Dating : May You Have A Blessed Day

“You talk about love too much,” she says, in October. We are dating. We —or maybe just me, after that statement — are in love.

“What would you prefer? Lust?”

She smiles at this. I know now how to draw out those tiny treasures, a white row of teeth with a gap in the middle. It’s like fishing, practiced and meticulous. Sex is the bait.

“I’m serious,” she insists.

“Me too.” I am; if not love, then lust is what I’d prefer: her breasts and necklace and the curve of her back and arches in her hip. All of it, all over me.

“People live without it, you know. Without love.”

“Not us.”

“We could if we wanted. We could run away and get married — ” my breath hitches — married — “and never have to be in love at all.”

“Did you say married?” Did she? Did she?

“You’re such a man. Love, then lust, then discussions of legality, in that order.”

“I could be worse. I think my little brother is currently rotating through liquor, legs, and lacrosse — in that order.”

She buries her head in my shoulder and she’s too close, too close. This is the collision crash course that never ends except in my head and heart pounding and pounding — I have to kiss her then, I have to.

I trail my lips lower and tease, “If you’d like, we could switch love for lust on the scale.”

She sighs. Even this —an exhale designed to show frustration and vulnerability, is confident. I will never believe that she believes in anything other than herself. Not me, not Him, not love, not anything.

She says, “You’re missing the point.”

But they both know she will not tell me the point directly because she cannot.

And I am not missing the point, because how could I miss something that I swallow with breakfast every morning? How could I miss the chilly warmth of the arms that cradle me to bed or the eyes that trail with boredom or the cross necklace that burns cold on my chest — burning — when we fuck? How?

This is the waltz we dance. The waltz where she doesn’t love me but we pretend she does. We tap our feet to the beat of I miss you I miss you I miss you, because it is the most she gives me. I spin and dip her to lust. And when the song ends, I pull her close so that her arms go around me, but I can never tell if her hands are clasped because I cannot see behind my own back.

“May Yew,” I murmur into a stand of her hair, black not brown. My want for her comes in waves now, crashing hard on the beach of my abdomen. She is not the cool waters of the autumn ocean. My flesh is on fire. I know already she will watch me burn until constellations do the same behind my eyelids.

I think that, for this feeling, she is worth it — love or not.

May I ask why you wear a cross? Do you believe in Him?

May Yew live interesting lives? May Yew stay forever young.

Do you love me?

Why — oh fucking tell me why — do you wear that cross?