I Want What I'm Scared Of

That went away real quick, the monster of jealousy burbling away into nothing when he glanced over her shoulder at me and gave me a warm smile and I just kind of melted, realizing in an instant that I was so in lust with him and also that I was so very out of my depth as I only blushed even harder and collapsed in on myself.

I didn't know anything about this guy, but there were a few things I was certain of. He was way too much for me. He was probably perfect for Rachel. And she and he were both flirting up a storm.

Sometimes you can read a conversation without listening to the words. I mean it's not the case when you're in an office, at least not if everyone is being proper about things and no one is or is about to be fired, and it's not the case all the time, but there are certain conversations that happen out in the world where you can just pick out everything that is being said without hearing or processing any of the words at all.

By the time I fully realized the conversation was happening, I was too deep in it to fully grasp what they were saying. My embarassment and my jealousy and my other strong feelings were all mixed up and mingling in amongst one another and so in the end I gave it a valiant effort but quickly resigned myself to rather fading into the background and observing.

Lessons. Learning. That's what I was here for in this town after all and though the class may be informal, I could think of no better Professor for "Being A Girl 101" than Rachel.

There is something to the way that people move when they flirt. Something in the little twists and turns they make, the little push and pull that exists between two people while the whole world just sort of melts away.

Because you see it is defined by restraint. Flirting is an act of giving without giving too much away. It's little movements that are more florid and flowing than you would find naturally, hinged and drawn back at the last instant by the remembrance that you ought not to.

You want to take the chance, take the leap. With every part and every fiber of your body you want nothing less than to press yourself against them and melt into their body, crushing your lips against theirs and parting instantly to accept their tongue against your own while you moan and mewl and run your hands around their back. Clinging to them with desperation and wriggling your body so as to entice, so as to make them know that if they wanted an inch you would give them a mile because all of you is screaming out for the touch of all of them.

But you don't. Especially not the first time.

This is a stranger, after all, and we are all raised on a diet of stranger danger. This is a stranger and you don't quite know whether you can trust them yet and even if you can, you don't know whether you ought to. You think they're right but you don't know it and the more you glimpse at that the harder it is to look away, the harder it is to drift into that middle space between wanting everything and having nothing.

And beyond even stranger danger there is a greater fear. The fear that I do think is in all of us, even if some of us hide it better than others. The fear that maybe you're reading the whole situation wrong even though they may as well be a mirror for you now. The fear that maybe, just maybe, they don't love you like you love them. They don't want you like you want them.

So fear. Fear of the unknown and fear of rejection. Fear of reading the whole thing wrong. Fear of all of it and thus, we twist ourselves up into a knot and we play a game where we very nearly give it all away but we don't, in the end.

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