belle de jour

You have great taste in music!

I try not to return to these moments very often, for I end up lacerating my young self for not simply kissing the girl. I thought we had time. Despite everything, I believed somehow there was time. Love’s first mistake. Perhaps love’s only mistake.

But let me tell you what I think about secrets before you decide if you want me to tell you one. Secrets make life more interesting. You can be in a crowded room with someone and touch them without touching, just with a look, because they know a part of you no one else knows. And whenever you’re with them, the two of you are alone, because the you they see no one else can see.

"Hey," he said. It came out hard and frustrated. "I told you to smile because you're pretty when you smile." She walked to the bottom of the steps, then looked back at him. "It'd be better if you thought I was pretty when I don't."

She felt him forming an opinion even as he stood there looking at her, talking to her. An aspect of her, in his mind, that he already possessed. He’d plucked it from her without permission, a transaction no other man had attempted, one that she could not object to, because it was him.