Kissing a girl is one thing...

She’s not like an addiction; she is an addiction. I’m going through withdrawal. There’s no other way to explain the chills or that sick feeling in my stomach when see those three words: No new messages. I understand that it takes time to settle in after a move, especially after a move to an island paradise where everyone is better looking than me. I know I should give her more time. Last time I was abroad I only got a chance to send one email in the entire two weeks, but I was on a tour. I didn’t have my own computer. I just had Internet cafes, and that was five years ago. What was I expecting her to do? Cancel the trip she'd plans for months because some stupid girl with a crush kissed her goodbye?

She doesn’t owe me anything. I should be content with what I have: a few snapshots, a few belongings she touched. I mean, all she did was kiss me, or maybe I kissed her, and she just accepted. Either way, that doesn’t entitle me to anything. I’m just another someone for her to mark off her list or, more likely, shut away in her closet. I’m a secret after all… Secrets are supposed to be sexy, something that you pull out when nobody’s looking. Maybe that’s what she’s doing. Maybe she couldn’t bring her computer, and she has to borrow her new boyfriends’. She’s too nervous to send me a message, even a bland, impersonal one about the weather. So she takes out her thoughts of me while she’s walking alone on the beach or while she’s in the shower. No, she doesn’t take them out; she tries to hold them back, but as the water rushes over her sculpted body every memory of my touch dives into her skin. My fingers are back on her hip bones. They glide, sommoning all sorts of strange and dangerous aches. Then she cries because she doesn’t know what to do. It’s ok to kiss girls while you're drunk, but it’s not ok to love them. It's one thing to want them at night and another to still want them the next morning.

When she sits down to play her guitar she sings about me, not blatantly of course, but she smiles at the lyrics about a faraway girl because she knows a secret. That’s what I do; I pour out my heart in some stupid song that I heard on the radio probably eight years ago. Would I give up forever to touch her? I would hate to spend forever like this. What happens when every physical trace of her fades away, and I have nothing to prove that I didn’t just imagine her entirely? No one could ever possibly be as perfect as I imagine her. Why should I waste my time on an illusion? Why should I give up anything for someone who doesn’t even care enough to say hi? Damn, I’m such a girl, whining, “Why doesn’t (s)he call me.” I hate that she brings out this side of me. At the same time I love it. I love how standing next to her makes me shake. I hate how my voice cracked as if I were a teenage boy when she surprised me while I was in the shower. Did she realize I was thinking about her?

Maybe she hates it too. She hates that I wear down her resolve to be a good girl, to settle down, too grow up. She says “no,” then I say “yes,” and then she agrees. Yes, she hates that. She prides herself on her strong will. What she says goes. In a low voice I slip a few words around her neck and lead her wherever I want. I don’t mean to make her weak. I love that she’s strong and fiery. I love the stray curls that refuse to stay straight. I know just how they feel.

I love how when she speaks I feel capable of magic, but I just don’t know it yet. Then later, when she’s nowhere around to see or hear, I become great. What would happen if she saw? Would she beam at how she made me grow? Would she be scared because of what it could mean, that she was losing her edge to me? That I’ll keep growing and she keeping loving me?

Who am I to even think that she might love me! I don’t even know if I love her. I’m in love, but that’s not the same as loving. Kissing a girl’s ok, but loving a girl isn’t. That would mean breaking all the rules. That would mean making my parents cry. That would mean having to fight for everything. Is she worth it? She’s worth anything. How often can someone say, “She makes me better?” She would answer, “No, you make yourself better,” even if she did feel a little twinkle of pride. Whether I love her or not, she’s worth loving, and if I do, I’m going to love her completely, love her like she deserves, pull out all the stops. If I can't, she deserves someone who can and who will. She's worth burning down the world. Am I ready?

Maybe she’s thinking the same thing. She wants to be sure. If she doesn’t talk to me, doesn’t think about me until she gets back and this thing, whatever it is, attacks her when she sees me again, then it’s real. It’s too strong to kill or bury alive. Then she’d give it everything, no pussyfooting around; that’s not her style. It’s all or nothing, as scary as that sounds... God, that’s scary, enough to scare even her. I bet she feels the way I do when I find a new email that’s paragraphs longer than any email has a right to be. I stare, overwhelmed. I have to wait before I can write. I have to collect myself. That’s what she’s doing; she’s collecting herself. She’s waiting for her heart to stop pounding and her head to stop doubting. When she comes back she’ll take a deep breath and…I have no idea what she’ll say. I have no idea what I’ll say or what I’ll feel, but I know it will overwhelm us both. I may have become numb by then. I may have become so used to wanting her here again that I don’t even notice her lack anymore, but when I see her, that lack will push me to the ground. I will get scared all over again because kissing a girl is one thing, but loving a girl is another.