” I love you” He said. Her face scrunched up in that specific way that made him think she was about to cry. He started to say something else but his brain, little more than a biological computer with no real emotional intelligence beyond that which she fed to him or he picked up from the constant feed of bad television relationships had already ceased functioning in a rational way. That computer did not recognize how the facial input followed the verbal statement and thus he did not know how to act.
“I love you too.” She said, and then she turned away. He didn’t know if she was going to cry. He watched her walk away from him, their small bedroom becoming it’s own de-militarized zone; her footsteps soft pops on the cold tile. He was going into the bathroom and she was going into her annex. He’d tried to name the space her ‘Apertif’ because it sounded cool. She decided not to name it, because she hadn’t found a name she was comfortable with. It was her space, not his just as the bathroom was his space, not hers. The biological computer that he called a brain processed those two variables and openly wondered if this was language and thought she put to the spaces or, like everything else, was this his own interpretation and by that he meant, misinterpretation.
The stained glass double doors shut behind her and he wondered again if she was crying and what it meant when someone cried when you told them you loved them.
Some Thoughts:
- Well, that character clearly has a lot to work on emotionally.