Page 124 of Modern Romance January 2025 5-8

“All I have is speculation.” But she knew that was a lie. It was a knot in her brain that she hadn’t yet unspooled, not even for herself. But she decided that she would try. For him. For her. Because they were both different here. There was no one to perform for. They just got to be. They got to breathe. “Maybe the truth is in what you just said. I didn’t know how to want anything for myself. And then I met you. And there was something so... Compelling about you. And it isn’t the way that the media talks about you. I found you to be so wholly different than what they said.”

“The Pitbull.”

“Yes. Anyone who thinks otherwise is an idiot, in my opinion. Or they just haven’t looked into your eyes.”

“There’s nothing there now.”

“That’s a lie. Whether you see it or not, I see so much there. And I wanted you. In a way that I never... I never wanted anyone like that before. I told myself it was because I wanted the fantasy of what we had that night. Because I felt beautiful. Because I felt... Special. Because I felt like the one being taken care of, instead of the other way around.”

“And here you are being my seeing-eye dog.”

“I don’t see myself that way. It isn’t that. It’s not. I’m sorry. If I made you feel that way.”

“Don’t apologize to me. I’m not so easily wounded. I’m not even entirely certain that I have feelings.”

“I think the problem is that you do. We both do. It doesn’t mean we especially know what to do with them, but we both have them.”

“It’s a nice thing to think.” She wondered which thing he meant.

That they both had a lot of feelings, or maybe that she connected with him in a way that she never had with anyone else. In a way that no one else had.

“I didn’t even know what wanting someone felt like,” she said. “I understand what attraction feels like. Not the need to act on it. Not until you.”

“Why me?”

“Maybe we are the same,” she said.

“How?” He sounded completely uncertain, but not angry, not derisive.

“The way that we’ve built walls around ourselves in order to survive. The way that we became other people. I don’t know that I was conscious of becoming another person. I don’t think it was a decision in quite the same way yours was.”

“You’re like me before,” he said slowly. “A creation of my surroundings. There was no decision made. It was only after, when I decided to become an entirely new thing.”

She nodded. “I didn’t do that. I stayed the same. I just move myself. But nothing else changed. This was different. You were different. Reaching outside of myself, rather than wandering around trying to be self-contained.”

“I’m not certain that I’m worthy of any of this.”

“It’s not about you,” she said. “Well, it is. It’s about you creating a response in me, I suppose. But acting on it... That was for me. In the very best way.”

“Well, I am pleased for you then.”

“We are naked in a field,” she said. “I think maybe we’re both the same kind of fool.”

“Is it foolish to want someone, do you think?”

“You should know. You’re the playboy. Many more women have wanted you than men have wanted me, and certainly you wanted more women than I’ve ever wanted men.”

“No. That is true. I have wanted sex in the same way a person wants a piece of cake. Wanting you is different.”

“Oh.”

“It is like the moment where the air is caught between winter and spring. The last week before school lets out for the holidays. The longing for something, so specific and sharp it takes your breath away. I cannot say it better than that.”

“Well,” she breathed. “I don’t think I can say anything better than that.”

She moved closer to him, her bare skin touching his. And she let the sun warm them both. It was a long time before they went back inside.

And when she led him back upstairs, and to his bed, she went with him.