Maneater

Chapter Twenty-Three

    "So...tell me more about you."

    The trick to answering a question like this was to not overshare. It was a common mistake for women, divulging every little detail about their lives to the point where there is nothing else to share over the course of time. Dating was like a game. A man didn't want to advance to meeting the big boss after beating the first level. He wanted to master multiple levels to earn going against the big boss at the end of a video game. Similarly, even when a man asks, he doesn't want a woman to peel back all of her layers on one of their initial meetings. He wanted to peel back each layer, piece by piece, over the course of time. That's if he wanted to get to know the woman at all. Crystal smiled at Justin while grabbing her glass of wine. Instead of giving him the wordy answer he was looking for, she answered his question with a question. "What is it you want to know?"

    While walking beside her, he shrugged. "I don't know. Um...how was your childhood?"

    She tilted her head back and laughed. "You're horrible at making conversation."

    He gave her a sideglance. "I'm not trying to make conversation," he insisted. "I really want to know. I can't picture you as a kid."

    "I looked...very different than the way I look right now," she told him, running a hand through her hair. "But my childhood was pretty average. Nothing exceptional happened to me back then. I was just...this happy, bubbly girl. I just...lived, loved my family, went to school, just like any other kid."

    "You said you looked different?" Shocking that a man would hone in on that statement.

    A corner of her mouth lifted. "I was heavyset, throughout most of my life."

    His eyebrows shot up. "I never would have guessed."

    "That's what everyone says, but I definitely was. Chubby and happy."

    "Then...what happened?" he asked.

    "You mean, how did I lose all of the weight?" She squinted her eyes against the sun.

    "No...I mean, what changed you from being that happy, bubbly girl, to being this... serious, takes-no-prisoners ballbuster that you are now?"

    She turned and stared at him.

    He stopped walking and allowed her to stare, looking her in the eyes and not backing down.

    "Nothing...happened," she said.

    "Come on," he said with an easy smile on his face. "Something had to have happened. What... did your dad cheat on your mom?"

    Her pretty features formed into a frown. "No, he would never."

    "Then...did someone cheat on you?"

    Memories threatened to overwhelm her. She shook her head and started walking again, to keep them from coming.

    "Are my questions too personal?"

    Yes. "No."

    "I'm upsetting you."

    Yes. "Of course not."

    "You don't have to answer the question, if you don't want to."

    "I know I don't have to answer that question, because the only two things I have to do in this life are stay Black and die," she said, trying to shake her discomfort. "But I'm going to answer the question anyway."

    "Please," he said, sliding a hand into his dress pants.

    "Nearly all women in this world are cheated on at one point or another in their lives. That is just a reality. So while men have cheated on me, I wouldn't ever allow a man cheating on me to change my entire personality."

    "But you do admit that your personality has changed from back then?"

    "Of course. I was a kid then and I'm not now. People change."

    He was quiet for several minutes. "I'm sorry for upsetting you," he said quietly.

    Avoiding eye contact, she instead busied herself with scoping out the park setting stretched out to the right of the sidewalk.

    "So your childhood was average," he summed up. "Are you still close with your family?"

    "Work keeps me from being as close to them as I'd like to be," she replied. That was a lie. Her work wasn't time-consuming enough to get in the way of her family life. Who she was had gotten in the way. She spent her down time scamming men, and knowing that made it hard for her to laugh and joke with family at their gatherings. On some level, she felt that she wasn't the same little girl her parents had raised, that she was some broken, tainted version of that girl... that she was holding that little girl captive, deep down inside of her somewhere.

    "Hmmm."

    "My life is boring," she said, her tone perfectly apologetic.

    "Quite the contrary." Whenever he looked at her now, it felt like he was analyzing her. "There's more to you than you're telling me. You're just making it fun for me to get that information out of you. I appreciate that."

    She laughed. "You're so weird."

    "Not weird," he said, his steps slowing. "I just see through your bullshit."

    "You're the second this week to do so," she commented. "I must be losing my touch."

    He arched a brow at her in askance.

    She shrugged. "So, enlighten me, then. Why has my personality changed so much?"

    He was quiet for so long, she thought that he wasn't going to answer the question. His brows were furrowed, possibly in concentration. "I don't know...maybe because sometime between then and now, you realized that people are flawed and miserable, and treat each other horribly. Maybe at some point the rose-tinted glasses came off and you saw the world for what it was, a place where people like to be miserable and pull other people into their misery. Maybe as a cute, chubby kid, other kids were nice to you and played with you, but when you grew up and got to high school, things were different. Maybe people were different, and were mean to you. Maybe the boys you thought were cute treated you like shit, or played pranks on you. After high school, maybe it was more of the same, but on a smaller scale. In college, individuality is a lot more welcome than in high school. People are a lot more tolerant of each other. Then you get out of college, you're back in the real world, which can be harsh and cruel. After pitying yourself for awhile, maybe you looked around and realized that to a certain extent, you have control over what you look like. So you decided to do something about it."

    It was hard, listening to him give his opinion on what her life was like. It was hard, because several of his guesses were right on target. This was the first time this had happened while she was spending time with a mark, the first time that a man had so completely and thoroughly broken down who she was and why she was how she was. Stunned speechless, she continued to walk along beside him.

    "How did I do?" he asked, slanting a look down at her.

    "You might have gotten a thing or two right."

    "What is my reward for that?"

    She turned and looked at him with narrowed eyes, trying to see past the face he was showing her, into who he really was.

    "I bet you were a beautiful girl," he told her.

    She felt tears in her eyes, and she hated it, hated him for making them. "What?" she asked in disbelief.

    "I said, I bet you were a beautiful girl," he repeated, taking a step towards her. "Even when you were chubby. You probably glowed. Brightened up any room you were in. I can see it. I can picture you now, as a kid."

    Moved beyond words, she rose up on her tiptoes before she even knew what she was doing. Then she grabbed his face and pulled it down to hers so she could kiss him.