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Chapter Twenty-Eight

Justin

“You didn’t recognize her at first, did you?” Drew is studying me with an intense expression, like I’m a complex equation suddenly revealing an unexpected solution.

The festive chaos of Winter Wonderland swirls around us, but all I can focus on is the way Drew’s forehead is creasing.

My face flushes under his scrutiny.

“No, I didn’t recognize her,” I say quietly.

Drew just continues to stare at me like I’m one of those British customs he can’t quite wrap his head around.

“This is going to sound weird, but I really struggle to recognize people sometimes.” I duck my head, not wanting to meet his eyes. “Especially when they’re out of context.”

Bobby Ray’s voice lives on in my head at moments like this. “ You better be normal, kid. ”

Bobby Ray is not here with me. Drew is.

And I know Drew is perfectly okay with who I am.

When I get the courage to look back at him, Drew’s not watching me like I’m some kind of freak. Instead, he’s frantically scrolling on his phone.

He glances up at me, his chest rising and falling.

“Does it happen to you a lot?” he asks.

“I…” I trail off because how do I explain something I’ve never talked about before? “Yeah, it does. I mean, I’m terrible with faces. Always have been.”

Drew continues scrolling on his phone. “Do you rely on other things besides faces to recognize people? Like their voice, how they walk, or what they’re wearing?”

“How did you know that?” The chestnuts are growing cold in my hands as memories flood back. All those awkward moments when someone waved at me and I had no idea who they were until they spoke. The times I’ve walked straight past people I should know.

“And in photos?” Drew asks, his eyes still glued to his screen. “Is it harder to recognize people in photos than in real life?”

“God, yes.” I huff out a laugh. “My mom used to get frustrated because I could never identify people in photos. And I struggle with movies too. I have to wait until characters speak before I can tell who’s who.”

Drew looks up at me, and his expression is weird. His hand is trembling as he grips his phone.

I’m suddenly alarmed. “What is it?”

“I think you might have prosopagnosia. It’s also called face blindness,” he says the words quietly like they hold extra gravity.

“Face blindness?” I repeat the term like it’s a foreign language. “That’s… That’s actually a thing?”

“Here.” Drew turns his phone screen toward me. “Read this.”

I scan the medical website he’s pulled up, my chest tightening as I recognize every symptom listed.

Difficulty recognizing people out of context.

Relying on voice, gait, and clothing to identify others.

Problems following movies or TV shows with large casts.

“Holy shit.” My voice comes out rougher than I intended. “This is… This explains so much.”

Drew clutches his phone tightly, his knuckles white against the dark case. The Christmas lights reflect off his glasses, making it hard to read his expression, but his jaw is tense.

“Yeah, it does,” he says. “It explains a lot.”

“In high school, I used to pretend I was too cool to say hi to people in the hallways,” I say slowly. “But I was actually just terrified of greeting the wrong person. There was this guy on my college football team—we’d practiced together for months, but I only knew who he was because of his lucky red bandanna. The one day he didn’t wear it, I completely blanked on his name during warm-ups. Coach made the whole team run extra laps because he thought I was being a cocky asshole.”

I let out a hollow laugh. “The worst was this customer dinner last spring. This woman came up and hugged me like we were old friends, but I was completely blanking. Turns out she was from our biggest account in Bristol—I’d had three Zoom calls with her that week. But in person, without her usual background of motivational posters?” I shake my head. “Dave had to kick me under the table and whisper her name. He thought I was having some kind of stroke.”

The memories surface like bubbles. “I think that’s why I got so good at making small talk. If you’re vague enough in your greetings, people fill in the blanks themselves.”

“And that’s probably why you’re so good at remembering other details about people,” Drew says. “Like how you remember everyone’s coffee and tea order at work.”

“Yeah, I guess I developed that as a way to compensate.” I think about all the mental notes I make about people—Pete’s lucky tie with the footballs on it, Dave’s habit of drumming his fingers when he’s nervous, Sarah from Accounting’s collection of cat-themed coffee mugs. “I notice everything except their faces.”

How had I not thought to look this up myself?

I’d known recognizing people was something I struggled with compared to everyone else.

But the thought of showing any side of myself that wasn’t “normal” felt like confessing to a crime in Bobby Ray’s house.

Besides, it wasn’t something I wanted to think about. It’s not great for someone in sales not to easily recognize people.

Drew’s shoulder presses against mine, warm and solid. “It’s actually pretty common. About two percent of people have some degree of face blindness.”

“Two percent?” I let out a shaky breath. “All this time, I thought I was just… I don’t know, not trying hard enough or something.”

The sympathy on Drew’s face prompts me to share another memory.

“There was this time at church when a woman came up to me after the service, all smiles and hugs, talking about how much I’d grown.” I swallow hard. “Turns out she was Bobby Ray’s sister. I’d met her five times before, but she looked so different in her church clothes than her usual server uniform. Bobby Ray…” I pause to steady my breathing. “When we got home, he started yelling at me for disrespecting his family. He grabbed me and threw me against a door…”

I remember the sound my head made when it hit the wood, how the world went fuzzy at the edges. But worse than the physical pain was his voice, low and dangerous: “ You’re gonna learn respect, boy, if I have to beat it into you .”

Mom was in the kitchen, and I could hear her crying, but she didn’t come in.

“Oh my god, Justin.” Drew makes a sound like all the air has been punched from his lungs. His hand finds mine in the darkness between us, fingers intertwining with mine so tightly it almost hurts.

When he speaks, his voice is rough with emotion. “He had no right to treat you like that.”

His words soothe something deep inside me.

“He wasn’t…. I mean, he didn’t do that kind of thing much, but the threat was always there, you know?”

“It isn’t your fault you don’t recognize people,” Drew continues. “You can’t help that your brain is wired differently.”

I let out a deep breath.

We continue to stand shoulder-to-shoulder, my mind spinning. All those awkward moments, all those times I felt stupid or inadequate because I couldn’t recognize someone I should know…they weren’t my fault.

I have prosopagnosia. Face blindness.

The name itself feels like a gift, like finally having the right word to describe something about myself I couldn’t name.

I turn to look at Drew.

He’s biting his lip, his forehead creased in that way I’ve come to recognize means he’s lost in thought.

“What’s wrong?” I ask.

Drew snaps his head up. In the dim light, his eyes look huge behind his glasses. “I’m just thinking about how we can believe we understand a situation perfectly, but really, we actually have no idea. Like, two people can exist in the same moment but be living completely different stories.”

“That feels very profound,” I say.

His eyes slide away from mine. “Profoundness is what I aim to provide,” he says, exhaling shakily, his breath creating a small cloud in the cold air. “Anyway, didn’t you say something about a light show?”

I check my watch. “It starts in ten minutes. Do you want to watch it together?”

“Yeah, I do,” Drew says. “Though if they have mechanical reindeer, I’m using you as a human shield.”

I laugh, the sound carrying away on the crisp December air. “Don’t worry, I’ll protect you from murderous Christmas decorations.”

As we make our way through the crowd toward the light show, I grab Drew’s hand again. He looks down at where our hands are joined but doesn’t protest. Instead, his fingers squeeze my hand, his thumb gently running over my thumb. It’s like he’s sending some kind of secret code through our joined palms, one that translates directly to my heartbeat.

This is what I like so much about Drew. I can be completely myself with him in a way I’ve never been with anyone else.

And the fact that Drew was the one to help me understand this about myself? That feels significant.

I might not be out yet, but when we reach the patch of grass near the edge of the park beneath a canopy of fairy lights, I don’t hesitate to wrap my arm around his waist, pulling him closer as the Christmas light show begins to dance above our heads.