Real Life Sucks!

16

"I like you."

Katie looked at him as though he had battered her with a fluffy stick, mouth opening and closing. She looked uncomfortable, stepping from bare foot to bare foot, looking around as though to see if a bunch of people were about to jump out at her yelling 'Gotcha!'. When no-one jumped anywhere, she looked back at Rory and scowled.

This was it. The moment where she told him that he was disgusting. That she listed every single thing about him that made her feel disgusted. A long list. A list that, if it were on a single piece of paper, would roll yards away from her as she began to recite everything that could explain, in no uncertain terms, that he, Rory, was as incompatible with her as the surface of the Sun was incompatible with, well, pretty much everything.

"I like you, too." Then why did she look as though he had told her that he was, in fact, an alien from the planet Gimblethrop, here to enslave the population and turn them into pancakes. Or something. "What's brought this on?"

Now, that was a question.

-+-

"Has it happened often? People rejecting you? Or that you believe they've rejected you?" The therapist had said it as gently as she could, and Rory that knew she knew that this was a very touchy subject. "You say 'everybody' rejects you, but, here, where it's safe, you can say exactly what you mean."

"Yeah. All the time!" He knew that she knew that that was, if not an outright lie, then an egregious exaggeration. "I mean, sometimes not in so many words, but you can tell. They get a look in their eyes, you know? It's obvious."

"Obvious how?" The pen falling upon the notepad, held there by both hands. This was the point where the therapist always said something she felt was meaningful and deep. "We, as humans, tend to project our own fears on others. We look at ourselves and make decisions about us before the other person. I've done it myself. But, sometimes, we don't know as much about ourselves as we think we do. Is it obvious to them, or to you?"

He had looked down at himself. He did that a lot and couldn't understand that others didn't see what he saw. Didn't hear the things that came out of his mouth. Of course it was obvious to others. How could it not be?

-+-

Sat on the bed, a good arm's length apart, both Rory and Katie looked anywhere but at each other. Katie picked at her bright, violet coloured fingernails, bringing her natural nail colour to light, little flakes of nail polish falling away. Rory clutched his hands between his knees, as though he feared they would suddenly become overly touchy if he didn't keep them under control. He looked at the in-room drinks tray. Tea bags in little sachets, arranged like letters in a post office sorting box. Little tubes of coffee and hot chocolate.

This was new territory. He'd had girlfriends, in the past. Not for long, and not on any deep way, but girlfriends nonetheless. Yet he had always had, in the back of his mind, the knowledge that it wouldn't last. They would see him for exactly who he was, eventually, or someone better would come along and practically everyone was better. He knew that.

"Michelle said you liked me. And Rebecca. But I don't trust Rebecca's judgement. She likes reality tv shows." That was odd, wasn't it? An odd thing to say. The kind of odd that made people squint their eyes at him and say a slow 'okay'. "I don't know what to do, to be honest."

"Do about what?" Katie shifted on the bed and her pyjama top strained against the continuous attack of her breasts. That didn't help. Rory couldn't look at her now. His eyes would fall into that gravity well and he knew, through experience, that he shouldn't look at boobs when talking to women. "And reality tv shows suck people's brains dry. Literally. Husks of people dying to know how Jim Pectorals could possibly find a way of bedding Skye Fakelips, because, oh my god, Alanna Twerkbum likes him too!"