The Secret of the Love Well
The summer heat in our small town always felt heavy, but that afternoon, the air was thick with something more than just humidity. I was leaning against the fence of my front yard, watching the smoke from my cigarette curl into the blue sky, when Gloria approached me. I had known her since she was a child—our families had been neighbors for a lifetime—but today, there was a new intensity in her gaze. She was slender and petite, but the way she looked at me was entirely adult.
She began to talk about her desires, asking if I finally saw her as a woman. I tried to play it off with a laugh, treating it as a girlish whim, but Gloria was persistent. She told me she didn’t want a boy her own age; she wanted a man. When she looked up at me with those wide, determined eyes and suggested we make love, the boredom of my afternoon vanished, replaced by a sudden, electric tension.