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*****
“Love isn’t cut and dry. I mean, there are different types of love.”
She rolled her eyes, smiled a little. “I know that, Ben. But, you are a writer. If someone asked you to write love, what would you write?”
Jesus. He hadn’t even been this nervous giving presentations in college. What could he tell her? She had no background information to go off of. At least, nothing they both understood that he could reference.
It’s like watching Fred Astaire and Ginger Rogers. Love is…synchronicity.
And her eyes would squint, her nose would wrinkle, and she would ask him to explain until everything got lost in translation.
He stalled by focusing on his plate. She would wait until he was finished. Roux had a natural thirst for knowledge, an affinity for it. And she was like a sponge, which only spurred her curiosity. She had no qualms sitting there, quiet and eager, waiting until he came up with an explanation.
“Roux, if I can be honest with you, I may not be the best person to answer that for you,” he admitted. “I may not be one of your top ten choices to answer that question.”
She moved closer. It was only about an inch, but he felt it. Because she’d never moved toward him before. “But if somebody asked you to write it.”
She also didn’t drop subjects.
“If I had to write it?” He took a moment to sort through his thoughts. “I’d say it was like…okay, you remember that rope you tied me up with?”
“Yes. Shall I get it?”
“No. I’m just using it as a…never mind. Think about that rope.”
She closed her eyes so didn’t see how wide he smiled at the fact that she was literally thinking about it.
“Love is like each of the strings that make up that rope. It’s a mixture of trust, of compassion, of friendship. Of passion. The bond that remains when everything else has fallen away whether through disaster, rough times, or just time itself. A person will never look at someone they love the same way they look at anyone else. Kennedy put men on the moon and I’m pretty sure that, as they looked back at the shape of earth, none of them saw the same thing. That is what I think love is like. Looking at someone and seeing your own version of the world.”
And if she didn’t look away soon, just like a rope, he would unravel. He didn’t see the world when he looked at her, but he didn’t see anything he’d ever seen before, in any woman. When she looked at him, he felt something he’d never felt before, from any woman.
K. Alex Walker 
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