Irreplacable

He said, "I love you."

What does that even mean? Words, they're arbitrary, they have no inherent meaning in themselves. The different sounds made by air being pushed out of different mouth and tongue arrangements are understood as different words only because the meaning pinned to each sound is agreed on by everyone. But Love... that word, nobody knows what it means, nobody really agrees with everyone else. So don't say "I love you"! Because I don't know what it means.

He breathed in and the rise of his chest distracted me for a moment.

Damn, he's sexy. I think I could just listen to him talk, I could watch him breathe, all day...

I regained control.

How could he, say such a thing, he knows how I feel about words, how meaningless they are, what purpose does he think telling me that would serve? It's not like I don't already know how much he wants me, I'm not blind I can see the way he looks at me, but even if I were I would have felt his damned sexual aura permeating the air whenever he's close...

He breathed out.

"Wait. Let me finish. I wasn't done. You've probably already had two paragraphs worth of thoughts run through your head, hmm... You think too fast, sometimes..."

This guy, what is he? A vampire?

"No, you just have very expressive eyes... I was going to tell you what I mean when I say "I love you". And it's going to take awhile. I don't want to repeat the entire thing every time I want to tell you, and I'm going to want to tell you often, in every way, in everything I do. So, this is what love means to me ...."

***

I stopped to take a breath.

So what did he tell you? What did you do after that?Who's this guy? Does Mom know about him? What happened in the end? I want to know I want to know I want to know...

"You already know what he told me. The rest, I'll tell you next day."

Next day? Next day? What does that mean? Tomorrow? A day soon to come? What?!