Page 214 of What We Brave
"Here's what I think," Reid says, leaning back on his hands. "I think it's like... okay, this is going to sound terrible, but you know when you meet someone with a giant hairy mole?"
Laine blinks. "What?"
"Hear me out. Giant hairy mole. Right on their face. First time you see it, that's all you see. It'sright there. You're trying not to look at it, which means you're definitely looking at it, which means you feel like an asshole."
"Where are you going with this?" I ask.
"But then you see that person again. And again. And by the third or fourth time, you stop seeing the mole. You just see the person. Because your brain adjusted. It filed the mole under 'normal' and moved on."
Laine's staring at him. "Did you just compare our relationship to a giant hairy mole?"
"I comparedother people's reactionto our relationship to—look, the metaphor isn't the point."
"The metaphor is terrible," I say.
"The metaphor isaccurate.People stare because we're new. We're unexpected. Three people holding hands doesn't fit their template. But if we keep showing up—at the market, at the coffee shop, around town—eventually we stop being the weird thing and start being just... us. The mole becomes normal."
Laine groans and looks at the sky. "Please stop saying mole."
"The point is, the only way people get used to us is if we give them the chance to. And we can't do that if we—" He catches himself. Softens. "If we hide when it gets hard."
He didn't sayif you drop Blake's hand.He didn't have to.
Laine's jaw does the thing. The one I always notice. The one where she's writing an essay in her head about everything she did wrong.
"I know," she says. "I know that."
"I'm not—I'm not trying to make you feel bad."
"I know you're not." She pulls off a glove, wipes her face with the back of her hand. Leaves a streak of dirt across her forehead. "It's just—it's easy to say 'keep showing up' when you're the one people don't look twice at."
Reid goes quiet.
"You and me walking down the street?" She gestures between herself and Reid. "Nobody blinks. Cute couple. Normal. Add Blake, and suddenly it's—" She waves her hand. "Suddenly there's math. People are doing math. And I canfeelthem doing it. Trying to figure out the configuration. Who's with who. What's happening."
"Let them do math," I say.
She looks at me.
"I'm serious. Let them figure it out. Let them stare. Let them get it wrong." I toss the broken stick pieces into the brush pile. "The soap lady? She looked at us for maybe ten seconds. We survived. The world didn't end."
"The soap lady isn't Joyce."
"Joyce was fine. Joyce was better than fine." I hold her gaze. "Joycealready knew, Laine. And she looked at us and said we look good together."
"I know."
"So the flinch wasn't about Joyce."
"I know that too."
I should stop. I can feel myself pushing toward something, and after last night—after Reid forced us both to be honest and it cost us all something—I should let this breathe.
But the words are already forming.
"It was about you," I say. "What you think you look like. Standing next to both of us."
Laine's eyes go bright. She doesn't look away.
