1. I don't want to bastardize the truth by using v.2.0.
2. I don't want to spend a month upset and struggling by writing v.1.0.

            I looked into his baby blue eyes, tears rolling down both sets of our cheeks. I stuttered away, searching for any excuse to end it out loud. I could see the glimpses of hope in his eyes, hear his words of fear out loud, even though he was not speaking.

            “You’re too young, J”, I started. It seemed like the logical place to start, the easiest excuse. His piercing eyes shot back without one word. This was an argument we’d had before. Each and every time I had tried to pull away it in the last two months – the time between when we met, when we started kissing, then fucking, then making love and tonight – this had been my starting place. Each and every time, his answer was always the same, “Babe, you know as well as I do that age is just a number”. He was right too, there was no denying it; the last person I had pushed away had been seven years my senior, how could I use a two year age difference as my excuse now. I bit my lip, like I usually did when I was lost in thought, as he tried to stare me down in some strange staring contest that was about much more than who blinked first. As I bit down on my lip, his thoughts floated into the air and I was concentrated enough to pick up on them. His thoughts now had turned to merciful pleas, worries of inadequacy and the ever present fear of abandonment. Very normal human emotions in a time like this, yet I did not appreciate them running through me without warning. They must be stronger than normal, since I was picking them up without too much effort. With that cue, I was back at the drawing board with a new excuse.

            “I’m not ready to be in a relationship,” I continued, this time, with more or less the truth. The truth was a funny thing, and it had a funny way of always finding its way out of whatever hole people tried to push it into. In my life, especially, the truth always came out. This was probably because of my gift, or curse, depending how lucky you think I am to be able to see the truth in almost every situation. Let me explain – although since my 12^th birthday, I’ve stopped trying to explain myself since I’ll probably just be called a liar. The expression the tension was so thick you could cut it with a knife comes from the way some people, some of the time, can sense the feelings of a room, if you can call them that. It expands on how people who are in tune with their surroundings and other people can read people’s mannerisms, understand their actions, hear the difference between what they are saying and what they are actually saying. This of course becomes easier when you know someone well. And for me, my ‘gift’ is a hyperactive version of all that, where at times, I can feel what the person in front of me is feeling, hear their thoughts and secrets out loud without them saying one word, and see, quite literally, the truth. Truth, it’s a funny thing. Because of my abilities, I have often felt the need to be painfully honest with the people I can tune in too. Not about that, of course, they’d never believe me. Call me insane – although I suppose I’ve been called worse. I have felt like since I had the upper hand in every game of chest, both actual and metaphoric, I should at least try and spill my truths in the name of equalization. That’s why, at the end of the day, I knew it would come down to this. Telling him how I got to the point where I refused to date him, admit I loved him or even really give him any sort of chance.

            Love and trust is difficult when you always know the truth. Sometimes I believe that ignorance is bliss, not that I’d known anything about that. For that reason, I had a tendency to keep my walls up and everyone at an arm’s length. It is no surprise then that I had been here before, with different guys with different eyes. The difference with J was that he was stubborn. Like a mule, or a penguin – yes, a penguin. No story of stubbornness is complete without mentioning the penguins. The animal too stubborn to leave the Antarctic with the rest, I always admired their stubbornness. Especially the way Morgan Freeman tells it, but that’s a different story for a different day. This is the story of how J, unlike other guys, refused to accept my superficial excuses for ending it before it even really started without questioning and without a fight. I should have known when I met him, should have seen the fighter spirit in his eyes and stayed clear of him. But those eyes drew me in and I through caution to the wind the second those lips grazed mine. His stubbornness meant that he was unwilling to let me go without the truth. I adored him for it, yet, at the same time, I hated him. This story is not one I like to tell.

            The truth on the tip of my lips, I took one last look into the confused, sad, blue eyes of this boy I was trying to stop myself from falling too hard for and took a deep breath. As the clock turned from 1:59AM to 1:00AM, I decided that if I was going to relive the last hour of my life due to daylight savings, I might as well set the record straight.

            Most love stories begin with once upon a time’ and end with ‘and they lived happily ever after’. The story I was about to tell to J wasn’t one of those stories nor were any of its subparts. It is a much longer, darker, more twisty story than that filled with unexplainable highs and lows I never wanted to fully revisit. But here I am, about to give this boy the entire history of my heart, to the best of my recollection, in the name of healing, moving on, and giving him the best shot I can. When I explained this, he hesitated.

            “We have an extra hour, if it’s the length you’re worried about,” I shot him my infamous sarcasm smirk and laughed a bit at my own chirp. Knowing full well that he was as nervous, fearful and anxious to hear the story as I was to tell it, I took his half nod – half smile as my cue to begin.