A couple weeks ago something clicked when I was sitting with her at lunch. We were going back and forth, giving each other our best 'pissed off' faces. Jutting out our jaws, rolling our eyes and sighing.

She fills all the silences that usually hang around me. That sounds a lot more dramatic than I mean it. It's like, she just starts talking, and it's always something so stupid and hilarious. If I tell one of my dumb stories, she's not just along for the ride. She's chiming in, she's laughing, she's making an addendum.

No stupid cat and mouse game. She seems asexual, no physical contact.

I really don't know what it is, but I haven't felt like this about someone since I met K. I have experience now (at least a little bit), I know how it starts and ends and I know where to be cautious, how to pump the brakes, how to check my mental state. She's not that awesome, I just don't know her well enough yet.

She's so young. 21. It matters and it doesn't. I'm 26 now. My parents are 13 years apart. I'm obviously not going to extrapolate as far as 'later on in life,' but on a basic level, they're still a cautionary tale about what loving someone on a different plane of life can be like. School, jobs, debt, children, illness.

I think about couples I know who have that kind of age difference. I always look at the guy like some kind of lecher. And the girl, I feel like she just got sucked into playing wife for an older guy, tricked out of her 20s.

I don't know. My stomach does flips when I think about her. Jesus, that's fucking stupid.