No "one"

"Well, it all starts with a friendship. If you aren't friends first - what do you have?"

"I have you!"

He's on the other side of this mammoth bed, facing the other way. We've already been through another battery of pillow-talk questions. What do you like about me? Well, what do you like about me? I answer and ask those questions about this situation, this sex, while watching a pattern of street lights coming through venetian blinds dance across the ceiling. We've wandered into how things go with dating lives and online profiles. He's rolled away to stake out a position on the far side of the bed. The internet seems to be good for friends, but not for finding 'the one'.

"What do you mean?"

"You are here regardless of having sex or not. You are honest with me. I have a feeling that you would be there no matter what I needed."

"Well, I am your friend."

And it's true. Partly. I'm also, I suspect, his chump. I knew there was another woman he dated this spring. I knew because the few times I'd stop by there would be something different in the bathroom or two wine glasses in the kitchen sink. He says he told me, but he did not. I simply kept telling myself that my hope for him was that he'd be happy. And I hid my hand about attempts to date other men also. Now, he asks if I've been protecting him and I have to wonder, have YOU been protecting ME? I've been busy protecting myself.

"You are the only good thing to come from {that site}".

"You are the only person I've ever met on there that I'm still friends with."

"We'll do ok, just keep being honest with each other."

In the dark, no one can hear you smile. I'm not the one. I've never been anyone's "one" which is fine by me. It's never comfortable to feel the mantle of someone's myth fall over my shoulders. But it's true. He's not my myth or my solution, but my friend. I've realized that I already met "the one" right in my mirror.

At the gym I find myself dressing next to an African American woman. This could be the woman he dated. What was the dynamic of that? How did that end? Is he still talking with her? Is she in pocket, too, like I have been, at the ready for some future intimacy? I imagine him next to a dark skinned woman. So here I am, having sex with him again. Plunk, into the old rut we go, as if no time has passed between April and June.

Do I only have sex with him on the suspicion that at some point he'll come around and see me as being worth something more? Wouldn't I rather just be his friend? Part of me wants to smack him... look what you are passing up! Maybe he thinks I'm not interested in more? I know I've had too much to think, but one moment floats back into memory. One response still gives me pause.

"What do you like about me?"

"You are sweet."

"What does that mean?"

"You are accepting of what I want to do."

Suddenly sweet doesn't sound so hot. The man likes his sugar but this rots.

In the morning, after the usual 5:45 exercise of passion, he grabs my hand to keep me there. But I'm up and in the shower. Because all night one thing has forced me out of a sound sleep only to see him curled up on the opposite side of the bed. It's a cry. "Touch me."