where people are shifting sands in a desert, impossible to predict—those interactions ultimately leave me feeling like a failure.”

My lips parted as he spoke, and my heart gave a sad, sluggish beat as I absorbed his meaning. “Byron—”

“Writing a different reality, where I’m removed from the equation, and all the people are fictional, helps me feel less dissatisfied with this reality.”

Narrowing my eyes, I shook my head. “So you’re telling me you’re dissatisfied with the world and everyone in it?”

“Not everyone, Jane Austen.”

“Ha. You got that.” Leaning forward, I gave his nose a quick kiss.

“Like a fly ball if my name were Rodney McCray.”

“What obscure reference is that? Someone who caught a famous fly ball?”

“More like someone who caught a fly ball famously. Went right through a wall, had no regard for his safety.” He frowned at me, his gaze thoughtful, and he gathered a deep breath before murmuring, “Reminds me of myself.”

As soon as the interviews ended, we left. Thankfully, Byron’s manager had arranged delivery from a gluten-free restaurant and we scarfed down our dinner in relative silence. I suspected we were both too tired to discuss the day, which was why I was surprised when he reminded me after dinner that we had a conversation to finish about childhood trauma.

Curled up and cuddling on the bed (fully clothed, sadly) we spoke late into the night, not caring about the hour since Byron had no appointments tomorrow until the late afternoon. I told him all about my mother’s passing when I was ten, what it was like to grow up in my uncle’s house, and how I suspected his treatment of me had exacerbated my propensity to go with the flow, turning it into fear of swimming against the current.

I thought it would be difficult to discuss my childhood with Byron, or with anyone, and it was at first, but not nearly as much as I’d anticipated.

He asked me so many questions, wanted specifics, requested that I describe the room, the time of day, add additional context, precise examples of what my uncle would say and how—specifically—I’d reacted. A few times, I wondered if this was what being cross-examined felt like. His questions did make me consider situations and people in a new light, my aunt and her complacency as well as my oldest cousin who was just one year younger than me.

But one thing Byron never did was make me feel like I was at fault, nor did he believe my uncle had been justified in his actions. He didn’t ask what I’d said to set him off, what I could’ve or should’ve done differently to avoid being screamed at—questions my aunt and cousin would ask upon discovering me crying after an altercation with my uncle.

It was just after midnight when he said, “Unless a person is imminently in danger of catching on fire or of being hit by a motor vehicle, I’m not sure screaming is ever justified.” Shifting to his side and a tad bit backward to catch my eye, Byron pushed a strand of my hair behind my ear. “Screaming might be understandable—given a particular set of circumstances—but not justified. There’s a difference between understanding actions and replaceing them justifiable. I don’t think you require me to say so, but your uncle’s were neither understandable nor justified.”

“I know.” I yawned, then tucked my hands under my chin. My voice sounded tired from talking too much after a month of not teaching five days a week. “But I also know and have forgiven myself for the fact that habits formed as a child can become ingrained and eventually turn into instincts. I will ask you for what I want, but I’m not going to be perfect. You’ll need to give me time to get better at it.”

“So noted.” His hand slid down my arm and plucked a hand from under my chin, placing my palm over his heart. “It’s late. Do you want to go to sleep?”

“No.” I smiled. “I don’t want to go to sleep.”

He smiled too. “Then what do you want to do?”

We’d already talked so much. I considered kissing him and letting our discussion of his childhood trauma wait until another time, when we both weren’t exhausted from a day of upheaval and seismic shifts in our relationship. But there were things I’d wanted to know about him for a very long time, topics I’d never felt comfortable asking about, and I’d promised I would ask for what I wanted.

Choosing my words carefully, I said, “You don’t have to tell me why, but I’ve always wanted to know, does the reason you deleted all your social media accounts have anything to do with that video of the girl at Comic-Con?”

He set his head back another inch, like he needed to see me more clearly. “Did you watch the video?”

“Maybe once, when it was being shared widely, not knowing you were in it at first. I never understood why it was bad enough to make you delete your accounts.”

“It wasn’t bad.” He moved my hand from where it covered his heart and studied my fingers as he spoke. “A girl—thirteen or fourteen, I think—started crying when she got to the front of my line. She was distressed. Her distress concerned me. I walked around the table and hugged her until she stopped crying. Someone recorded the incident and uploaded it.”

I waited for him to continue the story. When he didn’t, I asked, “That’s it?’

“Yes. That’s it.”

Maybe I was more tired than I thought, but I had to be missing something. “That’s what made you delete your accounts?”

“No. Not at all. I . . .” Byron frowned at my fingers, placing my palm on the bed between us and covering my hand with his. “That’s not why.”

“Remember, I don’t push. So if you don’t want to discuss it, we don’t have to.”

“This isn’t the reason, but . . .” He closed his eyes and frowned, breathing out through his nose. “My father isn’t someone I can respect.”

“Okay.” What this had to do with his social media, I had no idea.

It took a few seconds, twenty maybe, before he opened his eyes again and said, “He and my biological mother got pregnant in high school, very young. She was fifteen, I think. She didn’t want a baby, but my paternal grandparents, though they were older, had always wished for more children. She allowed them to adopt me. My grandparents were good people, but I do not have a high opinion of my father.”

“I’m sorry.” I scooched closer. “Was he abusive?”

“No,” he said, but the word sounded loaded, unfinished. “No, not abusive. He never screamed at me or hit me or called me names. But he—I’m not even sure how to describe what he is. Amelia says he enjoys being pitied.”

“Pitied? For what?”

“I’m not sure. Whatever he can be pitied for, I suppose. He likes to be pampered, fussed over. I didn’t talk to anyone but myself until I was ten, and the people in the small town where I grew up always felt sorry for him because of me. My biological mother left, but he stayed, and the narrative he spun centered around the fiction that he’d given up his life and future to raise me.”

“But I thought your paternal grandparents adopted you and raised you?”

“They did until they passed away within months of each other when I was eight. And then I lived in his house. For the most part, we ignored each other.”

“Huh.” I had several questions but didn’t know quite where to start. Byron usually sounded so certain about everything—what he thought, how he felt, his opinions and beliefs—yet he seemed uncertain about his father, like he disliked the man on principal but also felt conflicted about it.

As I sorted through what to ask first, Byron lay quiet again for a long moment, picking at a loose thread on the quilted comforter, then he said, “He ignored me until it served his purpose to show me off, like a sideshow act, in order to elicit sympathy from others. That’s what he did.”

I flinched. “What?”

“For example, he enrolled me in sports without talking to me about it and would break down crying in front of the other kids and parents when I didn’t speak to him at the baseball field or at the soccer pitch. He wasn’t special. I didn’t speak to anyone. But that’s when I began to suspect he did it, the public displays of teeth-gnashing and hand-wringing, because of the sympathy of the spectators.”

“He never, I mean, when it was just the two of you alone, he never tried to get you to speak then?”

“No. He didn’t talk to me.”

I flinched again. “Oh my God. I’m so sorry.”

“It’s okay. He never hit me, never yelled at me. He actually seemed pleased by my brokenness.”

“Byron.” I grabbed his shoulder, squeezing until he met my eyes. “No. You’re not broken. You weren’t then, and you aren’t now.”

“I wasn’t a typical child,” he said. “That’s what I meant. I didn’t necessarily want to play sports, but I did. I could.”

“What did you want to do?”

He shrugged. “I wanted to read nonfiction and watch the news.”

A disbelieving laugh burst out of me. “You wanted to watch the news? At eight?”

“Yes. And I read at a very early age. But now that I think things over, I believe he liked it, liked that I didn’t speak or bother him.” Byron said this lightly, like we were discussing something else, maybe the weather forecast. “When I did speak, around ten, he didn’t seem particularly pleased.”

“What did he do when you became such a success? Did it piss him off when he was proven wrong?”

One of Byron’s bitter-looking smiles curled his lip. “He continues to paint me as a pitiful figure, as though I’m a modern Edgar Allan Poe, in danger daily of drinking myself to death in a ditch. He also claims I’m an ungrateful son who refuses to recognize all he sacrificed for my talent, and he takes credit for my success, giving interviews to anyone who will listen. Thankfully, after the initial wave of interest, and given that I haven’t communicated with him in seven years, no one is asking him for his opinion these days.”

I traced the line of his cheek and jaw, angry on his behalf. “Serves him right to be ignored when he ignored you.”

“Actually, I didn’t mind being ignored by him. What I hated was the attention he sought from other parents, but I never minded being left to my own devices. I did mind losing my grandparents, though.”

“I’m so sorry. Losing them so close together.”

“I loved them. My grandfather in particular, who was a man of few words and never thought it was strange that I didn’t speak to him. But I never felt an affinity for my father, especially not after he married.”

“He got married?”

“He married a woman who treated him—and who still treats him—like a child. She does everything for him. And he leans into it.”

I hesitated before asking, “How does she treat you?”

“She treated me like I was something sad and disappointing.”

And broken. He didn’t say the words, but they were implied. His stepmother treated him like he was broken, and his father like a martyr. How messed up was that?

“Are they still married?”

He nodded, his tone remote. “They are.”

“And your biological mom? What happened to her?”

“She left after high school and went to the East Coast for college.” Byron didn’t sound tired, but his voice remained at odds with the personal nature of our discussion.

“Have you ever spoken to her?”

“No. I only knew she’d gone to the East Coast as my stepmother would complain about how heartless she was, how selfish. She told me, without me asking, that my biological mother became a research professor in Boston and never married. Everything I know about the woman—all of it involuntary—came from my stepmom.”

“You never wanted to know her? You never looked her up?”

He reached behind his head and fluffed the pillow. “I didn’t.”

“Why not?”

“She’s a stranger,” he said, like the answer was obvious.

“But you share DNA, you share some of her traits.”

“I share DNA with every person on earth, and I don’t want to know most of them either.”

I gave his shoulder a little shove. “You know what I mean.”

“I suppose I do, but no. I don’t hate her, I just don’t think about her. I have better things with which to fill my time than thinking about a person who has no time for me.” With this statement, Byron launched himself off the mattress and paced to the window. “Is it hot in here? Do you think this window opens?”

“But how do you know she has no time for you unless you reach out?”

He fiddled with the blinds, holding them to one side. “I didn’t know, but I do now. She said so.”

“She. . . what?” I sat up and pushed my back against the headboard.

“After the video of me consoling the girl at Comic-Con went viral, a few students in my biological mother’s class showed it to her—while filming her reaction, I’m assuming without permission—and asked what she thought about having me as a son.” Byron turned from the window, which remained unopened.

“Oh no.” I covered my mouth with my fingers. “How did they know she’s your birth mother?”

“My adoption wasn’t sealed or secret. Many people in my hometown are familiar with the story and happily shared my origins with any shady reporter who asked. Obtaining my birth certificate had likely been simple. By the time the Comic-Con video went viral, several papers and magazines had reported that she was my mother, including the Boston Daily.”

I braced myself. “What did she say when they showed her the video?”

“She said . . .” His eyes lost focus and he smiled, laughing lightly, but his features held no amusement, only a tinge of bitterness and incredulity. “She said, ‘I have no children.’”

“Ugh.” My hands fell to my aching heart.

“And then, when they pushed her about it, since her name and social security number are on my birth certificate, she said, ‘Everyone makes mistakes in high school. I’d appreciate if you didn’t show me videos of mine.’”

“Oh my God.” Now I covered my whole face, which had grown hot with secondhand feelings. “I’m so sorry.”

“There is nothing to be sorry for. It saved me the embarrassment of reaching out one day and having her say those words to my face.”

“But for it to be recorded and—oh shit.” I pulled my hands away, gripping the fabric of my pajama pants anxiously. “How did you see the video? Did they send it to you?”

“No. They posted it on social media.”

I groaned.

“It also went viral and was discussed widely. My biological mother is a bit of a big deal in the bioengineering space, and I believe her university issued a public statement on the video. I never read the statement, but that too was discussed widely online and in the media. By strangers. By people I’ve never met, will never meet, and who do not know me at all.”

“Byron. I—I’m—” Not knowing what to say, I stood from the bed, crossed to him, grabbed his face, and kissed him. Hard. As I leaned away, I said, “They had no right.”

“No, they didn’t. But they do it anyway, don’t they?” His smile was small and looked somehow sharp, his typically vivid gaze unusually dim. “The voyeurs, they lurk until they stumble across pain porn, and then they pick it apart, offer their unsolicited opinions about a situation and people they do not know or understand, ignoring context as though the bigger picture is a finger painting. They dissect the players, rate and make value statements about the subjects of their fascination, all in a public space for everyone to read and comment on.”

“No wonder you don’t like people.”

He nodded. “No wonder I don’t like people.”

“But not all people are like that.”

“Are you going to start a hashtag, notallpeople?”

I chuckled, but it was sad and mournful given the story he’d just shared. Smoothing my hands over his beautiful face, I pushed my fingers into his hair. “No, but I am going to advocate on behalf of those people who don’t do this kind of thing. Not all people engage in the feeding frenzy of gossip and pain.”

“You never saw the video of my mother? Truly?”

“No. I never did. It was my first year of teaching, and I wasn’t on social media much. When Amelia told me you’d deleted all your accounts, I assumed it must’ve been the Comic-Con video because of the timing. But I didn’t want to invade your privacy by asking. It wasn’t any of my business.”

“But you were curious?”

“Of course I was curious. It seemed like a big reaction to a fairly benign video of you and a fan.”

“Huh.”

“What?”

“Thank you for being you.”

“You’re welcome. But you know, there are more people like me out there. More people who actively avoid reading about the personal lives of others when there’s no criminal activity or risk to public safety. It feels intrusive to me.” Especially after what had happened to me in high school, whenever I witnessed or heard about a public-fail moment for a nonpolitician, I tuned it out.

Everyone made mistakes, stumbled and struggled and experienced embarrassment. In my opinion, what all people needed in these moments was time to process, grace to know they wouldn’t be forever judged for a mistake or accident or a situation over which they had no control, and space to put the events into perspective so they could move forward.

Basically, the opposite of what had happened to Byron. I now understood why he hated social media and wouldn’t give interviews. And though I didn’t blame him for deleting his accounts and wanting to distance himself from public comment, I wished he’d be willing to explore a happy, healthy medium.

For better or worse, social media was now part of our daily lives. I saw the good it could do, the ways it could reach and connect people, help them feel less alone, more understood. They could easily replace others like them, with shared niche interests, whereas before they’d been stranded on individual islands of one.

Sure, we didn’t need social media, but we did need to live with it. Perhaps one day, Byron would be open to reassessing his options. He’d stranded himself on his island of one for so long. Maybe he’d been content. But he hadn’t been happy.