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It seems that many books in the New Adult genre have
become wildly popular because of readers' obsession with misbehaved, but
hard-to-resist bad boy characters. We simply cannot get enough of guys like
Beautiful Disaster’s Travis Maddox, Easy’s Lucus Maxfield, Pushing the Limit’s
Noah Hutchins, and my own sweet, misguided bad boy, Toby Faye of Saving Toby.
Here’s my take on what is so compelling about this kind of guy.
Maybe he lived in a rundown house on your street, or
around the block. Maybe he was that boy in the back of the classroom who seemed
to be the bane of every teacher’s existence. Your brother’s friend whom your
parents said was a bad influence. However you knew him, we all knew at least
one: the bad boy.
He was a guy who had zest for pushing the envelope. The guy who took pride in getting people to react to his outrageous remarks, his cutting
humor and dastardly deeds. Wherever he went, his notoriety preceded him. The
rumors, the stories — he was a magnet for the disapproving looks and gossip.
You didn’t know much about him. Maybe you
suspected his home life was bad, and that he’d been through situations most
couldn’t fathom — he’d been exposed to a great deal more in life than you’d
been, up to this point. Someone with that kind of knowledge was intimidating.
So daunting that you would hold your breath if he walked too close to you in
the hall, or heaven forbid, looked your way.
As much as his view of life intimidated you, you sort
of admired him, too. You revered his ability to disobey so blatantly, to fight
the system. If you weren’t so afraid of stepping out of line, maybe you’d skip
class too, get high on an weekday afternoon, tell your stuffy science teacher
where to shove his homework assignment.
The bad boy wasn’t afraid to step out of line; it was
the norm for him. As teenagers, we went to great lengths to appear poised,
confident and in the know, but most of us stumbled in our efforts daily.
Fearlessness is an admirable quality, but for most, it is fleeting and obscure
during high school. The bad boy, though, was afraid of nothing — at least not
to us, the casual observer.
When everyone else was taking notes and trying not to
sleep in class during 3rd period, you’d find him outside the school, smoking a
cigarette, or maybe a joint. His disinterest in age-appropriate activities and
academia was indisputable. When he made it to class, his interests appeared to
lie in low cut shirts and the backsides of your shapely female classmates. With
a lusty smile, you could tell he had other things on his mind than geometry.
He was a guy who seemed to understand the innate
physical needs of a female body way more than you did yourself at that time,
and that made him exciting in a way you couldn’t overlook.
Time to fess up. You thought about him. The constant
disheveled state of his hair as he moved about unruffled, seemingly confident
as he threw caution to the wind. This caught your attention. Then, you couldn’t
help but notice how full his lips were, or how muscled he was when you’d seen
him in gym without his shirt on.
What would you have done if
you caught his attention, and he deemed you worthy of his pursuit? What if he
went after you like he approached most objects in his life, afraid of nothing —
would you been able to avoid falling under his spell?
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