“And where’s your boyfriend?” he asked. “With his girlfriend I presume.”

There was no bitterness in her response. She knew that the boy sitting next to her in that moment wasn’t really there. He was in the thoughts of a very different girl from herself, and although she was permitted to sip her beer with his arm across her back in that very tight bar booth, she had no right to intrude upon his emotional company. And he, for all his glittering honesty did not know that he was the boy she spoke of. His simplicity was genuine and it was a thing that she loved and hated about him.

She readjusted herself on the sticky wooden seat, allowing her knees to innocently graze his jeans and looked away from the boy with the honest eyes. Lucy smiled in spite of herself. Tonight she enjoyed the feeling of want all on its own. There was no need for envy or chase and for all the gossip that comes with being a home wrecker she knew that if there was any rationalization holding her back on this one it had nothing to do with her moral standards. It was the unavoidable truth that she would lose such an endeavor. That and the observation that true love is seldom found in a sweaty dive bar.