Okay

Amidst the coolness granted by sex's sweat, my lover strangely stiffened and the moment silently soured. Selfishness and cowardice were the ingredients of my post-coital cocktail. I'd cum, and I didn't want to inquire as to whether I might never cum with her -- in her -- ever again. It would have been a low thing to ask so directly, but it was lower still not to.

She'd cum, too. I'd made her insides quiver and spasm. Pearly essence had flowed passively and submissively from her smooth, tiny, girlish 'clitty.' Oh, how that invited me to pretend -- but I knew. She endured my touches. She suffered my kisses. Her cocktail was discontent, and that was the moment when her cup finally filled. On that, I will defend myself. I didn't know until just then. I am not the hero or the victim in this story, so I have little to lose by making the off-color joke: aren't girls so much better at hiding that sort of thing?

Sleep came for me; I hope it came for her, too. I doted on her in the morning and made her feel terribly guilty -- not on purpose, but I should have known better. I went to work. She went to school. I kissed her. She didn't kiss me.

In the evening, before dinner, I sat her down. I looked deep into her hazel eyes; they were usually windows into her brilliant mind more so than into her soul, but that day it was different. It was all emotions, culminating in that brief flicker of surprise when she realized that I knew. Predictable chaos followed. Oh, those girls. They do think they're so clever.

"Maybe I should apologize for not noticing sooner," I began. "I don't know. I noticed last night, so now here we are. Don't wait anymore. Say it. It's how you feel."

"You always do this," she complained, knowing I'd take the compliment. I'm a know-it-all, and I don't really hate it about myself. She was a genius, but she was only twenty. I had eight years on her, and people like us can get lost in our own heads for a small eternity while taking a shower. I might as well have been an old man. I felt that way most of the time, and still do. She didn't make me feel young. She made me feel good about being the older man who could provide for her -- who was, unfairly, just far enough ahead of her so that she wouldn't get bored. Youth wasn't something I could recapture for myself. It was something I could take to my bed and enjoy. That didn't mean it wasn't love.

What did the kids say ten years ago? Are you 'pressing X to doubt?' Well, if only I could make you feel that wretched heartsickness -- ironically, so close to dopesickness. There at the table, my body was already anticipating the withdrawals. In the having, maybe the sex is the more powerful drug. In the losing, though, it's always the love.

Of course, I'm not the kind of guy who loses the love and not the sex, so the assertion remains quite unscientific. I'll cop to that.

She found my eyes occasionally while rolling hers and torturing herself -- and me, though that hardly mattered. Her slender fingers clenched and unclenched upon the cheap, faux-wood surface. She slumped back into the similarly glossy chair. I wondered for a moment if she was trying to look and act more like a boy. If so, she wasn't doing a very good job. She'd dressed the part that morning, which had come as no surprise, but her lithe frame, soft shoulders, wide eyes and full lips forever pushed her over my personal line. I could always, always believe that my tomgirl was my tomboy instead. She was my girlfriend. She was my good little girl.

Was, was, was.

"I love you," she said, three words that should've been three letters instead: starts with a 'b,' ends with a 't.'

"You don't love me," she said next, trying to make me the villain and her the victim. It's only natural.

"I do love you," I replied easily. "That's not what this is about."

Her eyes steeled. "What do you love about me?"

That would've made a younger man sputter. My pendulum was long since swung the other way. I struggled to make it sound like I wasn't reading my response from a script. "Your mind. Your heart. You're a good person, and you're my kind of person. You're inquisitive. You're contemplative. You feel deeply. You care deeply. We agree on so much more than we disagree."

I have to give her credit: she let it go. She let the smooth, high-quality answer earn me the points it deserved. She could've been a child about it. Being mature took something out of her, though. She got small. Her head lowered. She must have felt so cheated that she was the one to look away.

"I'm not a girl," she said. Her tone was a pout, but it was more than earned. "I don't want to be the girl."

I nodded. She felt it -- vision so peripheral it's not really sight.

She looked up. Her eyes and her lips were pleading, but there was a larger picture. She already knew. I already knew. There was to be no begging.

"I wish it didn't matter," I said.

She sighed, because she'd decided to be an adult yet again. It was exhausting her. Being fair does that. We have so many instincts that scream out at us to go the other way. She shrugged, and scraped idly at the table with a fingernail that was too smooth to do any damage. "I don't think I could ever do anything with... you know. A vagina."

And of course there's a difference. One hangup is bits. The other hangup is a gestalt, and maybe a construct -- or maybe it's just about different bits. Regardless: whichever hangup you don't have, that's the unreasonable one. That's the shitty one.

"Thank you," I replied. "I know it's a weird thing to say right now, but thank you."

"Yeah," she said... but, no. It was time then, and it's time now, in the retelling. No more 'Kaylee' or 'Kay.' 'Connor,' once again, like it says on the official paperwork, and always did. Connor is a boy. Connor is a 'he,' so let's try that again.

"Yeah," he said.

There we go.

"How was it ever going work?" he asked.

It was my turn to shrug. "Strangely. Uniquely. Maybe no public displays of affection. Maybe my good little girl at home, and nowhere else. I don't know."

"Would you have been able to say it?" he demanded. "Out there? 'This is Connor? He's my boyfriend?'"

"Of course," I said, "but that's not what you're really asking."

"Yeah," he said. He was getting used to the fact that I wasn't fighting.

"I wouldn't have liked it," I said. "It would have felt wrong."

He nodded. I nodded.

"I can move back in with Billy whenever," he said. I was even luckier than him that he had family. "Do you need to... not be here? Sometime?"

I shook my head. I was heartsick and ready to both kill and die, but I knew I had to take my lumps. I was the older man. I had to set an example.

"Okay then," he said. He took the key out of his pocket and slid it to the center of the table. "Should do that now, then."

"Thanks," I said.

A look passed between us. This is the part where one usually writes, '... and it spoke volumes.' Not so; what a twist. That look was a single, specific conversation; it was about pictures, videos, emails, texts, and anything else that was either about sex, about 'Kaylee,' or about both. You can go ahead and say something cynical about how that Venn diagram must look. Agree to disagree, but I don't have the evidence anymore to support my position.

I silently promised they would all be destroyed. He silently believed me. That felt good in the worst possible way. It was love's remainder -- the part that should be all that matters, but isn't, and the part that doesn't die so easily, but cannot be the phoenix spark, only the night's ember. It was the antidepressant that gives the tortured soul just enough energy to kill himself. I hung on. I didn't cry. Should I have? I just don't know. Losing love feels like an endless series of choices between selfish truths and noble lies.

"I don't how much to say," he said, "because, you know... we might actually see each other again."

"Yeah," I said, faking a chuckle, poorly. "Nothing worse than that."

We stood, and he gathered a few things. I walked him to the door. We didn't hug, kiss, or shake hands. Selfishly, I was grateful that he was a boy, and not a girl. There were things he understood, or was willing to accept. He knew I couldn't see him again -- not voluntarily. It would hurt too much. He knew we couldn't be friends. He knew it was The End, with capital letters, but maybe not the lowercase version, so no big speeches or elegant summations. He allowed for the possibility that there would never be the right moment for them. That's really, really hard. I was proud of him. How many big speeches had I made over the years -- all of them just as regrettable and ill-advised as they were deadly accurate? I'd been smart before I'd been wise, and I'd been wise before I'd been kind enough to shut the fuck up and take my lumps.

Once upon a time, there'd been a girl, and at the end, I'd done everything wrong. So had she, but I'd been the older one then, too. So what do age and wisdom amount to? Two weeks, give or take -- the courage to know it's over and to blow the whistle. That's how long it had been, back then, between the phone call where she hadn't said "I love you" back, and when the contents of her cup -- the dis-contents, you might say -- had finally overflowed, and had turned to poison in the meantime.

She was gone. Connor was gone. I was still right there, with my career, my condo, my car, and a spare key back in my own pants pocket. Before I broke down sobbing in the hallway, I briefly wondered if the next time, for the very first time, I'd be the one to fall out of love. I wondered how much better it would feel -- or at least, as the heartsickness of a dope went from anticipatory to real and I literally doubled over from the pain, how it could possibly be any worse.

It would be no use dating an older woman. I had no chance to be blameless. Age isn't just relative; there are absolutes. It was too late for me. I was responsible.

***

I brushed a cheek, soft and smooth, so very close to full lips. "I've always loved names with that 'K' sound at the beginning," I said. "Don't know why. 'Catherine,' 'Katrina,' 'Caitlyn' -- even 'Crystal.'"

"Stripper name," he said in a deadpan voice. "Red flag." His body language was all green lights, though, which made it adorable. The high timbre didn't hurt.

"You could be my 'K,'" I said.

"Oh," he replied, surprised for but a heartbeat, which only proved how quick he was. He moved closer, and let me do the same -- but it was more than that. He accepted my presence and my touch. I got to feel his warmth as it became both mine and hers, and it was everything. "Oh... kay."

***

So clever. So smart. But not a 'yes' -- just an 'okay.'

Next time, I'll blow the whistle there. That's what age and wisdom will amount to then. That's what they'll earn me, and that's what they'll cost.

I didn't say the words or sigh them out, because even I'm not that big of a drama queen or a dork. Just for you and me, though, both then and now, and practically every single day:

Oh, Kay.