He’s pouring me coffee and all I can think about is how I want to rip his clothes off, but he’s twice my age. He looks at me with regret and desire all at once and I can’t help but wonder if he knew when he said hello that he’d grow to hate me this much.

He runs his fingers through his salt and pepper hair, telling me about his kids and how they’re the light of his life, but he can’t seem to find meaning ever since they went to live with his wife. He uses some dumb metaphor of being like a tap with no water coming out, and I wonder, Does he want me to be the water coming underneath his mouth? I’m as old as his eldest child, but he doesn’t seem to mind. A love like this doesn’t know much about time. 

I’m spellbound by his wisdom and his wrinkles and is that so wrong? I want to kiss him, but he’s twice my age. Instead I just take the coffee from his hand, say thanks and run my hand along his lap. My friends tell me age doesn’t matter and I’ve always been wise and maybe that’s why I’m not happy in any relationship of a normal kind. At 15, I was practically 30, and at 25, I must be far beyond my time. They tell me, You deserve to be happy, and fuck the world and all its limitations, and who knows, maybe if he’s twice your age, all that means is that he’ll make love to you twice in one day. I know they mean it, but I can’t help but see the jealousy and judgement oozing from their eyes since I get to play house and play wife and play is all we seem to do. I seem to be a toy to him, but somehow it pleases me too.

He’s making jokes about the ‘80s, about old cars and old habits, and I can’t imagine what it was like, so instead I imagine how he’ll fuck me when we get to “our home” later tonight. I hate it when he says that what’s his is mine when he won’t even hold my hand when we stand in lines. He says it’s to protect me from the harshness of the world, but the way he pulls my hair when he fucks me doesn’t make me feel like a little girl. Outside he treats me gently, but I wish it weren’t so. I wish he’d see that I’m not afraid, but from his six-foot view, he only sees that he’s twice my age.

He has a PhD in evolutionary biology and he makes art and that turns me on, because oh my god, he’s far too smart, and all I want is for him to keep learning the intricacies of me, to study me the way he studied phylogeny in 1993. He’s twice my age and I’ll never be his girlfriend or his wife, but I don’t mind. I don’t mind because I love him in this moment, and all I want is to feel him above me and inside me and to hear him say he loves me too instead of whispering in my ear that if he weren’t twice my age, he’d be with me too.

We spend time in his house and his car and anywhere we can exist where his ex-wife won’t see me and his kids won’t ever know about me. He looks at me and he rubs his eyes like he’s desperate to remove the sight of me lying beside him with bare thighs.

He shakes his head and says, There’s nothing wrong with you, or us, but you have to understand. It’s still a delicate time. Delicate like the way his hands search for my breasts, and as he rubs his hands along me, I start to lose interest. He’s not the man I thought he was, and I pretend that’s fine—fine that he’s a scared little boy who cares about others’ opinions so much more than mine.

He’s twice my age but has half my courage and my moans must mean I understand and I comply, but the truth is I don’t care that being seen with me would make his entire past seem like a lie. I know it’s selfish of me to want him to myself, but what can I do? My love chose him and he chose me too.