That he could be so separate; that there could have been something else before.

That fact stuck itself in the cleft between them, and drove itself down deep.

Of course something had come before. Of course there were other things.

But it was too much. She had wanted to be vulnerable and intimate.

There was a barrier there now. Suddenly he was a stranger.

He didn't hurt her. It wasn't a cut or a calculated blow.

But it carried the substance of a lie, somehow.

She felt decieved, in that moment.

His otherness was confirmed.

But she still loved him,

whatever he was,

whoever he

might

be.