He Never Looked at Me

Eric never looked people in the eye.

He always said direct eye contact triggered his crippling social anxiety—that being stared at made his chest tighten, a physiological glitch he couldn't rewire. In the five years we dated in secret, I memorized every other angle of him: the sharp contour of his jawline, the back of his neck, the downward tilt of his chin when he retreated into himself.

In half a decade, I had never once held his full, undivided gaze.

Until our college reunion party, when the bottle spun and landed on him for Dare.