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It was like I was a teenager again, sneaking a boy into my house when my parents weren’t home. I didn’t want to imagine how pissed off my mother would be if she ever found out about this, but she wouldn’t. What she didn’t know couldn’t anger her.
He let me lead him upstairs, quiet as he looked around. When we reached the hallway on the second floor, he paused, staring up at the wall. My mom’s numerous framed photos smiled down at us, chronicling my life from infancy until now. The majority of the pictures were from beauty pageants, including glamor shots spanning throughout the first twelve years of my life.
“Yeah, I was one ofthosekids,” I said, as he inspected them. The photos looked silly; I’d been as young as two for some of those pageants, dressed in sequins and glitter with a full face of makeup. Perfectly straight false teeth hid the gaps left by losing my baby teeth, and poofy wigs covered my soft wispy hair. I’d been a toddler, wearing dangling earrings and lipstick, smiling big and bright.
Manson looked at the photos one by one, and I wished I could see into his brain. I wanted to know what he was thinking when he lingered over the family portraits or traced his finger along the frames.
“Did you enjoy it?” he said, his question catching me off guard. “The pageants?”
No one, not even my mom, had ever asked me that. I wasn’t even sure how to answer.
“It made my mom happy,” I finally said. “She thought it taught me social skills, and she was right. I was never afraid to be in front of a crowd, even when I was really little.”
I’d learned to drown out my nerves with floods of false confidence, to look at every other little girl I encountered as a challenge. I learned to always strive to be the best, to harden my emotions, to view the world as my stage. I’d even had a coach. I could still remember her and my mom making me walk back and forth as I hit all my “points” as I would have to in competition.
“Pretty feet, Jessica, remember? Pretty feet!”
“Give them a nice big smile, come on, nice pretty smile!”
“Don’t clench your fingers like that. Let the judges see prettyhands!”
Be pretty so you’ll win. Be pretty so they’ll like you.
“That’s not what I asked.”
His tone wasn’t demanding, but my first instinct was to lie. Of course I enjoyed it! Why wouldn’t I like dressing up nice, getting attention, feeling like I was the prettiest little girl in the world? What else could I have wanted than to make my mom proud, to have others look at me in envy, to feel like I was the best?
“When I won, I enjoyed it,” I said. “But there was only one winner. And sometimes…many times…that wasn’t me.”
Someone else was prettier, smarter, more graceful, more skilled. It hurt to lose, but it also pushed me to win. To try harder, to perform better. No matter what it took, no matter how many times I won first place, it was never enough. The competition didn’t end once the sequins came off and the glitter was washed away.
Manson stepped closer. Before I even realized what was happening, he’d scooped me up, my feet leaving the ground as he easily carried me the rest of the way down the hall.
“What are you doing?” I said, as he shoved open my bedroom door with his foot.
“Getting that sad look off your face,” he said, smiling at me crookedly as he stopped next to my bed. He dumped me on the mattress but followed me down, crawling on top of me. He buried his face against my neck, the combination of his mouth and warm breath trailing over my skin making me erupt in a fit of laughter.
“Fuck, no, no, no, I’m too ticklish there!” But he already knew my weakness, as he swooped in right for that sensitive spot behind my ear. I shrieked and struggled as he easily held me down, laughing at my helpless thrashing.
“That’s better,” he said, flopping down on the pillows, and I finally had a chance to catch my breath. We lay there, side byside, staring at the ceiling as our gasps slowed. When I sighed, still shivering with leftover giggles, I turned my face toward him.
He was staring back.
“You’re beautiful,” he said. “How other people look couldn’t ever change that.”
I smiled, then stared at the ceiling as if that would hide how deeply I was blushing. Plenty of people called me beautiful — but it was different when he said it.
We stripped off our clothes until I was wearing only panties and Jason’s t-shirt, and he was in nothing more than black briefs. I pulled him onto the bed and my hands roamed over him slowly, exploring him in a way I’d never allowed myself to do before. I followed the lines of his tattoos, finding scars and freckles in the moonlight streaming in my window. He let me do it, lying there with his arms folded beneath his head as I touched him.
We shifted around, finally settling as he pulled me close, with my back to his chest. His arm wrapped around my waist, heavy but not clinging, like a weighted blanket that immediately relaxed me.
“Are you comfortable?” he said. His mouth was so close against my neck, and he was so warm.
“Yeah. Really comfortable.”
His steady breathing lulled me into a dreamless sleep within minutes.
36
