I brightened a bit.
“If anything, I’d say she’s jealous.”
“Jealous?! Of me??” I exclaimed, my mouth popping open.
Adam nodded with a smug look on his face. “She’s jealous of you, and she’s jealous of your mom for having you. I mean, think about it from her point of view… there she is, stuck with this screw-up son, so she has to make everyone around her feel bad so that she can feel better. She’s intimidated by your mom because your mother has all of the power and respect in the community: Everything that she wants. She’s got to come up with some reason why she doesn’t have that.”
“So she picks on me,” I concluded. “Even though everything she says about her son being successful, and that she’s so proud of him…”
“It’s all bullshit,” Adam chuckled. “Tim’s a delinquent; everyone in the precinct knows that. If some stupid prank is happening, or if we’re getting calls from something going sideways, it usually comes back to him.”
“Wow,” I said, letting out a small breath. “So she’s a liar,”
“Yep, a big one,” Adam said. “And the more you press her for details, the more vague she gets. It’s actually pretty fun to watch sometimes.”
I was quiet, thinking of all the past interactions I’d had with Mrs. Carr and her I-need-to-speak-with-the-manager haircut. Every single time, she carried around this sense of superiority like it was some luxurious accessory.
“Don’t ever let anyone make you feel like you’re less,” Adam said. “Chances are they’re doing it because they desperately need to feel like they’re more. And if anyone does that to you, it means they’re threatened by you.”
“What? That’s ridiculous. Threatened by me?” I asked with my eyebrow raised. “I’m just a skinny gay kid from suburbia!”
“No, you’re not just a skinny gay kid from suburbia,” Adam argued. “You’re tall, blond, handsome, smart, and successful. You’ve got the DuPont name tied to you too, and that’s enough to send these suburban moms quaking in their boots.”
I swelled with pride. No one had ever laid it out for me like that before. It caused me to look at all my past interactions in a brand new light, and it explained so many uncomfortable conversations I’d had with staff at the school or other families in this town.
“They’re scared of you. And what you bring to the table. If they step out of line, they don’t know if you’re going to mention it to your mom. And if your mom knows things about people in the community, that could have the potential to ruin some lives.”
“Well, now her life is ruined, so I don’t think that she’s going to be ruining anyone else’s any time soon.”
“Her life isn’t ruined, she just thinks it is,” Adam said as he put the cop car into park.
“I know, I know. But if she thinks it’s ruined, I’m kind of scared about what she’s going to do.”
“Don’t worry about that right now,” Adam said gently as we got out of the car and walked toward the station. “She’s safe, I’ve got Nick keeping an eye on her, remember? What you should be thinking about is what kind of clothes you want to get.”
* * *
An hour later, we were inside the bright white walls of the Zara in the nearby city. I was having the time of my life sifting through all the clothes, finding new patterns and new combinations of clothing for outfits.
“What do you think of these shoes?!” I asked Adam, showing him some low-rise boots.
“Get ‘em,” he said from the bench texting on his phone.
My mouth dropped open. “S-seriously?”
“Yeah, I told you. I want to spoil you,” he said, smiling.
“O-okay!” I said, the joy filling me up as I set the shoes down next to him.
He was tapping away on his phone, his eyebrows coming together. A coarse grain of suspicion ground away at my mind. Was he texting someone about work stuff? Or was he tapping away to… Brian?
I shuffled the thought away as I perused the clothing around me. It was easy to get lost in the joy of shopping, retreating to the clothing racks like hiding in a colorful forest.
Picking up four button-downs with speckles and flowers and sometimes birds on them, plus some slacks, then some more boots, shoes, and belts, I retreated to the dressing room.
As I passed by Adam carrying my stack of clothing, he peeked up from his phone and smiled encouragingly.
While I was in the dressing room trying on the clothes, I couldn’t help but let that thought fester. Who was he texting? There had to be a reason his eyebrows came together like that…
Though, the thought was chased away as soon as I got a look at myself in the mirror.
Even with my self-esteem issues, I had to admit that I looked stunning.
The slim fit shirt followed the lines of my body perfectly, and the floral print raced up my torso. The dark blue and pink colors perfectly complimented my pale complexion.
Bubbling over with excitement, I raced out of the dressing room to show Adam.
He was still hunched over his phone texting.
“Adam!” I called out.
He looked over at me as if I’d yanked him out of a trance. When his eyes fell on me, his mouth formed that “o” shape again.
“Get it. Get all of it. I don’t care how much it costs— you look too good for that outfit to go to waste.”
I stood up straight, looking smug, and returned to the dressing room to try on the second outfit.
In the dressing room, I took off my clothes and set them in a folded pile on the bench. When I looked at myself naked in the mirror, for the first time in a long time I felt… proud. I liked the way my slim form had barely any muscle, and only had the faintest of lines by my obliques.
And Adam hadn’t even seen me
