A Different Blue

by Amy Harmon

“Yeah. Being yourself only works if you don’t suck. If you do suck, definitely don’t be yourself.”

“I’m Manny,” he had said, as if that should have been enough. And why wasn’t it? Because despite all the good-intentioned urging to just be yourself, how was being yourself even possible if you didn’t know who the hell you were? Manny seemed to have known, but he was as susceptible as we all are to the influences of a world where people act without thought, live without consciousness, and judge without understanding.

I wanted to hate him because he was beautiful in a way I would never be.

“So redemption didn’t save you from consequence?”

Sometimes the things we want to be rescued from can save us.”

“Regret keeping my son? No. But getting pregnant? Getting married? Sure. But there’s no way to avoid regret. Don’t let anybody tell you different. Regret is just life’s aftertaste. No matter what you choose, you’re gonna wonder if you shoulda done things different. I didn’t necessarily choose wrong. I just chose. And I lived with my choice, aftertaste and all. I like to think I gave my boy the best life I could, even if I wasn’t perfect.”

“When you climbed into my bed in Reno, all I could think of was how I felt in London in that awful week when I’d had more sex than any teenaged boy could dream of. And how gutted I felt at the end of it. I didn’t want our first time to be like that for you. You were emotionally rocked in Reno, just like I was in London, and you needed me. But you didn’t need me that way. Someday . . . hopefully bloody soon—because I will combust if I ever have to spend a night like that again—you will want me because you love me, not because you’re lost, not because you’re desperate, not because you’re afraid. And that’s the goal.”