“Latex?” he asked.
“She was a nurse. She’s retired now. Which she deserves, I guess. She worked really hard when we were young. Lots of night shifts, because those paid more.” And then a smell hit me. A smell thought. It wasn’t pleasant and I didn’t know where it came from at first, until I did.
“I think my dad smelled of cigarettes,” I said pensively.
“You think?” he repeated.
“I don’t know. I last saw him when I was a toddler. But I think I remember cigarettes.” I tried to shrug off what was starting to become a painful memory. “But that’s impossible, right? You can’t remember smells from when you were that young.”
“I don’t know.” Mark sounded thoughtful. “Smell is a very powerful memory.”
I thought about that for a while and then thought about all the smells in my life. Kyle always smelled of that specific hair gel, the one he liked to use. My sister always smelled of mint, she chewed gum a lot, and I remember how my niece had smelled when she was first born.
“What’s your signature fragrance?” I asked him.
“Don’t think I’ve found it yet,” he said, gesturing to the cupboard.
“What would mine be?” I asked, and then a lump formed in my throat. God, why did that question seem so strangely intimate? It felt like I was asking him what kind of lingerie he thought would look good on me.
“If you had a fragrance it would be . . .” He paused and looked at me for the longest time. His face looked searching at first, and then slightly blank, as if something was dawning on him.
“What?” I asked defensively. “Are you trying to decide what my personality is?”
“I am,” he said.
“Looks like you’re having trouble?” I felt a little hurt that he wasn’t able to see me and my unique personal scent.
He nodded for a moment and then agreed with me, much to my horror.
“I . . . I have a personality,” I said, broken. “It’s uh . . . um . . .” I stumbled over my words and then stopped talking.Did I have my own personality?Holy crap! I shook my head at the thought.
“What are the things you like?” he suddenly asked. “Other than likes and popular hashtags?”
“I . . . I like, well, um . . .” I stopped talking and wracked my brain. What were the things I liked? My likes always seemed to be dictated by the current hashtags, and things that were trending or whatever was going to get me more likes and shares. I squirmed. Suddenly this conversation was making me feel very uncomfortable. I turned and walked out of the bathroom, wanting to be as far away from those bottles as possible now. They seemed to be mocking me. Each with their own bloody unique personality and me with my lack of personality, or so it seemed. I had a personality, didn’t I? I had done those online personality tests before! They had told me I had a personality. Wasn’t there an app I could use to figure out what I liked? Shit! My fingertips itched and I needed my phone. It was plugged into the wall next to Mark’s bed and I started moving towards it.
“Where are you going?” Mark asked.
“To get ready for tonight.” I walked into the room and closed the door behind me.
“Cool, we have to leave in about five minutes,” Mark shouted through the door to me.
CHAPTER 32
Five minutes turned into ten, turned into fifteen, something that Mark pointed out to me several times through the door.
“I’m just contouring,” I shouted out.
“What’s that?” he asked.
“Never mind,” I shouted back, not wanting to explain what contour was. When I was still a lot bigger, I’d done a YouTube tutorial on contouring, giving a chubby face cheekbones. It had been one of my breakout videos, the one that had put me on the map as an influencer to watch. I still remember that feeling I got when I woke up and saw how many times the video had been viewed. The feeling I got as I read through all the positive comments telling me what an inspiration I was for losing so much weight and how beautiful I looked. It had felt so exhilarating. To have something I’d done acknowledged so publicly, when nothing I’d done for years had garnered any attention. Well, any positive attention. I got a lot of attention from my mom when I was young, but not the kind I wanted. She was always trying to put me on a diet, which inevitably made me feel worse about myself, which made me eat even more.
I finally stepped out the room when I’d contoured, done my brows and over-lined my lips. I walked out and looked at Mark. His jaw fell and he stared at me in a way I did not know how to interpret. I felt self-conscious.
“What?” I asked.
“Um . . .” He stood up. “I think you might find it hard to walk there in those.” His eyes trailed down to my feet.
“These?” I was wearing my favorite heels. Super sexy, super high.
