We stood in the kitchen drinking wine.

Earlier in the evening, we'd walked to the Village on Vermont for dinner, to the sushi joint I love for its great deals and tasty tempura rolls. When we got there the place was packed, the crowd spilling out onto the sidewalk. They were mostly dressed like they were about to hit the clubs.

It was more attitude than I was used to at this place, but he was the one to balk, before we'd even talked to the hostess.

"What else is there to eat around here?"

We went next door to the Thai restaurant in the strip mall, my old standby. Although I had just been there the night before, I didn't mind. The food is always good, aside from their thinking that "spicy" means "punish me." And on weekends, they have a live keyboardist who plays and sings, then later accompanies patrons who perform karaoke. Really bad, highly entertaining karaoke. It's not the place for a quiet, romantic dinner. But I knew romance would come soon enough.

Once we were sated on pad thai and yellow curry, I picked up the check. He is a self-fashioned starving artist, a writer who only ever spends a dollar on drink and the little rent he pays on a room above a garage on an alley. In his writing, he likes to emphasize that it's on an alley. He fails to mention that the room is actually the poolhouse of an upscale home in a nice part of Whitter. He also fails to mention that he is living on a nest-egg that he saved up working as a video game programmer. He chooses to live this way. He could be well-off, but he chooses to shun that "soul-crushing" path in favor of a meager existence, where he has the freedom to write and sulk all day. In some ways, I admire this. In other ways, it disappoints me. For example, I can't ask him to go out to dinner without feeling bad unless I pick up the check. So I pick up the check.

We stopped at the Rite Aid on the way home, to pick up cigarettes and the bottle of Drain-O I'd forgotten while I was out earlier in the day. I also bought two large bottles of laundry detergent. He insisted on carrying the bags the rest of the way home. Sometimes, he does things that surprise me.

He'd brought a movie that I'd never seen for us to watch, Buffalo 66, and put it in. While I opened a bottle of wine and poured two glasses, he stood next to me playing with my un-formed refrigerator magnet poetry. I haven't cared to touch it in the 8 months I've been here. He thought it should have some poems, I'm a poet right? So he put some in.

I watched as he wrote the last one. He came to the final word and stood thinking about it for a long time. Simultaneously, we both reached for a word to complete the poem. He chose "death," I chose "love."

"Haha," I said, "That right there is why it will never work."

We put them side by side at the end, so it would be the poem we both wrote.

He laughed, and we drank, and watched the movie. It was really sad the whole way through, I mean depressing. Until the last five minutes, when it made me happy. By then, the wine had gone to my head.

I put on The Princess Bride for background noise and we talked for a while. Then we kissed for a while. Then we were in my bed.

I couldn't ignore some of the movie dialog, about True Love and all that hokey crap. That hokey crap that I still want to believe in. In the dark, next to him, I realized that he was not going to want to be part of that vision. His world is too dark. Those things are too easy, and simple, and mindless to him. He'd never condescend to just be happy. He'd never bring me flowers. I actually did realize, It will never work. As much as I've become a cynic in many ways, there are some things I'm not willing to let go of. At least, not yet.

So I went to the bathroom and cried.

When I came back to bed, he asked me, "What's wrong?"

I told him, "It's nothing."