Ava and I are sitting outside on the swing, looking at the stars. She’s lying down, head settled comfortably on my lap.

“See them there? The moving lights?” she asks me.

“Yeah.”

“I always used to see them when I was younger.”

We fall silent again. I start stroking her long, soft hair. It spills down my leg and off the far side of the swing. She looks up and smiles at me. I lean down and we kiss.

“What did you mean when you said that you can’t stop falling in love?” she asked with a note of interest in her tone.

“It’s just that I can’t seem to stop falling in love. After I break up with someone, I quickly fall in love with someone else…” I trail off.

“How deep?”

“A lot.”

“How much?”

“The same.”

“You fall in love with a lot of people?”

“No, just one.”

“Oh, ok.”

I take a deep breath. Even though we’d become close in the past few months, it was still hard to get over my initial cowardice and fear of rejection at times.

“I- I was talking about you. I already love you, but now…it’s like double of what it was. It’s hard to explain.”

“So you fell for me again?”

“Pretty much.”

I wrapped my arm tighter around her waist. She smiled that amazing smile of hers and stroked my arm gently.

“It’s just. It’s hard to explain how I feel,” I start.

“It’s ok.”

“Well…words really can’t communicate it, but I’ll give it a shot…sometimes I can smell you in the middle of the night, and I just become wide awake, knowing you’re just out of reach and I can’t contact you,” I begin, fumbling for words. She moves her head a little. “What I feel…it’s…Sometimes, I can feel your heartbeat. Other times, I know when you’re thinking about me. I get these little flashes of you doing things. I have these memories of you and me. The little things we do. Like when we went out to dinner at that Mexican food restaurant.”

“Mmm. That was a night to remember,” Ava purred.

“Yeah. Afterwards was fun too.”

“Especially that,” she agreed.

“But it’s more than just that…I can remember our first kiss, all those memories,” I continue. “Sometimes it’s just little daydreams, little fantasies of us. I can just imagine what it would be like to wake up and see you in front of me. It’s funny, really. Remember right after we broke up?”

“We both said ‘I love you’ right after,” she laughed.

“Yeah, that. Just a week after that, we were back to normal. I just can’t find the words to describe it. It’s beyond passion…it’s…” I hesitated. “As funny as this may sound, it’s…beyond love. You mean a lot to me.”

She gazed up at me, eyes sparkling in the moonlight. I lean down and we kiss, again and again, each like a little taste of heaven.

“I…don’t suppose it’s fair for me to ask you how you feel about me, is it?” I ask.

She sat up, stretching. “My back is sore,” she complained. “It’s been hurting for a while.”

“I didn’t hurt you the other day, did I?” I asked concernedly.

“Oh, no, you helped,” she assured me.

“Good.” I lean back and settle comfortably on her soft, warm legs. She put her arm on my chest. I held her arm while her free hand started to scratch my head gently.

“But really, how do you feel about me?” I asked her.

She half-smiled. “You really want to know?” she asked. I nodded my head.

“Well, we’re a lot alike. Except you’re more ruthless than I am.”

I smiled. “We balance each other out. There’s a part of you that’s cold, and there’s a lot of me that cares about people, too. Yin-yang. It’s…easier for me to think of us as “us”, one group, than as two individuals.”

“Yeah.”

“Sorry, I should let you continue.”

“It’s ok. Well…in the beginning, when I first met you, there was something about you I liked, even though you kept on moving closer and closer. It was a bit creepy. But later on, when we hung out on my blanket and we talked, I still felt it. Of course, you looked at me like I was weird. Then the time you put your hand on my leg, although you say it was an accident.”

“Oh, yeah. I thought it was my leg,” I grinned. “ ‘Oh, I’m wearing jeans? Funny. My leg feels numb….Oh, shit. I’m gonna get slapped,’ I was thinking.”

“Well…yeah. Then the day we kissed and did those things I hadn’t done before. To be honest, it didn’t do a whole lot for me, but it was interesting.”

I gave her a sultry look. “Not as fun as last Monday, eh?” I purred.

Ava smiled. “Nope, but it was…interesting anyway. After we broke up…I started to care a lot about you…I started to like you a lot more…I started…loving you. You’ve hurt me sometimes, and you’ve made me angry…like when you got drunk and were puking for four hours...or when Jeremy told me about that other girl…” She pulled me closer. “And at first, I felt a little weird with all of what we were doing together. But after a while…well, you’ve changed me a lot. I…you mean a lot to me, Helm.”

We sat in silence for a while, broken only by my laughter after a few minutes.

“What?” she asked.

“Words are very unnecessary/they can only do harm – Depeche Mode, Enjoy The Silence.”

Ava smiled again.

“You know what song has been stuck in my head for a while?” she asks me.

“No.”

She starts singing lyrics.

“I love you.” I say softly as she pauses.

After a while, she starts singing again.

“You heard me, right?” I ask.

She nodded. I feel my stomach turn to ice and drop.

“The thing about me…I never say I’m going to do anything unless I’m 100, 200 sure, which is crazy. I’m indecisive. I mean, I’m supposed to love my mom, but a lot of me resents things she’s done. If I don’t love her…then how can I love anybody?” Ava explained.

Silence.

“You don’t have to take me out places…I don’t feel bad about us. Why spend money when we can just visit each other’s houses and have fun there?”

“Maybe it’s because I feel like I’m not doing enough,” I replied softly, closing my eyes.

“All you have to do is be there for me.”

“You’ve been there a lot for me, and I want to…pay you back.”

“You don’t have to…it’s ok. I care about you.” Ava whispered to me.

“It’s a good thing my eyes are closed.”

“Why?”

I opened my eyes.

“Because there’d be tears in them.” I replied, looking deep into hers. She came down and we kissed, sweetly and slowly. I sat up, and we held each other tightly in silence for a long time.

After a while, we stood up to head back inside. Pausing before the stairs, we hugged tightly, holding on desperately to each other.

“I love you,” she whispered into my ear.

I blinked back a tear, and inhaled her scent.

“I love you too.”