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1.
Zoe has her bottom lip sucked between her teeth, face screwed up in intense concentration. She’s painting Connor’s nails a bright blue color at his request.
“There!” she proudly proclaims, offering him a big grin, one of her front teeth missing.
Connor looks down at her work, very neat considering that she’s only six.
“Thanks, Zo,” he says, staring at his fingers as if in awe of them.
“You look beautiful,” Zoe says happily.
Connor frowns. “Boys aren’t supposed to be beautiful.”
“Well, you are!”
It's a matter-of-fact statement, no arguments allowed. Plus, he would be a fool to argue with her.
He gives her another smile, this one weaker. “Thanks again, Zoe.”
He moves to ruffle her hair, but she shrieks that he’ll mess up all her hard work, and so he stops.
Later that night, he sits up under the lamp on his desk and picks the polish off, nail by nail, watching it crack and flake on his fingertips and fall onto the wood.
He isn’t beautiful, and he doesn’t want to be.
Or, at least, that’s what he keeps telling himself.
2.
“You’re beautiful,” Miguel says one afternoon.
They’re laying on the floor of Connor’s bedroom, on their sides, faces turned towards each other. They’re coming down from their high, too, making them feel like they’re almost floating above the hardwood floors.
Connor blushes, shaking his head with a small smile. “I’m not,” he replies. He’s not trying to fish for compliments; he truly doesn’t believe it.
“But you are. I mean, seriously…”
Bringing his hands up to cover his blush, Connor shakes his head again. “Shut up,” he says.
Miguel takes his hands gently, pushing them down to reveal his face again. “Never,” he grins.
Connor grins too, and their faces are so incredibly close, Connor could count the freckles under Miguel’s eyes. He wants to lean in and kiss him, but he doesn’t have the guts to initiate anything between them. That’s always been Miguel’s job.
“I mean it,” Miguel whispers. “I wish you could see it too.”
He sighs. “I’m sorry.”
“Don’t apologize, silly. I just mean...If you could see yourself the way that I see you, you would think so much better of yourself.”
He leans in and kisses the top of Connor’s head softly.
Connor lets his eyes flutter shut, relaxed and still a bit spacey.
Beautiful, huh? That’s a word he’s never thought of himself as. He sure as hell doesn’t believe it, because how could he? It will take much more than one compliment to unlearn years of self-loathing, but this...Miguel, their friendship, their...whatever this is...Maybe this is the first step to unlearning.
Maybe.
3.
Rehab is fucking hell, Connor decides.
Well, he’s said the same thing about school, and home as well, so it’s no shock he thinks the same of this place. They took his phone, stuffed him in a tiny room with bunk beds in pristine white sheets. It feels like a prison, or an asylum, or just one of those places from the movies where nothing good can ever happen.
He’s not even an addict. Sure, he smokes a lot, but he doesn’t need it. He only took the fall for Miguel to save his ass, but now his parents have decided he needs ‘professional help’.
The only kids here are all true addicts, bruises on their inner arms and withdrawal making them cry out and sweat and shake.
Connor feels out of place. Not better or worse than anyone else; he has his vices too, so he can’t judge. He just feels wrong there, but then again, when does he ever really feel right?
There’s a girl with dark circles under deep brown eyes. Got into her mother’s painkillers during her sophomore year, hasn’t been able to quit since. She sits next to him in group circles, always pulling her knees up to her chest in her chair, stealing glances sideways at him.
They start talking after his first week there.
“I never noticed that your eyes are two different colors,” she says, tilting her head to the side.
Connor shrugs. “This one is only half brown though, so it’s more like ¼ of my eyes are a different color.”
She laughs. “It’s still cool though. Has anyone ever told you how attractive you are?”
That takes him a little by surprises. “Oh, I don’t—”
“Don’t worry, I’m not trying to hit on you,” she says. “I’ve got a girl waiting for me back home.” She winks at that, a grin curled on her lips. “I just mean, like, aesthetically...You’re really beautiful.”
He feels a flush rise in his cheeks. “Thanks?”
She cups his face in one of her hands. “Just in case you don’t believe it, I wanted to tell you.”
And then they were called for bed, and she slipped out of his room and back to her own without another word.
He felt her fingers on his cheek still, the ghost of a touch lingering. Her words floated in his head, a memory pinned at the forefront.
What did she know about beauty? She found beauty in oxy and smudged eyeliner (So much for not judging, right?).
What even is beauty anyway?
***
1.
It is the day of prom, and Connor feels like he may either faint or throw up.
So, it’s not actually his prom. No, he’d skipped out on that opportunity, but Miguel had asked him to the dance at his school, the one Connor met him at.
Of course, he said yes.
So now, he fiddles with his blue suit that is just a little bit too big around his shoulders, and wonders if this is even worth the hassle, the anxiety. But for Miguel, he figures that it is.
His mother squeals and cries over him, how ‘handsome’ he looks, how happy she is. It’s sweet, but it does little to calm his nerves.
Miguel arrives in his car, his hair slicked back and adorned in a black tux. They take the awkward staircase photos, and Larry begs him to, “please, just smile for one picture!”
Miguel pinches his side out of view of the camera and his parents, making him laugh and getting a picture of his mouth stretched in a ridiculous grin. But he doesn’t hate it or even beg for them to delete it.
“You look beautiful,” Miguel whispers to him after their humiliating photo shoot is through, and Connor catches a glimpse of the two of them, or himself in the mirror across the room, their fingers intertwined at their sides, flushed faces and dorky smiles.
And, well, they’re beautiful.
So maybe that means he’s beautiful too, even on his own.