From a Dead Sleep

He had never felt comfortable dating. He found it to be a tedious, completely unnatural ritual of portraying something that he just wasn’t: a charming, considerate person. Numerous times throughout his life he’d heard the standard advice, “Just be yourself.” It’s what his sister, Diana, would tell him. It’s what the talking heads on daytime television talk shows would say. However, the phrase always struck him as cynical and simplistic, because it had to have been concocted by someone who had clearly never met a man like Sean Coleman.

Even back in high school it was difficult. He played football, a warrior’s sport where female fans typically swooned over the combatants. They never swooned over him, though—at least not the ones from his own school. Most high school girls in Winston had grown up alongside him from an early age, sharing small classrooms where he often occupied a corner at the command of spent teachers. The local girls knew all there was to know about Sean Coleman, and if they ever forgot, their parents would remind them.