the lying days

He had sort of told me he loved me before—collapsing into bed when we came home drunk, or after a long three weeks apart, over a milkshake at our favorite diner. But of course I’m too shy and strange and, even at twenty-five, I’d never been in love. Before him. I resolved to tell him, the next time he offered the words first. I didn’t want to say: I love you too. I loved him all on my own, without qualification or need. Only I was scared to let it float there in the air, all on its own. And so, I would wait.

It didn’t happen how it should have. I am hysterical, sobbing in a Starbucks—and we’re not Starbucks people. We’re visiting his friends up north and I need to be home, now. I couldn’t take it, meeting new people and smiling and laughing at their jokes and making my own. It was too much and I am fragile and broken. I’m looking for a way back south—a train or a flight or a rental car. I can’t stop crying; I’m  making a scene. People look at us without trying to hide their curiosity.

I don’t think he knows what it really is to be sad. In a way, that’s really beautiful, but it’s hard. And he’s looking at me with a worried expression, but he is almost smiling. We’re just people on this earth, baby, he tells me. We’re just living. He kisses me, and then: I love you. And my eyelashes are matted with tears and my nose is running and I have never felt so miserable and so happy all at once, and I try to say it back, but the words won’t come out and I am lost and I am falling and I am in love, but I’m not sure if it matters.