away

“Do you remember
our first kiss,” she asked, and he said, “No,”
and she felt her heart shrink, a bit, because
she
remembered
it so well. “You asked if you
could kiss me,” she said, and he shrugged, with
an embarrassed, apologetic smile, because he
was that sort of sincere. “You
actually
asked,” she said, and he felt good about that,
because it was important to her, that,
but he wasn’t
sure why it was so important to her
that
he
remember, as she did. Then, he saw it
in
her
eyes. “If I ask you again,” he asked, “will it make up
for my forgetting?” and she smiled
a sad smile and said, “No,” then shrugged and
turned away, a bit, not too much, because she wanted him to
love her,
but,
still,
away she turned,
enough, enough.