He always slept over. That was the thing; I could have ignored him if it wasn’t for the sleeping over. If he just left after, or if he left sometime in the middle of the night, so that I would wake up alone and a little pissed, I would have gotten over him. Writ him off as the asshole I knew he was. But he slept over. And he held me; often all night. So I was caught.

Caught in between abhorrence and adoration. He was fantastically brilliant. I didn’t want to punch him in the mouth when he spoke. He was a creative type. And he was good in bed. He was very good in bed. If you can’t fall in love with that, what can you fall in love with? It was true. I had fallen. Fallen for his proclivity to spend the night. Something I would come to recognize as just that, and nothing more.

We, as humans, tend to look for patterns that make sense of our world; and he slept over. So what did that mean? It had to mean something. Was it just about the sex? Or did he fall for me as I fell for him? Were we actually in it together? Did he sleep over because he wanted me as well? Was that what the pattern meant? Meaning in patterns. We all look for it. But we also should have learned the simplest explanation is most likely the right one. Haven’t we been taught that since middle school science? Look for the simplest answer because it is almost always the correct one- But, what if it meant something? Something more than just a simple desire to sleep with someone, for that night?

There wasn’t a complex answer. It was simple. He just liked to spend the night. It had nothing to do with his feelings for me. It had everything to do with where he felt like sleeping just then. Maybe that he was already comfortable and not inclined to disturb his comfort to get in his car and leave. Or maybe it was the idea of looking for parking in his neighborhood after everyone else was already home from work, and the streets were lined with cars. Or maybe he just liked to fuck in the morning, which we almost always did.

So, eventually, I realized the pattern was simple. And nothing more. No indication of his desire for me. Well, not for me in any capacity other than fucking.

That realization didn’t help me. It didn’t make me regain my stumble into a nonsensical devotion to him. I could convince myself all I wanted that it was just about sex for me as well. But I wasn’t that dumb. I could figure out his pattern. I wasn’t oblivious, especially not to my own weakness. Really, all he had to do was ask and I would have given him anything, everything. He slept over, and I fell.