Flipped

She wanted to want to be here. She pretended (ignoring that she was pretending) that she was enjoying this. He invited her to his boat on the lake and she was happy to oblige. She loved him; of course she would go.

He pushed the boat off the shore, making the oars work immediately.

He did not roll his eyes when she asked him to stop in the middle of the lake. He allowed her this favor.

They met in dance class. There had been some confusion if they were flirting or if their bodies were only accidentally too close in dancing together. She had tried to ignore both of them holding on for a little too long. She was the one who had been brave enough to bring it up.

She listened to him talk about life under the boat, about the ridiculousness of thinking that there was a mythical creature in its depths. Again.

Each time, she wanted to say that the world was so much vaster than he would ever realize, that natural beauty does not give up their secrets easily, that we already have to be patient for a seed to decide to turn into bud into a flower into a fruit that looks nothing like the flower and sharks are older than trees and things keep turning into crabs so what stops the bottom of the lake from being a bed for a wonderful monster?

However, she had already learned her lesson, many times over. She didn’t bring it up anymore.

He liked dancing, obviously. Outside of class, he liked dancing on the off beat. He liked when she followed him, although it made her body uncomfortable to not be on beat. She would try to coax him to the beats her hips knew, and he would decline. He was strong in his convictions.

Please, just let me have this one thing.

She never asked for it out loud. She was learning what battles to choose. She doesn’t know when it became a cold war.

She had questioned him a few times. Every time, she came away apologizing to him. He always expected her to apologize when he felt she had wronged him. She would relent. She loved him. When she would try asking for the same thing, he kept to his conviction: he didn’t apologize if he felt he had done nothing wrong. She didn’t know how to point this out without having to apologize at the end of the discussion again, so she didn’t.

She stared into the depths, the lake too dark a blue to let go of sightings of secrets. She forgot she gave off a reflection. She didn't want to know what was down there - she wondered if they wanted to know her? The monster wouldn’t care what she was, much less who she was. It would just eat her. Or, the world was more vast than she could imagine, and the monster would love her. Would consider her opinion worth caring about. Would consider her worthy of an apology every once in a while. Would not constantly needle her into what they wanted her to be and tell her it was growth.

She fell in love with him because she felt like it. Later, it was for saying “I know this is hard for you,” for recognizing her struggle to keep up with him. She fell because he helped her grow, to not let things build until she blew up, for walking her through her emotions, helping her mature. He taught her tact, to be more subtle.

All this she had learned from him. Yet.

She wasn’t a subtle person. But she had learned how to be subtle for him subtleness from him. How could she not take his lessons? She loved him.

She was fantasizing about a monster who didn’t know she existed. To be fair, she wasn’t sure she existed either. What was important was that she loved him. What was her existence if she didn’t love him?

Well,

She would be unsubtle.

She would be loud.

She would smile to herself.

She was holding on for a little too long.

She moved to sit on the edge of the boat, facing him.

“You know what?”

He finally turned to her, bewildered that she hadn’t been listening and the audacity of being interrupted.

“I’d rather be dragged to the bottom of the lake than spend any more time with you.”

And she fell off backwards while flipping him off in the process.