The True Love Experiment

by Christina Lauren

intolerance is a failure of curiosity,

I am the floppy wind sock in a family of sturdy street signs.

I assume we all have the proverbial angel on one shoulder and devil on the other, but in my case, they’re very real, and the devil is a shouter.

To be as head over heels in love at eighty as I was at thirty. To be together and just… feel joy.”

Across from me, Jess gives me a disapproving frown. I tap my forehead to remind her that face will give her wrinkles. I’m such a good friend and she never thanks me for these things.

For all my talk about enjoying sex, I’ve never been a noisy lover, but with Connor there isn’t room for anything else and there’s too much sensation to hold inside, it has to escape somehow. Sharp, rhythmic gasps. Surprised cries. The sound of our sweat-slick skin coming together. I hear myself and wonder at it, feeling half out of control of my own body and brain.

“As a professional writer,” I mumble to his very nice retreating backside, “I must say I would absolutely verb the adjective noun out of him.”

“You see her clearly, and I appreciate that.”

Love is not found in a four-foot-high floral centerpiece or a seven-tiered chocolate cake. Real romance is in the quieter details. Who proposes, and how. The way they look at each other across a room. The anticipation of what it means to be married, the nights spent side by side, shaping their forever. The first moment alone after the commitment is made. The day after, when they get to finally embark on the adventure.

you are the easiest thing I’ve ever done.” I look up at him, watch his words land on his own ears. A flush crawls up his neck and turns the tips of his ears pink. “You know what I mean.”

“It’s you. The person my heroines choose is always the person who makes them feel like the best version of themselves. You make me feel that way.”

First kisses are great, but the one hundredth, the one thousandth kisses are better. There’s familiarity and comfort, satiating a need but with enough knowledge to know how to tease and play. Whoever invented kissing is my favorite historical figure ever.

Being with Connor feels like a devastating inevitability. I have this pit-deep need for something not just fast and satisfying but slow and whole.

“I’ve never felt that—that insatiable thing, you know? I want to be near him every second. If I eat something delicious, I want him there to take a bite. If I see something beautiful, I want to turn to him and point it out. If I hear something hilarious, I immediately want to call him and tell him everything.”

I know I’m weird, and I know for a fact that no one else thinks exactly what I’m thinking right now because no one knows you the way I do. No one loves you in this exact, perfect, consuming way.”