I tried to smile, but my face wouldn’t cooperate.
“Well, if it’s any consolation, Noel didn’t really deal,” continued Claude. “I mean, not that anyone
“Oh.”
“Yeah.”
“I’m so sorry,” I said again.
I couldn’t stand for the conversation to go on any longer, so I turned to Sydonie and Marie, who had been running in circles around the hedge I was cutting. “Did you guys feed the llamas yet?” I said as brightly as I could.
“I want to!” cried Marie. “I’m going to give them food from my hand.”
“If you go to the Family Farm area, you can buy food pellets and feed the animals,” I explained to Claude.
“Come with us, Ruby!” said Sydonie. “Tell Claude the names of all the goats!”
“I can’t, cutie,” I told her. “I have to work.”
We said our goodbyes awkwardly, and Claude led the girls off. I went on clipping the hedge.
Like a regular person.
Like a person who knew what to do with everything she knew, now.
That night Gideon took me bowling. He was down for the weekend from college, and as I laughed and chatted and rolled my orange ball down the lane, deep inside I was thinking: Are these really the only options in terms of romance?
1. Love with a brooding, confusing guy who makes me feel insecure and stops being my real live boyfriend because he is too messed up, or
2. Nonlove with a real live boyfriend who is wholesome and sweet and responsible but just isn’t that exciting and kisses with too much slobber?
In other words, love and pain, or safety and boredom?
In the movies heroines often
The movies make the brooding guy the hero—the guy with problems, the guy who carries a gun, the guy with unresolved anger, the guy with a chip on his shoulder, the guy who’s a vampire—and they tell you that you can have the mythical happy ending with that same brooding guy.3
But in reality, the brooding guy is cranky. He doesn’t reply to e-mails. He doesn’t call. He’s only half there when you’re talking to him, and he doesn’t chase you when you run. You feel insecure all the time. You get needy and sad and you hate yourself for being needy.
If you don’t know why he’s brooding, you’re shut out.4
And if you
Even if he shares his feelings—or overshares his feelings, like my dad—he’s still not really there. He’s off in his own mind, wrangling his Reginald and drooling onto the couch or sobbing into dinner or lying on the floor.
It is really, really, really not as attractive in true life as it seems in the movies.
Gideon wasn’t a jerk. I had tried to find something wrong with him, I really had—but he was neither a shallow idiot nor a crooked, spineless cheater. And he seemed to really like me. What was more, he was incredibly hot and always wanted to go do fun things like bowling or wakeboarding; he was interested in school and questioned authority—and listened when I spoke.
Maybe, I thought, I should be the serious girlfriend of Gideon. Maybe, if I kept pretending to him that my home life was good, that I felt confident about college, that I was experienced in the nether regions and in possession of solid mental health—maybe if I kept pretending, bit by bit, those things would become true.
Gideon thought I was a good person with an easy life.
Maybe with him, I could be that.
In life, I told myself, if not in the movies, the nice guy should finish first. Stick with him and stay away from people who don’t call you and have secrets and weird behaviors. Be with that nice guy because he is good and kind, without angsting about all the ways in which he doesn’t live up to your romantic ideal.
Romantic ideals are stupid anyway.
Fact: I was lucky to have Gideon.
Fact: I was happy with Gideon.
Or almost happy.
Or something that might turn into happy.
If he could just be trained to be a better kisser.
And if I could just tell him what was really going on in my life.
