Somewhere Else [Damien Haas]

10. Arts

-/-/-

But why didn't I do it?

I could have pulled him by his sweater and asked him if he wanted to stay over, because of course, consent is queen. I could have done it right and better than in high school. History would have been the present, and the future would have been clearer than my raindrop-stained windowpane.

Sometimes, I wonder how I graduated with a high GPA but how I also am very incredibly stupid when it comes to love.

"So dumb!" I scream into my pillow. "So dumb, so dumb, so dumb!"

And I deserved that. I deserved being called dumb by myself, because I bared myself to the man I know I'm shit-ass-balls in love with for an entire evening, showing him my laugh, my smile, my awkwardly long time of taking a restroom break. And he was perfectly fine with it! He told me I made him happy. I could have done it, my dear friends. I could have done it.

"Okay, calm down," I tell myself, sitting up straight on my bed and realizing how much makeup is on my pillowcase. I flip it over. "I need to calm down. The interview is in less than fifteen hours, I just need to calm down."

But I wasn't any sort of calm at all. After getting six hours of sleep, I wake up at seven in the morning, prepared my outfit, took a shower, ate breakfast, drank a shit ton of coffee to make sure I was still sane, and looked out at my window while practicing my lines. Now, yes, it seemed calm, but the entire time I did it, I was only thinking about how things could have been so different if I had told Damien last night how in love I was with him. But I didn't tell him, which would possibly be the greatest mistake I am bound to ever make.

I do remember the days that we were both so in love with one another, and they changed the game for me in high school. I felt even more psyched to do everything I've always wanted to do, because I had a boyfriend who would make sure I did them in moderation. I felt more secure, I felt less insecure about myself. It was all going so well.

"I am so not ready," he mumbled as the barber put a coat over him and tied it around his nape. "You think this is gonna be okay?"

"Damien, you look pretty alright with that cut, but I swear, you can do so much better with a different one," I assured him as I sat behind them. "And besides, if you don't like it, at least you can make my haircut worse."

"Now why would I want to do that?" he asked, laughing. "Fine, okay. I'll close my eyes now, so it'd be a surprise."

Damien had this bowl cut that he grew out over the course of the second half of junior year. It was his mom that told me to help him get a haircut, as well as Kendra who told me Damien could have been part of the Backstreet Boys but a really bad reboot of it. Since he didn't comply with it, I decided to let him decide on my haircut as well, and he was more than excited. My hair was a dull brown, completely straight that ended before my shoulders. It framed my face well, but Damien said that it didn't really match who I was.

In my defense, I didn't see the point of getting a haircut that wasn't straightforward. I only had really long hair right now because I didn't have time to get haircuts; all week I was in school, Saturdays we went to Yale, and I'd rest every Sunday. I was never the artsy type of person who wanted to color my hair or get tattoos or wear colored lenses. All I wanted was to look decent, and decent for me meant anything that was comfortable, didn't show too much skin, and was easy to maintain. Again, I wasn't one for the arts. But when a person enters your life holding paint buckets of different colors, it's up to you whether you let them make you an artwork or not.

"Alright, it's done," the barber told me as he took the coat off of Damien. "Payment at the counter, lass, okay?"

"You got it, and thank you so much," I replied before holding Damien on his shoulders. "You ready to see yourself in the mirror?"