Dating : We’re Not Just Friends

February

Your girlfriend — or the girl you’ve been hanging around with, whatever — stop by with a bouquet of red roses. I don’t say a word as I place them on your side of the room. You go out to dinner. I stay at home and study for exams that are two months away. You come back, fixed me with an intense stare, and refuse to back down until I meet your eye.

Stop ignoring me, you say.

I’m not, I say.

Then why do you always look away, you say.

I say nothing.

I want to say that it’s hard to look at you, except that isn’t true. It’s much too easy to look at you, your smile, your eyes, your uneven front teeth, your hands, the glossy pink lipstick you always wear, the loose strand of hair you can never tuck behind your ears, the scar down your right arm that you got when you fell off a swing when you were five years old. No. It is only hard to look at you, when I’m looking at you with her.

We’re friends, you plead.

We’re not, I say. We’re not just friends, and you fucking know it.

You move to sit beside me on the bed; our thighs barely touching, but enough to make me feel the heat. Your hand come up to clasp my cheek. You slid fingers under my hair, behind my ear, and cradle my jaw in your palm. You brush your thumb against my skin, tracing light circles around the corner of my lips.

Tomorrow, you say.

Tomorrow, I agree.