Georgia was a fresh start in a yellow dress with a highlighter behind her ear.
And after a while, I gave in.
Not all at once.
First, it was study dates. Coffee shops with bad lighting and sticky tables. Library rooms where she quizzed me on building codes until my brain felt like wet cement. Afternoons with her knee bumping mine under the table while she laughed athow badly I butchered terminology she had memorized in ten minutes.
Then dinners.
Nothing fancy. Tacos. Burgers. Thai food. Pizza eaten out of the box on the hood of my truck while she told me about her family and asked me questions I only half-answered. Georgia was good at that. Letting me give half-truths without grabbing for the rest.
Then movies.
Her couch. Her parents’ den when they were out. My place once, though I cleaned for two hours before she came over and still felt like she was walking into all the parts of me I didn’t know how to make respectable.
She curled into my side during a movie she claimed was a classic and I claimed was two hours of people making bad choices in expensive coats.
“You have no culture,” she said.
“I’m heartbroken.”
“You’re not. That would require having one.”
I looked at her.
She immediately softened. “I didn’t mean?—”
“I know.”
But she had meant it as a joke, and the reason it landed wrong was not her fault.
Georgia kissed me that night.
Soft.
Warm.
Nice.
That was the word again.
Nice.
Her mouth was sweet from the strawberry candy she kept in her purse. Her hands rested on my chest like I was something she wanted but wasn’t afraid of. There was no desperation inher. No storm. No graveyard. No fire licking at the edges of everything.
Just Georgia.
A good woman with a good laugh, kissing me in a quiet room while a movie kept playing and the world asked nothing brutal from either of us.
I kissed her back.
Because I wasn’t dead.
That was the ugly truth.
My body worked. My blood moved. Georgia was beautiful. When she shifted closer and my hand settled at her waist, I felt it. When her breath caught and she pressed into me, I felt that too. When things got warmer, when my palm slid over the soft curve of her body through her shirt and she made a small sound against my mouth, I knew exactly what kind of man I still was.
Not dead.
