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Te

Bill Tope

She looked as if she held, behind
those brown eyes, the key to every
riddle ever posed by the heart of
man. She was both brilliant and
beautiful. And knew it.

She possessed all the answers, she
was sure, and who was there to
question her, amongst mere mortals?
You’re not my boyfriend, she said,
sitting up straighter in my bed. I have
a boyfriend and Kevin means everything
to me. Compared with him, she went
on, you are as nothing.

i must have blinked. I did remove my
hand from her breast, I remember that.
How long have you felt this way, I
wanted to know. Hadn’t we grown any
closer in the months we’d shared a
house? I wondered.

I had known that Theresa had a nominal
“boyfriend,” a faceless man that nobody
ever saw. But to learn that she had
severed--or refused to acknowledge--any
other intimate feelings, was a crusher.
She was speaking again.

From the first, she said, I have only loved
one man and that is Kevin; no one else
even merits mention in the same breath as
him. There is no second or third place, only
Kevin. There is, she said, no comparison.

Then what was this, I asked, sweeping
my hand over the mattress and bed
clothes. This, she said dismissively,
was play. It doesn’t take emotions to
have sex.

There were other men in Theresa’s life
as well. Each weekend it was on to a new
conquest for her. At the beginning we had
shared only the roof over our heads, but
in the interim had become ardent lovers.
For me that had changed things.

I had somehow thought that we were
becoming more and more intimate--
emotionally--and not just physically. And
when I broached the subject, I then
stood corrected. And embarrassed and
vulnerable. Mostly, I felt stupid.

I next told her, collect your things, your
stuff, and get the hell out of my bedroom
--and don’t come back, I added quietly.
She gazed into my eyes for a moment,
turned away and left my bedroom for the
last time.

Theresa, I called after her. She turned
to regard me. I told her that I had heard
from others that she was soulless and
cold, but I had to learn the hard truth for
myself. I told her I didn’t understand
how she could love a man she obviously
didn’t respect. We never spoke again..

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