You couldn’t tell Chad anything. Well, you could, but he wouldn’t listen. He always had to figure out anything and everything the hard way. He didn’t even consider it a hard way. If you said, “Hey, don’t touch that, Chad, it’s hot.” Chad would touch it, and say, “Yeah. That’s hot.” It was as if every day were his first day on earth.

If someone accidentally used an idiom in front of Chad, he would cock his head and look at that person with his striking blue eyes piercing into their very cerebral cortex. “Why would anyone try to make a silk purse from a sow’s ear?” “What is the point of two in the bush?”

“Oh, Chad,” his friends would say, “You know what I meant.”

And he’d just shrug. Did he? Didn’t he? You could never be sure.

Sometimes this worked to his friends’ advantage. If ever there was someone to try something out first, it was Chad. He was the Guinea pig of the friend group. Chad got the first of everything, made the trial run, would give you a detailed description of the event. You could decide after for yourself if you wanted to see that movie, try that restaurant, sleep with that babe.

In many ways, he was the epitome of what you see is what you get. No subtleties to Chad, boy. No nuances. He took face value at face value. One of his friends said behind his back that if you mentioned wearing your heart on your sleeve, Chad would probably check your sleeve, look for a gaping hole in your chest, and ask how you were still alive.

But he did get the girls. He landed women in a way none of his friends ever could. He’d walk up to the prettiest girl at the bar and tell her she was the prettiest girl at the bar. And a flicker of expression in his eyes or on his face would let her know that he meant it. No subterfuge. No lying. He had a way about him that let you know every word he said was true. From the very start of a relationship to the inevitable end. He would say flat out he wasn’t interested in a serious relationship, and he meant that, too. Or if he did have a girlfriend for few months, he would ultimately get bored. Then he would say, “This isn’t working any more.” And that was that.

At work, if he didn’t agree with a campaign, he’d say why. If he did more work than other people, he’d explain where they’d failed. If he let people down, he’d be honest and fix his mistakes. There was something very confusing about Chad. Was he rude? Not really.

If his boss implied that he should work overtime, Chad would ask for extra pay. If his boss said that he wasn’t a team player, Chad would define a “team” and define “players” and point out that he was one, but his boss was not. He spoke back in a manner that might have gotten other people canned but he never was. Something about Chad seemed too earnest or wide eyed and yet… Yet there was something different, too. Nobody could put their finger on it.

Most people aren’t prepared for brutal honesty.

One night, he was in bed with the prettiest girl in the club. Except they hadn’t been to a club in six months. They had been hanging out every night in his apartment or hers, and they had been finding out different tricks and ticks and subtleties about each other. The thing was, she hadn’t been the prettiest girl in the club by magazine standards or influencer standards or society norms. Instead, there had been something about her that had drawn him to her, a wild, almost untamed quality, and he hadn’t even known why or how they’d ended up kissing behind the club pressed up against the brick wall, his hands in her thick black curls, her cherry-slicked lips on his.

This is how his short relationships generally started. But then she hadn’t gone home with him, and when he told himself the truth, he’d realized he hadn’t wanted her to.

They’d met for a walk a few days later. Then they’d met for a drive. They’d gone to a movie. They’d had dinner, a picnic, they’d rowed a boat in the little lake. He thought about her all the time, and suddenly some of the idioms he’d always made fun of began to make sense. Absence made his heart grow fonder.

Look at him. Was he ever wearing his heart on his sleeve.

So he was in bed with her one night, and he realized that he actually thought he might want to stay with—be with—live with—marry her, and he said those things to her in a way no man ever had spoken to her because he was face value. He was authentic.

She narrowed her eyes at him and said, “You’re for real, aren’t you? This isn’t some sort of line?”

Chad said, “I don’t do lines.” Then he leaned back on the mattress and stared up at the ceiling and said, “I know what people think of me. I know that they talk about me behind my back. But years ago, I decided the only way to get through life was to be shallow. Not shallow in an uncaring way. But I just give people the shiny surface and keep the rest for myself. That’s how it’s always been.”

“Always?”

He nodded. “I don’t lie. I don’t beat around any bush. And I’ve watched people try to figure me out, and they can’t. Because what they see is flat, shiny water. And you can’t hold on to flat, shiny water.”

She said, “You’re not like that with me.”

And he said, “You’re the first person I didn’t want to be like that with.”

She wrapped the sheet around herself and looked at him. He rolled over to face her, and he realized that maybe the reason he liked her, the reason he loved her, the reason he’d been drawn to her was because they were alike. Way down inside, they were alike. And maybe it is always darkest before the dawn. And maybe you can’t take it with you. And maybe nobody knows how many angels can dance on the head of a pin.

But he moved forward on the bed and kissed her, and she kissed him, and the ebb flowed and the waves crashed.

And still, waters run deep.