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“Life is a beautiful struggle,” she says to me.
“I like how you balance your optimism and realism,” I respond.
“But… don’t you think so?” she asks.
“It’s a nice definition, poetic at the least.”
“So what do you say it is then?”
“Life is… I don’t know. Se la vie.”

I roll back over to place my arm around her, enjoying the coolness of her flesh against mine. We had spent another night together after she had sworn that we wouldn’t. Many of our nights were like this, spent in sweltering stints of passionate sex. We would get lost in time, and lost in each other; then cool off with verbal intercourse of casual philosophy, exchanging our thoughts on love and life.

“This is the last time I’m coming over here!” I recall that angry voice of hers in my head. At the time, furious, but I knew not serious.

“We can’t keep doing this,” she had told me.

It was because she said she had someone now, a serious relationship. She told me about a week ago. I tried to act as if I couldn’t really give a damn. It was the way we men try to do, play it off as if we were emotionless; stoics in the stern face of love. But it was a mask, and I knew this, but wouldn’t let her penetrate my blank façade.

My lover and I had a history that went way back, about two years ago I think, long before her and Mr. Nice guy had gotten together.
“Yeah, he treats me good,” she says as her embrace conforms to mine. “He has a great job, a nice place, good conversation. I couldn’t ask for anything else. But I miss you.”

Tonight we saw each other again. A night that began in innocent conversation, and presently resumed in pillow talk; after our fits of lust had been satisfied. I heard her phone vibrate on the floor. She lazily climbs over me to grab it and falls back to my bed.

“Looks like somebody misses you too.” I say.
“Hmm,” she hums with a humorous smirk.

She flips open her phone to respond to him I supposed, with fingers tapping away rapidly to a text message. ‘Wait a minute, what the hell?’ I think to myself. ‘Is this a hint of jealously I feel developing in the pit of my stomach? I don’t get jealous. Why should I? I can have other women. What she and him do is none of my business, it doesn’t affect me.’

Yet, by some involuntary choice of my own romantic sub-conscious, that little touch of jealously was incontestable. I lay there and gaze intently at the perfected light brown visage in my presence. The pale blue tint from her phone made it visible, surrendering to her beautiful air a luminous glow; a radiance that complemented her present prettiness. An enticing creature she is, my Nubian Aphrodite. She is the opiate of my eros; my lustful power, my --?--, and a deadly flaw of mine. I loved having her, and I needed her. But she was not entirely mine at the moment. For she is his too; and my knowing this minor piece of info was enough to devastate some small, repressed part of me. Our attractions were growing fatal, and fated to resolve in a star-crossed heartache.

My stare continues through the duration of her message. She flips her phone shut and tosses it.
“What?” she inquires. “You’re just layin’ there staring a hole in my forehead.”

I laugh, “You know what,” pulling her naked physique back closer to mine. Her brown eyes fall into the darkness of my own and we stare, burying our pupils into each others’, as if we thought we could make the substance of our minds meet; like our souls might experience an ecstasy and conjoin somewhere outside of this physical realm. She kisses me, with soft and moist lips, relaying a tantalizing quiver through my nerves.