“One size does not fit all when it comes to people, problems, love, and intrigue. One size does not fit all when it comes to dating and the possibility of more. One size does not fit all when it comes to what a man is looking for, what he’s expecting, and what you should expect out of him.”
“It’s true, some guys don’t call because they have better options or don’t click with you at all. Some don’t call because one of their most prominent personality traits is most easily described as assholeishness. And some don’t call—and they never will—because a steady girl isn’t what they’re looking for.”
“But some men don’t call because the woman they spend a couple of mundane hours with isn’t the woman you are. It’s some bland, scrubbed-down version thanks to articles like this one and the stereotypes they perpetuate. Some men don’t call because the confidence you lack is small in comparison to the vast emptiness of their own.”
“Be you. Not what some faceless Simon behind a computer tells you to be—and not what the person you’re trying to impress wants. There shouldn’t be a fucking break-in period before you can be you or an amount of time you should wait to make a move. And there are instances you should be able to give a guy the benefit of the doubt. If you’re bold, be bold. If you’re clingy, cling. Because there are seven billion people in the world, and Reed This, Sex Says: There’s someone out there for everyone. But good fucking luck finding the right one for you while you’re pretending to be someone else.”
I brought my cigarette to my mouth and leaned forward at once, stopping the recording on one last frame of my face, smoke obscuring the details.
Lola Sexton’s words didn’t directly tell anyone to pretend to be someone else, but that was the ripple effect. Sweet, trusting women would go into dates jaded by the past and a skewed sense of what every signal a man sent must “mean.” They’d discount a nervous, otherwise caring guy because he didn’t have the confidence to make his feelings known immediately. There were no hard or fast rules in love, and her column read like there were.
Not one to blog in the past, I wasn’t proficient in any aspect of it now. But after a few minutes of fiddling, I finally got the video uploaded to a YouTube account I’d just created, and I left it to find a small home in the world.
Maybe it would find someone who needed to see it, needed to hear it, and maybe it wouldn’t.
But it gave me the outlet I needed to move on.
With one last drag, I shut my computer, stubbed out the cigarette in my ashtray and stumbled to my bed, pulling my T-shirt over my head and falling face first into the covers gracelessly.
I didn’t set an alarm, and I didn’t struggle to find sleep. Confident in who I was and what I wanted out of life, I drifted off like a content baby in the womb.
A delivery truck honked its horn, and my hands jerked the handlebars of my bike a little, causing the wheels to roll over a bumpy section of pavement. My body shook from the vibrations, and I silently cursed the man driving the monstrosity on tires.
Midday traffic in San Francisco was a real bitch sometimes. Hence, one of the reasons I was on the bike in the first place. The other reason was that I was the kind of weird you couldn’t learn. Nope, like it or not, I was born this way.
I slipped my hand into the side pocket of my cutoff jean shorts and tapped the volume button a few times to drown out the annoying sounds of people in a rush to get somewhere they probably didn’t want to be.
The last time I had driven a car, I was eighteen, and it was my dad’s old Astrovan. With its maroon paint, sliding doors, and spacious back seat, that van was a goddamn relic. It was a sad day in the Sexton house when my dad had to send Delilah—that was her name—off to the junkyard because she had turned her very last mile.
Unfortunately, her aging process worked the opposite of wine. But in her prime, she had taken us on vacations all over the West Coast. I loved that big-ass van. She had been a part of the family, and after she died, I made a promise to myself that I’d never own a vehicle unless I knew it was The One.
It’s safe to say, I have an unhealthy penchant for attachments to inanimate objects. Not in a kinky way where I had the urge to fuck my microwave. But for as long as I could remember, I’d named all the material things I loved. In Delilah’s case, I’d considered her to be another sister. Hell, some days, I’d loved her more than my blood-related sister—probably still would if she were still burning up the road.
Why am I telling you about Delilah?
Well, in a roundabout way, it has prepared you to hear about my bike. Brace yourself because this girl is what makes my heart beat faster.