Lessons On Love

23: A Cheesy Move Or A Sugar Rush

Chapter 23: A Cheesy Move Or A Sugar Rush?

            The third rule Marshall taught me about love actually made a bit of sense – which let’s be honest, is a complete first. After we left the coffee shop Jere-Bear was working at, we decided to walk the last block to the mall instead of taking my car. That was where he blurted out his plans to seduce me for the day. It all amounted because of rule number three: love at first sight does not exist.

            “If you think about it, it makes sense. I mean, lust at first sight, definitely. Attraction at first sight, fine. Like at first sight, I’ll even give you that one, but what the hell is love at first sight? I mean, during that split second first glance, what are you actually falling in love with? It’s not me you’re falling in love with. It’s my hair.”

            “Point made,” I said. “But what in the world does that have to do with our date today?”

            “Two things.” He raised up one finger first. “The first thing is that love is made up of two components, the first one being passion. That’s your whole whirlwind romance thing with the heartbeats and the sweaty palms and the deadly attraction. That’s what most people think love is or associate it with.”

            “Alright.”

            “And the second, a lot less obvious than the first, is intimacy.” He caught me giving him a look and shook his head. “Intimacy Camila,” he laughed. “Not sex. Sex would be grouped in with the first. Intimacy is all about understanding and compassion. In cliché terms: that’s the scenario where the two best friends grow up together and fall in love with each other because there’s nobody else that understands them like the way they do each other. They’ve got that unbreakable bond that’s extremely hard to interfere with, and that’s what intimacy is all about: the bond.”

            From the gist of what he was saying, I got what he was trying to say to me: that as of right now there was no way for me to fall in love with him. The attraction or the bond, we haven’t got any of it.

            “So that’s why,” Marshall continued, “we’re going to change that. I’ve been trying to get you during the last week and I think I kind of get where you’re at right now. Since intimacy takes a bit more time, we have to keep working at it continuously. As for the passion, we’ll start today.”

            The mall comes more into view behind the trees that surround the outside of the parking lot as we neared the intersection, and I had to wonder how we were going to create passion at a place like this. The last time I checked, it just had a bunch of shops, a movie theatre on the second floor, and a bunch of kids lounging in the food court with nothing to do. “What’s the goal for today?”

            Marshall lifted an eyebrow at me like he wasn’t quite sure he understood. “Goal?”

            “Yeah, a goal,” I said. “Like a schedule of some sort where we have to accomplish certain things by a certain time.”

            What I said made him laugh for some reasons before he turned back to me with a sarcastic expression on his face. “Alright,” he chuckled, “a goal huh? How about this? By the end of today, Camila will no longer see me as a chair.”