A Scorpio in Love

“I love you, Scorpio,” the words dropped out of full lips and slapped the lust that coursed through my body. I stared at her; ice quickly concreted my lungs as I waited for my brain to comprehend what fell into the space between us.

Love? How did she come to that conclusion? We made each other laugh. We told each other secrets, but that wasn’t love. I didn’t even know what love was. Was it the color her cheeks turned every time she saw me? Could it be the way her pupils dilated when she said my name or the pheromone that seeped off her skin and made my personal brand of heroin? I shook my head and moved from over top of her.

No, I was a lot of things; but I wasn’t love. If I didn’t even know what it was, who was I to give it? The air between us was still as I contemplated the future laid in front of me. I could accept her words, forget the insecurities that told me I wasn’t good enough for the future, and be a ‘we’. Was I ready to let a figurative ball and chain become a physical one?

Could I let my unlimited dreams squeeze into the confines of ‘us’ and whatever ‘we’ could accomplish? Was I okay with trading trips of self-discovery for sipping mediocre wine at the local winery down the road? Was I ready to swap nights searching the depths of my mind for contemplating the physical steps of a relationship? I still didn’t know who I was; how could I ever know ‘us’ or rather she was the other side of my happiness?

I stared at the girl quietly waiting for me to submit an answer. I liked her. I wanted her, but love was a word I wasn’t ready to share. I hadn’t even dispensed the word to myself yet. How could I give it to her?

The fear of making the wrong decision pooled into the depths of my stomach. Ice filled my veins as I crept into a safe space within my own corner of the bed.

“Are you okay? I know it has only been a year, but it’s like I understand you. I feel you in a way I’ve never felt anyone else before. I know you. I know you’re the one for me.”

The words felt more like an accusation. How could she know me? I barely knew me. The only thing I knew for sure was that I was a pleasure seeker, a thrill chaser, a relentless searcher of truth. Any other adjective seemed too basic and generic, yet this five-foot-five frame—draped in the scrunchies I bought her and the hoodie she sprayed my cologne on—claimed to know me.

Subtle hands stretched out to mine, but I couldn’t find the bridge that would connect us. I shook my head and tried to pull away, but she forced me to stare into her deep eyes.

“I love you,” she said quietly. Confidently. Each syllable was meant directly for me. She said them with a delicate, but concrete fervor that was more than just letters collected into a beautiful phrase. It was a declaration of something undying. Something specifically for me.

Her eyes softened, “You’re flighty. Misunderstood. Walking amongst the clouds. Swimming under the sand. More of a mystery than a man, and I love you.”

Confusion shook me as her words completely described me. Did she know me? Did she understand the complexities of something I felt was so indescribable? When we met, she said when her Pisces mixed with my Scorpio, it would make our oceans collide. She promised to be the rolling waves that diluted my secret storms, but the current moment made it feel like she was the storm—swirling up emotions that I wasn’t ready to handle.

“You’re broody when annoyed, but your smile brightens up the room. Your quiet, but even when your mouth is closed your mind is moving a mile a minute. You’re magnetic and charming. There is a darkness that is more like a flame, but it’s a bright darkness that I want to swim in,” I was quiet as she slowly crossed the chasm that separated us. Her hand fell on mine as she forced me to look into her eyes. She said the words a fourth time: “It’s how I know I love you.”

I wasn’t as convinced. Of all the adjectives she used, she forgot to add I was confused. How I could want someone as much as I wanted her, but still feel the need to keep her in the box where I understood her. Where her Pisces couldn’t mix with my Scorpio. I stared at her. She claimed she knew me. Maybe she was right, but did I know her in the same way?

She was sweet. Effervescent. Easily laughing and never fazed by my pouting. The only thing that upset her was when my distance also needed time. Then her pouting turned to crying and I never wanted to see that. I looked into her eyes.

She was a beauty. The person I wanted to see after a win or when I was bored. But when I was alone and the room was still, was her face the first one I saw behind closed eyelids? I wasn’t sure, and I wasn’t ready to make a decision.

I shook my head, “I can’t.”

The words were daggers that beat into me before they hit her. By the time they reached her ears, they were bloody with my own confusion. I didn’t want to hurt her, but how could I say it back? How could I be sure that the very characteristics she knew so well would be protected? At arm’s length, she could understand them, but if I let her inside, she could turn an ocean into a monsoon. It was an outcome I wasn’t willing to risk.

My head shook profusely as I doubled down on my opinion, “I’m sorry, I just can’t.”

She immediately turned into concrete, “No, you don’t mean that.”

Every emotion swam to the surface of her body and pooled in agony that she tried to control with a stone face. Her voice couldn’t be controlled. It begged—pleaded—for me to return a feeling. Any feeling. Even if it wasn’t the feeling she felt. It could be adjacent. Or similar. Parallel or even perpendicular. The only thing she didn’t want was nothing. Unfortunately, nothing was all I could give.

“I do mean it,” I winced. “I don’t feel that.”

Red solely crept from the middles of her cheeks and spread through her face.

“Why?” she said through broken vocal cords. She searched her hands for answers that would never materialize. “We are everything. We do everything. I’m here every day. How can you not love me?”

Her heat spread to me. I wanted to answer. To say something: anything, but the words didn’t formulate. She shook her head as she seemingly ran through our relationship in her mind. The details knit her eyebrow in a row as she shook her head and rejected my decision, “You’re crazy. You love me. You torment me. You leave me and divide me, but you love me!”

This time, I refused to answer, but my silence became a challenge. She crossed the stretch of bed that separated us and pushed her body onto mine, “Undress me. You love me. I know you do.”

Her hands were ravenous against me—begging me to reciprocate a love that I could never feel. She moved her body against mine in ways we had done millions of times. In ways that haunted my dreams—that made me buy her the jacket she asked for or send the funny picture I knew would make her laugh.

She moved in a way that made my fingers want to clench her sides and convince myself that I could do it: I could love her the way she wanted, but logic was louder. A body was one language I was fluent in. Emotions were completely different. I failed every time. I had no intention of failing with her, so I shook my head. Each movement was a painful tear as I pushed her to the side and told her to stop.

She stared at me; her body broken under the stress. Without taking her eyes off me, she sat back in her original seat; her message slowly sliding down her cheeks in the form of tears.

“But I love you,” she whispered. Her voice was pained, almost infantile. She did more than love me. She needed me. She wanted me. She relied on me; and for the first time, I had let her down. I stared at her: the most beautiful girl I’d ever seen. Curly brown hair framed an almond-shaped face and caressed a perfect neck.

She was strong, educated. Tough enough to utter words that I was too afraid to even think and strong enough to believe them even when I didn’t. She leaned her back into the wall; her feelings rounded her back as her face turned solemn.

“My Scorpio: misunderstood,” she said whimsically, but then sank deeper into the bed and scoffed, “Masochistic.”

“No,” I responded quickly. Fear-induced stubbornness turned into dread-laced panic. No, she was supposed to give me time to make a life decision—not leave. The tears that were once consistent rivers turned to a weak stream dammed by her stubbornness. I fumbled for thoughts as I saw the love she once fought for dry up and become a desert that didn’t care how I responded.

“Flighty,” her lips downturned as she roughly pulled her arm under her nose and searched for her things that were scattered across my bed. “Wandering. Lost. Secretive. Hiding. Always hiding.”

The last word haunted me: hiding. I was always underground, burying my thoughts into the deepest recesses of my mind. Never allowing anyone or anything to access the deepest part of me. Pain shot through my body as I realized she was synthesizing the end of our relationship.

Now, I really was misunderstood. I would never revel in her pain: mine was just louder. Then the reality set in. I was selfish. Self-centered. So consumed with my own emotions that I couldn’t see hers. Instincts pushed me to her side of the bed. “Don’t go.”

I tried to pull on her arm the way that always melted her, but she snatched away before I could touch her.

“I love you,” she said, choking back the honesty in her words, “and you feel nothing.”

The second phrase was heavier than the first. Did I feel nothing? No, that couldn’t be true. I stared into her eyes: the soft eyes that never asked me to change. Never asked me to be something other than me: a wild, untamed Scorpio who loved in the most aloof, all-consuming way. It wasn’t love, but my heart quaked every time she spoke. I reacted whenever she moved. I couldn’t define it, but I felt something.

I scaled the bed and swooped her into my arms in one movement. Her heat absorbed into my body and thawed the icy veins that thought they couldn’t handle her. Her fingertips dug into my ribs as she tried to push away, but I tightened my arms around her shoulders. She cried and cursed, but I buried my head in her hair and allowed the follicles to remind me of who she was.

She was no longer the puzzle I didn’t understand or the fear that stopped me from figuring it out. She was the Pisces that loved me anyway. It was enough to thaw my frozen lungs and clear my clouded mind.

Her arms went limp; her back quickly rose and fell as tears I never intended her to spill fell down her face, “You can’t do that. That’s not fair.”

Her arms carefully hung around my waist as I inhaled her. She was sweet. Warm. She was no longer the representation of commitment that scared me. She was the person I spent hours reading poems to, laughing at life with, and praying I saw another day with. My heart hurt. I hated that I couldn’t say what she needed to stop feeling sad, but I was a Scorpio. I couldn’t lie to comfort someone.

“I don’t know what I feel,” I said slowly, tears threatening to slide down my own cheeks. “But I never want to stop feeling you.”

Her tears weren’t as controlled. They burned into my chest as she balled my sweatshirt into her fists and pulled me closer. A lump formed in my throat as I held her just as strong.

I wasn’t sure that we had a future, but I was sure of the moment. We weren’t enemies. I wasn’t the person meant to see her cry or hurt her. I was a Scorpio. Maybe not a Scorpio in love, but her Scorpio. I pulled her close into me, allowing the soft curls of her hair to comfort the fear in my face. I leaned into her and exhaled.

It wasn’t love. But it was something. And that was enough.