hate is a strong word (bxb)

31

It was 4:00 pm and Benjamin stood anxiously in his bedroom, holding a mirror in his hand. The mirror was small and cheap. It was the type of mirror that you would buy from the dollar store—with the thick plastic rim around it, and Ben could barely see his entire face in it without holding it far, far away. It was going to have to do, though, because he thought that it would seem weird if his father heard him pacing around the bathroom, looking at himself in the mirror. His father would think it was suspicious, and if he realized that Benjamin was just staring at himself in the mirror, well, he would've thought that it was kind of girly. Though, Mr. Adams would surely use a less kind word than "girly."

Ben paced around and stared at himself in the mirror, or at least the distorted image that the cheap mirror was able to provide him with. Thinking about hanging out with Braxton tonight had somehow gotten him to become fixated on his appearance.

He figured that he was supposed to look somewhat decent, wasn't he? It wasn't a date—no, not a formal one at least—but it was the first time that they would be hanging out since they started dating. Even if they weren't going out anywhere, Benjamin figured that he was still meant to look somewhat nice.

Braxton hadn't told Benjamin anything—not a single detail of what they would be doing. All he asked was if Ben wanted to come over tonight—and even that was a vague detail because Ben didn't know what time he was even supposed to come over. All Braxton said was tonight.

It felt odd that all of a sudden he would be insecure about how he looked. It wasn't as if he had been too full of himself before (like a certain someone that he knew,) but he wasn't necessarily insecure about the way that he looked. There were some things that he liked about himself, and others that he didn't. He liked his eyes, for instance. They were dark, but he almost liked that about them. He thought that light eyes would look weird with his complexion. He liked other small things, too, like his freckles. He liked the way that they were only spread over his cheeks, rather than his entire face. He wasn't all that fond of his hair, though. People often complimented him on his curly hair but he personally wasn't a fan of it. It knotted easily and it always seemed too messy. Benjamin basked in his entire appearance—weighing out the good and the bad and getting stuck on small things along the way.

Benjamin cursed at himself for getting stuck in his own head. Why the actual hell would he care about his appearance now? The first time that Benjamin went over Braxton's house, he had sex with him without even putting one singular thought into what his appearance made him look like. And then, he went over Braxton's house several more times for that same exact reason. If he felt comfortable enough to show his bare skin, what was so different about today? Braxton had just seem Ben in school earlier that day, anyways. What was the difference?

Ben's lips looked just a tad bit chapped and he grimaced at this as he applied some lip balm over that, hoping it would do the trick. He figured that at least this was a legitimate concern. After all, what if Braxton wanted to kiss him? Ben couldn't help but cringe at himself, why was he like that?

Ben tried to take a step back from his worries to think logically about the situation. He was just going over there to hang out. But to hang out with a guy who he was now dating?

He came to the conclusion that he was most worried about how he was meant to act. There seemed to be no real guideline for how Benjamin was supposed to act. When he was just hooking up with Braxton, he knew how he was expected to act. The fact was that this was a whole new playing field, and it made Benjamin unsettled to say the least.

He spent the next ten minutes awkwardly pacing around his room, filling his mind with worries that weren't even logical. He walked from one end of the room to the other, over and over again, almost as if he were going manic. This all ended when he received a text from Braxton that said, "do u wanna come over now?"