By Annabel Smith

“I think there’s still something to be said for love,” he said, and his knee was touching mine. 

I closed my eyes and let my head rattle against the window of the bus. We had smoked a little weed just before we left and I felt the heat rise up in my face, the gentle pulses of every limb of my body. I shoved my hands deeper into my pockets and said, “How do you mean?” 

“I mean, if you think about it biologically,” he said. “You see monogamy in all sorts of species, right? I think we’re sorta hardwired for serious relationships. I think we’re hardwired for love. In that sense.”

“Oh,” I said. I deflated a bit. At that point we had not even kissed yet, but we had talked, in a roundabout way, about the vague, intriguing feelings that had mutually arisen, that I felt crackling in the ever-shrinking space between. “You’re very analytical about this stuff,” I added. I hoped he felt insulted. I’d been worried that if I tried out being in love with him it would feel formulaic, as if we were following the steps of some kind of algorithm. He was that type. 

“I had this dream the other night,” he said, ignoring my comment. “I had a dream that I was on a first date with this very cute girl and I kept getting recognized. Like people on the street kept coming up to me and asking for a picture, or we went to dinner, right, and the waiter kept calling me ‘sir’ and saying how it was an honor to serve me and stuff. And then we went back to her place and she was asking if I wanted to be called Mr. President, you know, in bed. I was all confused and I got up to look in the mirror and my face was George W. Bush’s face.” 

“That’s weird,” I said. 

He sat up and looked me hard in the face. “I keep wondering about what it means. Do you think it says something about what I’m like in my love life? You think maybe there’s something that’s holding me back from making real connections and Bush is the key to discovering what it is?”

“He started that whole war,” I said. “Maybe you’re at war with yourself.”

“That makes sense,” he said. He tapped his chin. 

“I’m just bullshitting,” I said uncomfortably. 

“I know.”

We reached our stop and got off the bus. It was drizzling outside, and our hair and shoulders were dusted with mist as we took off walking into the fuzzy gray afternoon. His hand brushed uncertainly against mine, then he shoved it decidedly into his pocket. I asked, “What was the girl like in your dream?”

He thought about it for a moment. “She had this French sort of bob haircut with the bangs,” he said. “But other than that she looked a lot like you.” 

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Annabel Smith is a student writer from Manchester-by-the-Sea, Massachusetts. She is currently studying English at the University of British Columbia in Vancouver. Her work has appeared in Sky Island Journal and is forthcoming in Bending Genres.