"Tell me what love is," she said, heart-shaped face resting on her palms. I looked up at her. She lay on her stomach next to me, and I lay on my back, staring up at the ceiling. I laughed, and threw up my hands like they were answers, hoping they would suffice and she would understand my exasperation. But when I glanced over at her, she looked determined as ever. The moonlight streaming through my window hit only half her face, but she looked earnest enough.
"I don't know. It's not really something that can be told." Her disappointment drew a careful straight line down her mouth, with a hand much steadier than mine. Though, that wasn't hard to do; mine were quite shaky.
"Course you can. And you said that you'd tell me anything I wanted." Her lips curved, and I stared at them, distracted. She sounded out the word. "Eh-nee-thing.
I sighed, and rolled over before stiffly raising my chin onto my knuckles to match her. "Okay, well... it's a lot of different things. I mean, it's love. It's like... caring about someone." My voice kind of trailed off, and I knew that she wouldn't take that for a second.
She looked at me, arching an eyebrow. "That's it? No, no, I need more than that. You aren't getting out of it that easily. Doesn't count." Her eyebrow fell back down, and she gave me a wicked smile.
I sighed even more heavily this time, and rose from lying on my stomach. My chin hurt from my hands, and my elbows hurt from the rough carpet, and it felt nice to stretch. "I dunno. It's when... I dunno. You know someone-- all of them, and you still care for them. Or when you don't know someone at all, and you'd risk your life for them. It's not caring about what they've done, but knowing who they are and what they want to do, and helping them do it." She cocked her head, and I could tell that she still wasn't satisfied. "It's like finding the sweetest, most intoxicating wine and drinking it, even if you know that you'll get a hangover in the morning." I paused, not quite sure where I was going with that one.
Her nose scrunched, and I could tell that she was trying not to laugh. "Are you comparing women to a bottle of wine? Really? And a hangover?"
I winced and stumbled on my next words. "Well, yeah, really good wine. Kind of. Okay, no. It's uhh, it's..." I looked at her, very seriously, and studied her half-lit face. I looked at the scar on the side of her cheek that I always saw her covering with her hair. I brushed it away from the silver line, fingertips just barely whispering over it. She nervously smiled, and my palms sweated, not sure about what I was going to say next. "It's seeing someone and knowing that they're beautiful, even if don't realize it, and it's making sure that they know." I lowered my eyes back to my hands and dropped my tone. "And yeah, love is painful 'n all, but... it's more than that. It's exhilirating, like jumping into a lake in the morning. You can feel everything on your skin all at once, but everything else is drowned away. You can't see, you can't hear, hell-- you can't do anything but feel that bright, cold lake water on your skin and relish it. Sometimes, you want to get out immediately cause you feel like you're drowning and the dock is way too far and your arms are way too heavy... but sometimes you want to do nothing but swim for the rest of your life. Getting of the water can be painfully cold, but the swim is worth it."
I peeked up at her. She was staring at the rough carpet, with her brow furrowed. I decided to keep talking. Well, it was less of a decision; I opened my mouth, and more words tumbled out. "That's what it is. It's knowing what you want and not knowing at the same time, and never knowing how to get it or what it's even for, but wanting it more than anything else in the world." My voice kind of drifted off somewhere behind me, back into my living room. I eased my eyes up and looked at her. The light had shifted, so now I could only see her eyes, and they were kind of glassy.
And then, she looked at me, fiery brown eyes more direct and more honest than I'd ever seen them. She stared at me for a moment, and I tried to hold her gaze, but it was one of those intense looks, where you're not quite sure what you're supposed to do. Right before I was about to look down, her gaze broke, and she stared down at her hands, even though I doubted she could see them in the darkness. I looked down too, and could just barely see her fold her hands together. Her eyes fell out of the little light, and quiet settled on our shoulders.
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