“I want to move down to Jacksonville,” he swallowed and smiled over confidently, “to be with you.”
I stared at him with distrust darting from my eyes. “Why would you want to be with me? You can’t even tell me how you feel, so you must feel nothing. If you feel nothing, there is no sense in moving so far just to engage in local sex or local whatever this is with us. I imagine you have no trouble at all attracting all sorts of strange, somatic types in Atlanta.” I dug my left fist into my hip bone and elongated my posture, trying to make myself appear taller. His overshadowing height wasn’t going to bully me into feeling like such a meek ninny anymore.
“I don’t want those types. I want you type. Type Jessi.” He whimpered and fluttered big blue doll eyes. His eyes were like some kind of memory box or one of those living pictures you can plug into an outlet and watch a waterfall come to life.
I was momentarily weakened by the way he kept looking at me, but then I became fumed. “Oh no, don’t you dare try to fool me with your cad lines and swollen blue eyes. I know who you are, and who you are isn’t the sort of man who’s truly attracted to a pale redhead like me. You like those swarthy, fake girls; the girls with so much gloss on their lips and raven blackness flowing through their hair that they shimmer in the sun like shiny bumper stickers from Hawaii that read 'I got laid.' I couldn’t be your type if I baked myself in an easy bake oven for a year and tried to dye my skin that dark. I swear I’d do it in a heartbeat though, if you’d only try to love the value of the interior of the tiny red car that I am, rather than comparing me to all those damn black Escalades that look really nice on the outside, but have likely been robbed and gutted spiritually on the inside...because they're all so fixated on the physical and their damn popularity rather than the higher love and soul intention that motivates it to take form at all.”
“Maybe I have dated girls like that in the past Jessi, but none of them are here now. You once told me you believe that nothing happens by coincidence, that divine reason drives every action and gesture of nature and humanity…”
“Joshua, just stop. You can't hurl that back in my face after all of your arguments about being a self-proclaimed 'healthy skeptic.' Skepticism is a disease I tell you! It's a disease that's been trying to kill God and Angels and the metaphysical art of life since the dawn of mortal intelligence! Skepticism even kills love when men like you become skeptical of their own damn emotions!" My eyebrows pinched in pertinacity and I glared at him. All that fucking blond hair draping down his cheeks, I couldn't take my eyes off the glow of his fucking head. Why I outta rip out a lock of his hair, then rip out some of my own, twist the strands together and set them on fire, straight up, old fashioned baptism of fire. Jesus and Gabriel showed me how to do it,Jesus twisted his entire head of hair in with mine once. But if I tried to do something like that with Joshua, he'd just call me "weird" again. All of my celestial shit is just weird to people who haven't bothered to dream or research it. I am a hybrid merangel, I can't help it if I don't fit in with trendy humanity.

I thought Joshua was an angel too. For a while I wondered if I was supposed to help him be at peace with certain things. He diverted his eyes from my green line of sight and retreated into his thoughts for a careful moment. He softly cleared his throat before he began speaking again.
"I know. I know OK, I know how I am." He confessed. "That's what I needed time to think about. I haven't felt like this since I was in love with my last girlfriend. Honestly, I didn't plan on letting this, I mean us, develop into anything beyond a few nice visits. But finding chemistry like this is contemptuously rare Jessi, it's so rare, and I can't fool myself or ignore it just because I live six hours away."
The veracity of proclamation on his face consumed me until there wasn't much of me left. There were only pleas to love him, to love his reluctant honesty. In that plea I also felt an ember of soul assertion. I could have kept my mouth sealed, went with the really flashy girly impulse to simply collapse in his arms, and let him scoop me up and kiss me again. But the kissing is what lead to this damn conversation at all. Where more kissing would lead, I really didn't want to know. Usually he's all here when we're kissing, but other times, it's like he's already back in Atlanta---because that's where a part of his head dwells, that's the final destination for him. I could give him the green light to move to Jacksonville, but I was never going to be his final point of residence.

"Just listen to me before you ramble on and blow more smoke up my ass." I began firmly. "When you last left here, I let myself fall happily under the impression that you truly loved me for who I am. You have no idea how long it’s been since I was able to believe that was even a reasonable possibility. But then, you vanished again and I did not hear a peep from you for weeks. You didn't even make the effort to place a lousy two minute phone call on New Years. How is that supposed to make me feel? It’s really early into this to be disdainfully neglectful of each other. And now you want to move here? I already threw my arms up in the air and figured you went home to Atlanta and combed over every detail of me in your head and came up with reasons not to accept me or be attracted to me. I shouldn’t have to think or care about other people’s superficial critiques, especially not yours. Yet, from day one, psychically, that is all I’ve fucking heard from you----constant evaluation. Comparing the way I look to certain people, people the world may not consider gorgeous. When you expend time over-evaluating people, how can you possibly coordinate your heart with theirs? I know I’m not the most beautiful woman Joshua, but I promise you that anything I lack on the outside, I more than make up for on the inside.”

“Jessi, I read the blog.” He blurted out and shot me a look of slick pity. Even with that dopey, puppy look etched onto his ivory face, he still looked like something that would make Michelangelo cream in his pants.
“You what?” My throat secretly trembled as a weak, embattled voice bounced beyond my stunned body. The redness on my cheeks began to burn all over. That stupid feeling I used to get when my old school teachers forced me to stand up in front of the class and present some gay project, returned like the flushed high school horror that it is.
“I read most of it and I love it.” He continued and smiled warmly. I shook my head and frowned. He tried to stretch out and grab at my hips, but I coldly smacked his hand in appall.
“So that’s what this is about. You read my goddamn Harlequin romance novel and it juiced up your pretentious head. How did you even find it? I never offered that information to you. I don't know how you can stand here and tell me you love it after you acted like such a grumpy, serious ass when I told you I was writing about you.” I reminded.
“Relax all ready! The last time I was over, you had the window open on your computer and I remembered the Mermaid Music Box. So I pulled it up once I got home.” He had a calm face. I couldn't understand how he could be so calm all the time. I was so accustomed to men who love being rebelliously dramatic in their immature self-importance. Joshua's tranquil, salted, sacerdotal persona--- made me lose sleep at night.
“You fucking sneak, you weren’t supposed to pry into that part of my life, that’s like my online diary.” I played angry, but secretly, I was thrilled. I gave away a swift smile. He doesn't react to my smile the way some men do. It makes me feel defective when he doesn't budge after I smile at him like that.
“A word to the wise---cyber space isn’t the most ideal place to keep your inner most thoughts. Anything you publish online is fair game. It’s out there for anybody to see.” He must have seen right through me. I love having these fights that aren't really fights, but major flirting and foreplay.
“I know I know, don’t pester me with that lecture now.” I waved him off, theatrically annoyed.
“Why are you embarrassed?” His expression sprayed superiority all over me like a horny male cat.
“Who said anything about being embarrassed? You’ve seen me too naked for lights. Why would a few words in a blog mortify me?”
“It would mortify you fast enough if I told you I thought you were an unstable lunatic and needed to get your head out all those dreams and focus on what’s in front of you.” He said half sternly and half teasingly. I love it when he tries to act like he's older than me, like he wants to have a tiny bit of authority over me.
“The landscape of now always changes. Men in front of me usually become little more than old, dusty files of the past. The dreams are supernal consistency. Connecting with the higher selves of the men I dream about is what brings the most resonating satisfaction. I've worked too hard with Gabriel, developing and rising to the level we're at together, just to turn my back on the clairvoyance and importance in the dreaming now. The dreams lead me to you in the first place, Joshua. I only knew to keep an eye out for you because Layne said you were coming, two months before you arrived in my life, Layne told me you would show up. It's more than simple precognition." I paused and waited for him to saying something, but he thumbed his goatee and shot me bleating blue eyes once more. I pressed on. I wanted to murder the soul kissing silence with more words.
"And apart from that, beyond the dreams, I am sure there is nothing you could ever say that would make me feel ashamed of myself." He nodded and began chewing on his lips. I knew why he was getting nervous.
"By the way, I heard all those horrible things you and your friends were saying about me. I heard you call me a turtle or whatever rude remark you felt the need to have a spiteful laugh at when you thought I couldn’t hear you.” I folded my arms and allowed totally neutrality fall over me so I wouldn’t well up. He instantly appeared to be slapped with guilt, mortified even, but hid it rather well. I’d already cried about it when I first heard, I wasn’t going to dignify the petty, crude insults with emotion now.
“They weren’t talking about you, they were talking about me.” He claimed uneasily.
Perturbed, I hissed, “That’s easy to say to my face. It’s not even worth talking about, I was just amazed and disheartened that you aren’t as loyal and protective and sincere as I’d originally thought.”
I let my mind swim in every memory that’d formed since the first moment I saw him. Destiny. I recalled. What a frivolous word.
“The first night we met Joshua, you asked me if I believed in destiny. At the time I said yes... but that yes came before I heard you pose the exact same question to other women who came after me... as a very crafty opening pick up line, I am assuming. I felt special that you had phrased it to me so effortlessly and supple, but there was nothing sacred or unique about that line at all. You affinitize with any woman who looks remotely appealing. You're just like some kind of humming bird. I'm surprised I even saw you given how fast you were trying to make your rounds from girl to girl. Why you wouldn't have even noticed me if I hadn't come up to talk to you. I almost walked past you and you would have been none the wiser to this chemistry you suddenly seemed so enamored with. For what it's worth, I really hadn't spoken to anyone else that night, and there were 40,000 people there. Once I found you, you couldn't have peeled me from your side with a paint scraper.” My voice faded gradually until I thought it would become one with the air. His face turned a stale shade of white. Men never over analyze the tiny specifics of first meetings the way women do. It was funny to watch him let it all the pieces of events sink in. I tried not to smirk in validation.
“Destiny is a capricious and tricky lady, especially when self-seeking men use her name in vain to steal a woman’s trust and affections.”

I heard curses fly through his brain, scolding his stupidity more than me. I didn’t say anything for a solid minute. I just stood stoically and absorbed his reactions and objectively overhead him wrestling with his own conscious. He was made more vulnerable by his own boyish games than anything he did or didn't feel for me. I felt so sorry that I wasn’t exactly what he wanted in a woman. Maybe because I wasn’t the type of woman who was obsessed with being shallow and making the exterior more physically perfect. I am healthy, I work out and take great care of myself. I've always been really skinny and toned. What more do these men expect? I will be damned if I go to a plastic surgeon and take a hack saw to my natural beauty, just because society is a shallow bitch. I am totally at peaceful contentment in being an awkward looking, little turtle of a girl. The angels have told me I’m the Megan Fox of the soul realm and that’s really more important in the long run, no matter how cliché or lame that may sound, now, coming from this shell of a homely appearing outcast that I am. My ex boyfriend used to remind me constantly of how flawed I am. That relationship finally broke on the point of resolving that it was better to be respectfully beautiful and self-appreciative alone than be made to feel ugly or unworthy of love at the hands of a judgmental person. In many times of heated insanity, I remember screaming at him, "If I am so hideously unacceptable, then why are you even with me? I am not keeping you here, but you are making me a prisoner to your perception of my appearance." Which of course, is based on low negative energies that are bred in falseness, and falseness isn't healthy for anyone until you have defeated it with the truth.

I flashback or forward or present or where ever flashes of thought can take a person intent on trying to dodge love. I flashed to the woman I have grown into. The woman who doesn't doubt herself because of the opinionated eyes of other people. I denied the inner hopeless sap and revved up the righteous Aquarius act.

“Joshua, I don’t think you should move here. I don’t want to be responsible for your unhappiness, should you rearrange your life and then decide you’re too much of a rabbit to keep patience with the pace of a turtle.”