(no subject)
--
I asked you if you loved me, and you said no.
I didn't believe you, because you did it without looking me in the eye, and you, well, you always look people in the eye. You say it's weak to start out as anything other than equals with a person, it shows vulnerability if you look at their forehead, their cheekbones, the wall directly behind them. I blame your father, military-man 'til the final, alcohol-soaked day.
So when you lie, the only tell you have is to look down at your fingers, fiddle with something. Also, you lie all the time, or tell half-truths, or whole-truths, only all twisted and turned around and tied in knots and metaphors that it sounds like a lie anyway. So I know what you look like when you lie.
So I asked why you were lying.
You bent down to tie your shoe. "Stop being ridiculous," you said, then stood up zipped up your hoodie. (It was green. It brought out the forests in your eyes, and it made me want to grab you by your narrow shoulders and kiss you until your pupils were so dilated that I wouldn't be able to see them anyway.)
I snorted. "Ridiculous is my middle name, of course."
You rolled your eyes, muttered back "Of course," and met my eyes directly.
"Do you love me?"
You pulled at the sleeves of your hoodie until only your fingers (long, mesmerizing, distracting in the middle of the day when you would gesture and I would stare) protruded and opened up your notebook.
I counted that as a win.
--
"Why do you always lie when I ask if you love me?"
"And why are you so hell-bent on figuring it out?"
"Why are you so determined to keep it from me?"
"Why won't you just give the hell up?"
"When have I ever?"
--
It was raining in Memphis, and the bus stop was dripping.
You're wearing a jacket, honest to god jacket, with a zip and pockets and water-proof exterior, and you look so small in all the fabric, like you're drowning in it. (I want to towel you off and tuck you into bed so you don't get sick, and I won't have to nurse you through the whinging and moaning to the other side of the tunnel.)
You hand me a jacket, half the size of yours, small enough that it looks as if it would fit you properly. "Put it on. You'll catch a cold, otherwise," you mutter. You're looking at me straight, and it makes me wonder. It makes me wonder how you could do something like that and still deny that you love me.
So I say, "How can you do something like that and still deny that you love me?"
You pull a hot chocolate out from behind your back and hand it to me. I watch your back get smaller as you walk away.
--
I decide to say fuck it. I decide to say fuck it, and fuck it away into somebody else. Any warm body will do, really, which is true. It gets the job done, and it gets you to hide away for a day and a half until you can look me in the eye without noticing how tired you look, how your eyes are just a bit puffy, and very slightly red.
Perhaps two days would've been better.
--
I want to shake you. I want to pull you in by your torso and shake the life out of you until sense takes it's rightful place in your mind. Because you're insane. You're absolutely, bat-shit fucking crazy to think that you're convincing anyone.
You're different than me in the way that I wear my heart on my sleeve. You wear it on your undershirt, tucked just beneath your thin t-shirt and barely hidden from view, the patterns and static just peaking through when the light is right and you're standing at the perfect angle. (Forget the fact that I want to rip your shirt off, all of them, and just be with you, baring all.)
But I know you so well that I can always see. And at any rate, you're standing at the perfect angle out of habit, and the light doesn't fluctuate a whole lot, not where we are. So everybody knows. Everybody can see the way you look at me and quietly want.
Which seems a little redundant to me, since I'm right here, ripe for the picking.
--
So we decide to take a breather, a vacation, a break from work. And you spend all of it at my house. You eat my food and lounge on my couch, and I'm doing twice the dishes, and it makes me grit my teeth and scrub a little harder at the plate with the caked-on lasagna because you're too much of a dumbass to know how to soak.
I wash your socks and iron the single nice shirt that you have, and if that isn't love, then fuck me, because I don't want it.
--
We're watching a movie (Black and white, your pick. It's french, with subtitles, and the subtitles are in such a bright neon yellow that it hurts my eyes to look at in contrast to the moving figures that glide gracefully and laugh with superiority. You think these films are genuinely more entertaining, and not just sickeningly pretentious, and it's one of those things that makes me love a little bit more.) and you're curled up to me, sharing my body heat as you shiver in the cold of a June afternoon in Las Vegas. (You're always cold, shivering in the sauna, and I blame your slight frame, the lack of any meat on your bones. Then I thank them, because the only time you seem receptive to cuddling is when your teeth are chattering and goosebumps are raised along your arm.)
"Hey."
"Yeah?"
"Do you love me?"
You curl up a little tighter and nod.
--