Before I knew I loved

I told her I loved her, but she wouldn’t believe me.

She knew that life wasn’t what I wanted - it had never been something I was looking for - but she had lied to herself from the beginning. She wanted to believe. Believe that the dream that caught her on a sleepy day, would keep her warm and safe for the rest of her life. But dawn came crushing in, just as it always does, pulling the sheltering blankets of lies from her face and leaving her naked under the cold air, facing a once displaced truth.

When it happened I lost meaning to her. I had done my duties and I had become nothing but a liability. A danger. A man. One that she needed to control to survive, but one that did all he could to be free. The baby lay flat on the brown carpet.

The baby was silent, then made some sounds. Almost surprised that he could even make them. In no understanding of who, not even what he was, but in no need to know. His eyes were thin, almost closed, but wandering about, exploring the room. How could I understand what I was feeling? Fear, in a dark way. Anger, in another. And then again, this warm, pulsing love, so strong I struggled to breathe. I was a father. And the world ran against me. Suddenly full of dangers and evil and I needed to protect. And I was too weak to even help myself.

But she hated me. I was dead to her. She loved the baby. And she hated herself. There it was, right in front of us, human life in its most pure form, a baby boy waiting for his mother's love. It was love that made the earth spin right. It was love, that kept the monkey from falling off the tree. I kept climbing, until the day I fell. And when I landed, it was all over, before I even knew I loved.

I met Sara on a night out at the pub. I wish I could be telling a different story, but I guess it’s all I deserved. She was pretty, not great, but I was drunk and dry and hadn’t fucked in weeks. It changes a man. It gives him a heavy heart and boiling blood. I wasn’t looking for love, I can say that much. She looked at me coming in with the boys.

She did it well, in a way that left me thinking if she actually did or not. We passed and her eyes were back to her friends and there was some guy close to her as well. She went through her dark hair as I passed and I remember her scent in my nose. It was full in that pub and horny bastards came flooding in, rolling out their temperament like puke on the pub’s already sticky wooden floor.

I went for drinks and she was hanging at the bar, staring through some guy talking to her. I felt her looking at me while I was ordering. I turned and she was there smiling at me, while that guy kept talking, desperately fighting for his life with every word. The bartender filled shots and I smiled back.

She started talking to me while that guy kept blabbering. I never said I’d play fair.

That guy stayed, watching us with a stupid, fake smile on his face for a couple of minutes until he realized that he was a fucking loser and ought to go home and cry. I felt the drunk. I felt the heat. We started making out at the bar. Then she was gone. Then she was back. Then we were in the bathroom and I was rubbing her clit and licking her tongue.

“Not here.” And she was wet and I kissed her and hated myself and it didn’t matter anyways, because we were falling together in a dark hole and there might have been people around us watching but their voices were too far away and reality too blurry and I was too hard and she was too wet and she wasn’t great but it would be great to be inside of her.

“Not here.”, she whispered again. I just grabbed her arm and threw her coat over her face. We stumbled outside. The fresh air felt good hitting my face. She lit a cigarette and I didn’t smoke but didn’t care. Empty streets. So drunk. I grabbed her neck and she stared at me and couldn’t wait. I stole her cigarette and took a hit and felt nothing but burned air and adrenaline. I kissed her full lips and imagined them around my dick, then pressed the cigarette back into her mouth.

“Let’s go.”, I said.

“But where?”, she asked. Stumbling beside me on an empty street.

“My place.” She grabbed my arm and looked up at me with those big, soleless, horny eyes.

“I don’t want to wait so long.”

So we fucked in an empty street at 3 in the morning.

She shook her ass while I stroked her and she screamed so loud I am sure somebody woke up. I kept working, feeling the cold morning breeze on my face, looking up to the stars, and questioning my existence.

Suddenly I saw the guy on his e-scooter coming up the street. I was almost shocked when I realized that I did not care.

She might, but it started to be really good, so I pressed her head down and forced her to hold herself against the concrete floor while I worked her from behind. The guy cruised past us. She didn’t see him.

I saw that he saw us. And I saw that he just kept looking straight. Must feel depressing I thought and kept pumping that drunk slut from the pub. Werewolf hours were out as the moon kept shining down. Her ass wiggling in front, screaming my name.

“COME INSIDE OF ME!”, she screamed. I ignored her even though it was all I wanted.

“COME INSIDE OF ME NOW!”, she demanded as her body started vibrating.

“Are you sure?”, I asked.

“YES! DO IT NOW!” And before she finished her sentence I filled her up. Like the fuckup that I was.

2

“What should we name it?”, Sara looked through me when she asked. I didn’t answer.

“Billy? What should we name it?” I snapped out of it.

“I don’t know what we should name it. I don’t fucking know.”

“Of course.”, she said.

“I don’t know what you want to name your kid all right. I don’t fucking know!”

“My kid? Are you fucking kidding me? My kid? What about you take some responsibility, Billy?”

“Oh yeah, because I am the problem.”

“Yes, you are!”

“You are the one that wants to have it!”, I yelled at her face and I hated everything about her. Everything about her and everything about me. And everything about this small, dirty, and cold shithole apartment that we stayed in.

“You are a fucking asshole! You are no man! You are sick!”

The first two months would basically look like that. I guess Sara had become my girlfriend. We stayed together. But we barely fucked. We would have the kid together. Because she wanted it that way.

We lay in bed for hours at night. We didn’t speak. We didn’t talk. We prayed for it to not be true. To be gone the next morning. Then we woke up, not remembering sleeping at all. The first thought being one of panic, realizing that it has not gone away. That it was no dream. That it was real.

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