Mr. International
Excerpt III
They call it magnetism. As if I am a natural force and they are helpless metals.
But I’ve watched the way devotion forms. It isn’t romance. It’s relief. People want a person who feels inevitable, because inevitability is a substitute for safety.
I have made myself inevitable in rooms where nothing is safe.
Wives soften around me—not because they are wicked, but because they are human. Because someone looks at them as though they are still new. Because someone listens long enough to make them forget they have been unheard for years.
I could tell you I hate this about myself.
I could tell you I’m trying to be better.
But that would be another performance, and I have promised myself I will not sell repentance as a personality trait.
So I do what I’ve always done: I accept the admiration like a glass of wine I didn’t order, and I drink it anyway—slowly, politely—knowing it will never nourish me.