I don’t understand the way I feel. It’s no different than yesterday, but everything’s changed. I don’t know what kind of tether love is between us. The man lying next to me… all of his… stuff. Not belongings, but thoughts, feelings, history. I don’t know what I’m supposed to do with it. Am I responsible for it and he for mine? Does love imply a promise of some kind? These are things I feel like I should know, but I just… don’t.
“Hey,” Rex says, and I feel like a bit of a creep for staring at him while he sleeps.
“Hey.” There’s so much I want to say to him, but I’m not sure how to start. “Um,” I say. “Do you think it’s snowing?”
“Yeah,” Rex says after listening for a moment. “I think we’re supposed to get a few inches today.” I stare absently at the window for a minute even though the shade is closed.
“Daniel.” Rex’s warm hand lands on my shoulder. I realize I’m still wearing my clothes from yesterday, though Rex must have stripped sometime in the night because he’s in his underwear. “Last night,” he continues. “I meant what I said.” He seems a little anxious, as if I’m going to claim not to remember anything, but he looks right at me.
“Me too,” I say, but I have to look away. I don’t know why I feel so embarrassed, but I do. I fiddle with the edge of the blanket, telling myself that if you love someone, you should probably be able to sustain eye contact with them, but I feel so shy.
“Can you look at me, please?” Rex says, tenderly but with the hint of an order.
I look at him, my heart racing.
“I love you,” he says, and somehow it doesn’t sound like a grenade of found language the way it always does when I hear other people lob it at each other casually. Loveyou, as they hang up the phone; Loveyou, when they’re running out the door. Loveyou, as they race to class, already texting someone else.
No, it sounds like something Rex has made up just now to try and tell me something real.
“I love you too,” I tell him, trying to make the words real also. “I really do,” I add, feeling like my delivery was lacking. I sounded terrified, tentative.
“I believe you,” Rex says, smiling at me. “Come here.” He scooches up to lean on his pillow and pulls me down on top of him. His kiss is sweet and slow and doesn’t demand anything in return.
“I just… I….” I mumble against his mouth.
“What?” Rex asks, stroking my cheekbones. His eyes are so warm, and I remember him telling me he’d do anything for me. I remember him telling me there is no right way to act in a relationship. I remember thinking that those things were easy for him to say, but I couldn’t comprehend them. But maybe, just maybe, he was telling the truth all along.
“I don’t know how to do this,” I confess softly, running my fingers over his straight nose and down the dip of his upper lip. “I don’t know what… it means to… I mean, I do love you,” I insist, fingers scritching over his stubble. “But what if we don’t mean the same thing when we say that? We can’t mean the same thing, can we? No one ever really knows what anyone else means when they say those things, you know? So, maybe you say it and you mean this one thing that means you expect something and I say it and I don’t know you expect that so I don’t do it and then you think I don’t really mean it, only I do, but maybe it just means something different and—”
Rex puts two fingers over my mouth. I’m breathing shallowly, but he’s smiling, serene.
“Do you want to know one of the things I love about you?” he asks.
“I, uh, yes?”
“You’re so brave.”
“Huh?”
“All this stuff about meaning and never really understanding each other—that’s big words stuff.”
“Big words?”
“You know, philosophers and theories and all the smart stuff you read. Big words stuff. But you really believe it. Hell, you’re probably right. We might not mean the same thing when we say love. But you’re brave because you said it anyway.”
“I….” I don’t know what to say to that.
“But you started to say ‘I don’t know what it means to.’ What were you going to say?”
Oh Jesus, he really did learn from Ginger.
“Just what I said: like, I don’t know what you mean when you say love, and you don’t know what I mean, and—”
“That’s not what you were going to say.”
I drop my eyes to the blanket and shake my head, tracing the plaid with a trembling finger.
“Say it, baby.”
I squeeze my eyes shut.
“I don’t know… what it means… to have someone love me. And I know how I feel about you, but… I don’t know how to act about it.”