I couldn’t figure out why I wanted him to dance with me so badly. He was a good dancer, sure, but there were plenty of good dancers in the room who kept asking me to dance. And when I had danced with him before, I didn’t feel like we particularly gelled as partners. But there I was, watching him longingly as he asked the girl next to me onto the floor. All I wanted was to smell his scent again. And then it struck me: he looked so much like the last object of my affection, down to 5 o’clock shadow, the muscular arms, and the rolled-sleeve flannel shirt that hung so well on his torso. Dammit. I thought I had been so effective in stepping away from those emotions, the sense of desperation and desire as Chris could be so close to me and still so untouchable. I had been looking back on those events as an impartial observer, like the reader of an average novel, interested but unmoved. In trying to forget the difficulty of that time, I had been trying to erase it, trying to pretend that I had never been affected, that receiving the affection of this person had never been my all-consuming obsession for a time. But here came back all these emotions, the neediness, the desire, the rejection.
Thank God for being human.
