their thoughts on love

isn't it more than a feeling?

"Dad, what do you think about love?"

Silas watched him with hope in his eyes, silently praying to whatever was out there that maybe he could tell him more about what it was like. Maybe he needed to ask a man about it, since he couldn't relate to his mother or Maverick.

"Love is a feeling. It goes away after a while."

The breath he had been holding in after asking suddenly escaped him and his shoulders dropped. "Oh."

As he stood in front of his father's large wooden desk, he suddenly felt insignificant. His father hadn't even looked up at him or given a second thought to his question, almost as if it was foolish to even ask or think about it. He fidgeted with his fingers as he thought of another way to continue the conversation, still having an ounce of hope that he might possibly get some kind of answer.
"But, isn't there more? There's more to it than it just going away, right? You love Mom, right? What about that?"

As he asked, he was careful to try and present himself as how his father wanted him to, but in the end, his question seemed more like pleading. As if he was begging his father to just tell him that love is more than just a fleeting feeling, but he knew that his father never took back his words.

He looked down at his eight-year-old son, a hint of disgust in his eyes. Silas noticed it immediately. "Love is a feeling, Silas. That's all it is, and all it ever will be. It's for movies and books, and it doesn't last more than a few years. After that, people force themselves to believe that they love someone. It's childish to pretend, and it's a sin to lie. Everyone fights, everyone gets tired of each other, and everyone is desperate to get something from another person. People who say they want love only want attention, and I'll be damned if I have an attention-seeking son, you hear me? If I hear you asking people about love or talking to people about it, I'm putting you in boarding school. I'm not going to be dealing with nonsense, especially from someone as intelligent as you."

His father looked at him expectant, but it took a moment for it to sink in.

After a while, love becomes a sin.

His father was the only person he had ever met who considered so many good things to be bad, but if he caught anyone messing up they would be in trouble. If anyone made a mistake, there would be punishment waiting for them, whether that was a belt, a timeout in a locked room, or belittling. Depending on the crime, it could be all three or something completely different.

His father cleared his throat, bringing Silas back to the present and out of a memory. "Yes sir," Silas whispered.

"Speak up."

Silas inhaled, looked up while avoiding his father's harsh eyes and straightened his stance. "Yes sir."

"Better. Go."

His father pointed at the door and Silas bit his lip as he walked out and shut it almost silently. He bit his lip as he walked down the hallway and down the stairs to his room. He bit his lip as he opened up his laptop and deleted his search history. He bounced his leg and held his breath as he shakily grabbed his school textbooks and opened them to the page he was up to, marked by green highlighter. He blinked as his vision got blurry and his eyes stung, wiping the two tears that fell before he could admit that he was upset.

He shouldn't be upset about love. Love goes away, so why should he be concerned with it? Knowledge never went away. Neither did intelligence, and he knew that. He knew that the more he studied, the more everyone would like him. If he had enough people that liked him, maybe that would make up for love.

He knew love was fleeting, until one girl showed up at a party and almost drank some jungle juice.