What You Think Love Is

She stands in her living room, with her duffel bag on the floor beside her feet. She hears him come in the front door and he says "Hey, I'm here, are you okay?" Her text message had said only "I need to talk to you. Please come over." That was half an hour ago. He only lives five minutes away.

He comes around the corner of the entryway, and hesitates when he peers into the living room. It has been three days since he last spent the night, and in that time she has managed to sell most of her furniture. All that remains is the coffee table and the love seat, which the subletter will be keeping.

"What's going on?"

She doesn't make eye contact when he enters. Instead, she sits down on the love seat, staring intently at the coffee table.

"The thing about it," she begins, "is that you're selfish."

"What are -" he starts, but she talks over him.

"You're not a bad person. You're affectionate. You're not cruel. You act with care, for the most part. Slowly raising her gaze from the table, she finally meets his. "But you're selfish." She swallows. He doesn't speak, but stands on the other side of the table, arms hanging at his sides, confusion all over his face, brow furrowed above his dark brown eyes.

"I have stayed here twice for you," she begins again. "I turned down a fantastic job opportunity and kept my shitty job. I signed a new lease. I held onto hope. I stayed because you won't leave, and I'd rather be with you.

But you have this fixation on what you think love is, what form you think it takes, what you think it entails. And you don't like that idea because it infringes on your freedom, on your independence. And you are so selfish, so focused on maintaining your freedom and your independence, that you will not - not for one moment - entertain the idea that just maybe you are wrong about what love is. That there are other ways to love each other; that it doesn't have to be about ownership and sacrifice."

She is standing again now. Her voice has shifted from careful and determined to forceful and angry.

"I never asked you to love only me. I just asked you to love me. And I know that you do, even if your blinders don't allow you to see it that way because it's different than what you thought love was."

She rubs her face, and speaks through her fingers: "But I'm tired of loving someone who won't love me back. I'm tired of loving someone too selfish to try loving someone else because they're scared of what it might cost them."

She picks up her duffel bag, and locks eyes with him again as she straightens. She can't help but feel a deep knot of sadness in her chest when she looks at him. His thick hair is tousled from lack of any sort of attention and his face is scruffy with a couple days of beard growth.

"I have stayed twice, and you have let me down twice. I can't continue to stay when you refuse to give me a reason."

He has been staring at her this whole time, with a look of perplexed hurt on his face. He opens his mouth, as if to say something, but hesitates.

"I love you," she says when he doesn't say anything, "with all my heart. But until you are ready to love me back, I can't stay."

She moves to walk past him and he grabs her arm. "Don't," he says, his voice quiet. "I didn't mean to hurt you." She closes her eyes and breathes in deep before staring back at him.

"I know you didn't mean to. But you did. And I respect myself too much to let you continue to do so. I love you, but I have to go." She gently pulls her arm from his grasp and leaves the apartment without another word.

He listens to the door shut behind her, the click and the thud.  He sits down on the love seat and leans back, covering his eyes with his hand. He sighs deeply and chews his lower lip. He is alone, as is she, and he is sorry. He knows it is his fault, but he doesn't know how to fix it.