Ladies' woman

Fiction for your Friday is a bit early this week ...

She told me she liked women. Originally, this seemed like really good news. I was all about women who liked women, especially attractive ones. I like women. Hey great minds!

Well, not so much.

The more I spent time with her, the more I noticed her noticing women. And talking about women. Women who weren’t me. Yet that were was always that reassuring, “But I find you attractive,” disclaimer. So it was ok. It had to be.

Right.

At first, I found her frequent out of town trips and insistences we do things with our own friends separately refreshing. It can get suffocating being with a person who merges into you, who get hurts if you want a night out with your buds or you just want to hide in your safety zone and read a book. I thought it was healthy.

It wasn’t.

At first, we spent more and more time apart. Then, it felt like we were apart when we were in the same room. Then, this lover of women wanted no part of my touching her. She was having her period. Her breath was bad. My breath was bad. The sheets were the wrong color.

I swam the river denial. She was just going through a phase. We moved a bit fast, so things need to slow down and then they’ll even out. We’re meant to be and if I’m just patient, if I am her rock, she’ll drift back to me.

As she floated out into the ocean of her own desires.

There was no evidence, no defining moment, no righteous declaration. There was only the sinking feeling I’d been left behind. She never had to admit her guilt, she was not capable of feeling it. Why should she? Some infatuations don’t turn out.

They turn towards a new infatuation.

I can’t even be angry, for the same has happened to me too. There is a spark of interest that can only fan the smallest, brief flash. The fire can’t be sustained by a bit of paper that floats into the flame.

If you’re lucky, after several good tries, you meet someone who transcends the initial infatuation. Her spark hits some form of love accelerant and the fire grows bright and hot. In time, it dims but slows into a steady, warm glow.

She told me she likes women. But after awhile, she told me she just liked me.