These feelings won't go away.

He sings in the car,

This feeling
Don't happen
By yourself
Alone
Is no
Way to live
Breathing
It don't happen
By yourself
Alone
Is no
Way to live
We could love
We can love
One another
We could love
We can love
One another
We could love

and I don't realize whether he is singing to sing or singing to say something that he could never think let alone utter outloud. He keeps giving me these CDs and I wonder if they should mean anything more than the mix tape my boyfriend in seventh grade gave to me, the one with Journey and Chicago and Boston on sides A and B.

My phone rings at 7:30am and he takes the shiny thing into his hand, saying that it's my mom calling and asking if he should answer it and tell her that I'm too busy being naked in some guys bed. I want to ask, are you just some guy? But instead I force the phone away from him and reach towards the beside table to find a place to set it down. He brushes the hair away from my neck and traces some sort of secret pathway all the way down and all the way back. He does it in such a way that I know what he wants and how he wants it. And normally, such things are much too inappropriate for the new day, but as the morning lights breaks through the thin curtains and his breathing becomes heavier it seems like it will be alright, even if it's just for a few moments. I spend the rest of the morning trying to avoid his intense gaze because I'm afraid he'll see that something has changed and to say otherwise would be to lie.

Hours later I reluctantly find myself in the company of an entirely different man, one who I have run out of patience with, one whose words and thoughts make me shrink further and further away from him. His honesty, he over-enthusiasm about emotions I am sure cannot exist repulse me and I don't think he'll even understand. I made no illusion about how I am feeling or that I don't want to be in his company. He knew this, yet he still persisted. The entire three hours were excruciating, requiring an inordinate amount of well directed insults and an abnormal amount of effort put forth in the construction of more and more barriers between us. I could only hope that he would have just left me standing there. Abandonment was in many more ways appealing than dealing with him.

The things he kept saying were like gravel shoved beneath my skin. Slowly picking away at the layers above was of no relief. I wanted to badly to make him angry and I did. It feels so good, still. And of course I am being entirely inappropriate, childish even. But I want him to feel what "no" is like. I want him to question his own frame of mind. I want him to see what everyone else sees. But really, I want him to hate me so much that it kills him because I'm afraid anything short of that wouldn't be enough.

Now, bits and pieces of the things that spilled out of his mouth run through my mind and the more I think about it, the more my stomach churns. I don't know how he can't see it. He accuses me of being unemotional, unresponsive, cold, angry, bitter, stupid and I wonder how long it will take accusations to turn into realize facts because let's be honest, he makes me feel those things. I'm not sure how attraction can be so one-sided, how one person is convinced of their infatuation while the other recoils in repulsion. It's only now that I question the merits of playing games with the hearts of little boys and not because it is cruel, but because dealing with the result is entirely more obnoxious than any of this is worth. He should have listened to his father.