The Heart Wants What It Wants

“It is. I think you should do something completely crazy. Jesus, Di, you always do the same thing, over and over again, and you expect it to end differently. It never does. You’ve cried over four men, and dated three others who you thought were great but dumped you when you wouldn’t sleep with them on the second date.”

Diana sighed.

“That’s true.”

“Well, then, what have you got to lose?”

Diana shrugged and sighed again, and drank her wine. She kept her hands busy by refilling their glasses, and then she kept herself busy drinking some more of the wine.

“Di?”

“I don’t know. It’s all… I don’t do stuff like this, Alex.”

“Maybe you do now.”

Diana considered that, and had some more wine.

“You’ll need a liter of water after that. Come on, let’s bust out the yogurt. God, Di, you have to begin to live properly. You’re never going to be skinny, and it’s a good thing. You have curves. People get surgery to get those curves. And you are trying your best to get rid of them. I’m telling you…”

Diana was glad when Alex went into one of her standard lectures, because she didn’t think she could talk about George anymore. Alex sensed that and left it alone, for which Diana was very grateful.

The one question that Alex had asked had told her what she really needed to know – what did she have to lose?

She knew what she had to lose.

Her heart.

She was afraid because nobody had ever managed to get her to even consider doing something as crazy as this before. Nobody had ever got past her defenses so easily before. Until George, she had followed her plan. Her plan was simple, and frankly quite uninspired. She admitted that.

She wanted to fall in love, get married, have a family, and have a fulfilling career. She really wanted a family. She wanted children to hold and love, to protect and cherish. She wanted to be a wife and a mother.

She knew she could be good at that.

So she’d always dated men who seemed to be good husband material. But they had turned out to be douchebags, as Alex put it.

Maybe it was time to take a chance. Maybe somebody who didn’t seem eager to fall in love was what she needed, because when it happened – if it happened – it would be real. If George ever said the words, he would mean it.

Maybe this was what taking a leap of faith felt like.

“I’m going to do it,” declared Diana halfway into Wonder Woman.

“I know,” said Alex, and that was that.

She was going to Japan. To be with a man she didn’t even know that well, for a whole weekend.

It made no sense.

But the only real truth that mattered was that she wanted to. She really wanted to.

She’d never felt this way before. Nobody had ever made her feel this way, as if she needed to reach out and touch him, to reassure herself that he was real, that she hadn’t dreamed him up.

She wanted to see that smile again, the way those lips turned up at the corners before letting the amusement show. She wanted those eyes – God, those eyes. She wanted those eyes on her again, looking at her as if he could see through to her soul.

She wanted his hands on her, and she wanted those lips on hers again.

All the logic in the world didn’t make a difference. All the sense in the world didn’t matter.

She wanted to see George again. Now, she could finally admit that her heart had been heavy when he hadn’t texted her or called her. No matter how much she’d tried to be sophisticated about it, she had thought that there had been something between them.

She’d felt like a fool – a rejected fool, left with only a bauble, as that was all she’d been worth.

Not his time, not his attention, not him.

But now, she knew. She knew that when she’d thought of him, he’d thought of her, too.

When she’d needed him, he’d needed her, too.

It didn’t matter that it was too soon, too fast. It didn’t matter that it wasn’t smart.

All that mattered was that he’d called, and he wanted to see her, as much as she needed to see him.

For that, she would go, and she would put her heart on the line if she had to.

She thought she would have to.