We were more honest in the middle of the night, it was easier then. It was summer and we had turned up the ac to trick our bodies into needing each other's heat. I turned over loudly and woke up Lowell as usual and he put his arm over me as usual. It was usually nice but I remembered I was still angry at him, no not angry but not resolved about it. And he knew it too so don't think I was doing some female thing of punishing him for weeks without saying it out loud. He felt me tense up under his arm but he did not take it away.

What he said was garbled and poorly phrased, it was three in the morning and we were bleary and roughthroated and blind. Something about being sorry he blew up this afternoon, boring old jealousy, it was just that he craved being with me and today had been hard in general. Something that maybe sounded a little dumb but he meant it, had not rehearsed it or polished an apology and therefore it was perfect.

It was one of those things where maybe I was hearing things that weren't spoken and maybe it was half or all a dream and who knows what else. But it was all so electric all of a sudden and I started crying into his shoulder and his ear. You love a girl when you let her cry into your ear.

It was always about words with us and it was the word crave that got me. Maybe it was because it was the first time I'd heard it used outside a catfood commercial. With sincerity and without real fish flavor. Lowell assumed it was bad crying and I had to explain the whole thing to him and he did not understand why I was impressed by his choice of words, he just loved me like breathing and why couldn't I see it? Because we were as always speaking different languages to each other and not listening and when we did listen, we hardly ever got it. I got it then, I cried, who could be surprised by that? We astonished each other over and over with how much we meant and how little we heard the right way.

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