Goal of the day: 1111 words. Written: 472.
"Are you in love with me?"
"I don't know. I'm not sure."
I look into your eyes. They are watching me, and your eyebrows are slightly moving and slightly rising. Your bottom lip opens slightly, as if you want to say something immediately.
"I don't understand. I like you. You're cool, funny and beautiful. Sometimes when I look at you I think I'm in love with you, but I'm not sure..."
I lean back on the stool and rest my back against the wall. I glance down to my left, as if looking for a lost explanation. I sigh.
"Sometimes when I masturbate, I think about you."
Your eyes widen. But still silent. I see your fingers move to the rolling tobacco tray - a sign that you want to smoke - but you don't do anything further, so I don't let myself stop and I carry on.
"Your shapes then excite me and..."
I smile, embarrassed.
"...Well, you know how it works. In a word."
I am silent for a moment, looking for what to say next.
"But I still can't say it's love. Well, or any greater admiration at all. With other girls, like Eleonora, whom I met last November, it was different - then my blood boiled and I rushed to her, I lost my mind, my feelings, my self-control, I had to", - I clench my fists imaginatively, stand up from the stool and start walking around the kitchen in empathy, - "be with her. And I was. Then I lost my mind!"
I lean my butt on the countertop above the cupboards. I look into your eyes.
"I don't feel it with you. Well, you're attractive. You're pretty. And I feel that stirring in my heart - that desire to spend time together, as we do now or on the trip to Saint Lucia and back. And I enjoy being with you, corresponding with you, talking to you."
I turn around, open the cabinet upstairs and reach down and pick up an empty glass. Somehow I got exhausted. I look at you after picking up the glass. Your coffee cup is already empty, but I'll ask you about that later, I'm still on the subject.
"And I consider you my friend. But maybe not just a friend. I don't understand."
I turn back to the cupboards and, reaching for the water tap, put the glass under the water.
"So do you still feel that you are in love with me?"
You do, however, pick up a case of rolling tobacco and open it. Immediately you start the ritual again - a piece of paper, a filter, tobacco, twist, lick, seal, invite you to go outside to smoke.
I turn off the tap, raise the glass to my lips and take a small sip. I look at you from eye to toe and back again.
"I don't know. And I can't fall in love, technically. At the moment, my year without love is a challenge. And I respect challenges, they are the most important part of life for me - it's the only reason I live, really."
I look left and down again. I put the glass on the counter.
"I don't know, maybe you could call it platonic love? Or something like that? Or maybe real love? Maybe a really good relationship based on the fact that I see you first as a good friend, a soul that completes me? ...Not a piece of meat with a vertical space between its legs?"
I smile. Then I laugh briefly - probably at the stress and the ugly comparisons.
You smile too, and stand up, picking up a rolled cigarette and your blue lighter.
"Come on, while I smoke, you can tell me more."
I smile, nod and follow you. Before crossing the threshold of the house, you turn around and ask:
"What about your first love? Laima, you said? How did it start?"
// 28 May, Almost halfway through the Year Without Love challenge.