he seemed that first night. That fateful night it all seemed so surreal, so sudden.
“That Dave Matthews Band song, Crash into Me makes me think of you,” I tell him.
“Really?”
“That’s what it felt like the first time we met,” I confess. “Like you just crashed into me. It was so sudden, so unexpected.”
I hear soft laughter at the other end of the line. “It was. It was amazing.”
“You came out of nowhere,” I tell him, remembering that night so long ago. “One second, I was here, and the next, I was gone…caught up in you. Absolutely wrecked.”
“Wrecked?”
“Yes, absolutely wrecked.”
“You have it all wrong, Mirella,” he says, his voice quiet. “You are the one who has wrecked me.”
I close my eyes, my heart caught up in his words. I don’t want to do this right now. I don’t want to go deep into this. I just want to talk to my friend.
“There’s a French song in the mix,” I point out. “You know I don’t understand French, right?” I’m teasing. I hope he can tell by the tone of my voice.
“It’s beautiful. It’s by this French-Canadian songstress who has the voice of an angel.”
“What is it about?”
There’s another silence. And I try to remember the song. I listened to the beautiful melody but couldn’t understand a word.
“It’s about a woman who is passionately loved by two men,” he finally manages. My breath catches, his words replaying in my mind. “I thought it was fitting,” he says quietly.
I find myself without words. Another silence divides us. The air seems so charged. And neither of us seems to be able to utter a single syllable.
My voice trembles as I finally venture, “Does she love them both?”
He clears his throat and after a long pause, he says quietly, “I believe so.”
He knows I love him. He knows it despite the fact that I haven’t told him since that night so long ago, in the canopy bed under the stars. And he knows I love Gabe too.
“She does,” I whisper.
Another dreadful silence. I can almost hear the pounding of my heart in my ears. I want him to say something. “What a mess she must be in,” I finally manage, a poor attempt at humor.
“Yes, I can only imagine.”
Yes, I’m in a horrible mess, I want to scream. I feel the heaviness consume me and I want to tell him how I cry myself to sleep every night, how I can barely eat a thing, how I can’t find the strength to take my daughters to the park on some days.
Almost as if he can read my mind, he asks, “How are you, really? Please tell me the truth.”
The lump in my throat grows thicker and I can’t hold in the tears anymore. “I’m in shambles,” I cry. “And I deserve it, every miserable second of it.”
“No, you don’t. Listen to me, Mirella. You don’t deserve misery. I wish–”
“I do. I’ve committed one of the seven deadly sins,” I point out. “I’ve craved you. I’ve lusted for you. This is why I’m in this mess.”
“No,” he says, and I can hear the raised pitch of his voice. “Think about it…God’s invention, it’s genius. How else to ensure the propagation of human kind? Lust is what that is.”
I don’t say a word as he goes on.
“The man sees the woman and desires her, wants to touch her, taste her, get as close to her as he possibly can,” he says. “And it’s not just in his mind, it’s his body too. His heart beats faster, his skin flushes, the blood courses through him, he hardens for her. He craves her. She becomes a physiological need.”
A wave of desire washes over me as I listen to his words. His voice is so soft. I want him to stop talking now. But he’s not quite done.
“And the woman has the same reactions. She wants to taste and touch, and be touched by him, be explored to the depths. Her heart beats too and her body readies for him, becomes hot, wet, pliable.”
I don’t think he’s purposely trying to arouse me, but hell…
“Weston…”
“Think about it,” he goes on. “Take a small boy building a car, would he fault his creation for rolling when he pushed it? When he built it to do just that?”
I decide to play the devil’s advocate. “So you’re saying God wanted us to all run around and go at it like wild animals?”
“Well, no, but I’m saying I don’t think monogamy is quite—”
“Of course, someone