Where am I going to sleep tonight?Howam I going to sleep tonight?
I haven’t even properly kissed this woman, but I am utterly undone for her. It’s not going to get better or easier from here on out. Is she planning to come onto me like this again? I’m not strong enough. Maybe I should sleep on my weight bench…
Do I need to have a talk with her about boundaries? Do I really want to impose boundaries that keep her from looking at me like shewantsme?
Rustling my hair, I grimace and sag, and find myself drawn yet again to staring at her.
My bed is going to smell like her. Like honey and peonies. Like the taste of her skin.
What in the world came over her?
I spend another hour or so reviewing my records from the past week and a half.
Lots of hitting. Then of course the past few days of avoiding me completely. All culminating in her telling me that I deeply hurt her when I left her like I did because she has absolutely no experience in romantic relationships, even though she has craved one her entire life.
And now.
This.
It doesn’t add up.
She wants emotional connection so bad it makes her cry and cut everything beautiful about her out in a pitiful effort to get some inkling of it… Yet, tonight, she was ready to settle for a physical connection.
With me.
A man she doesn’t care for.
If she weren’t so honest, I’d think she were in denial about liking me, but if there’s any denial going on, she wouldn’t verbalize lies every time she says how she’s not really a fan, which means that—cognitively—she still does not like me.
Per this afternoon, however, she is aware that she might come to like me.
Maybe that already happened, and she just didn’t tell me?
Maybe…she wanted me to prove what I said earlier about wantingher, not just her body?
Maybe she wanted to clarify just how deeply I’d be hurting her if I’m lying…
I can tell she doesn’t trust me. She’s guarded, when she lets her guard show. The world makes her wary. People make her cautious. When she’s not pretending to be sweet little Mirabelle, her eyes are hard. She’s been burned. Countless times. She’s been rejected. Constantly.
Every time she shows up somewhere as less thanherand finds people who like that version, it no doubt feels like a confirmation that who she really is isn’t worthy.
She puts all her energy into trying to be a person worthy of love.
And now, here I am, someone she doesn’t trust, someone who’s kept secrets from her for years, asking her to be herself, showing her it’s literally painful for me because of how desirable she is.
She’s likely confused and desperate and scared…to…to the point of exhaustion.
Cussing, I locate her again, passed out in my bed.
I love her.
Iloveher.
Sweet, dedicated, sincere, careful, perfect Mirabelle.
I so dearly love her.
Freeing a breath, I rise, take gentle steps toward her, situate her correctly and carefully the right way in bed, and pull the blankets up around her. Slow, I touch a kiss to her cheek, then I circle to the other side, grab my deep blue throw off my reading chair, and lie down.
