Sitting in the car outside, writing this before I drive

He did the thing with my lip.

Reached over and grazed my bottom lip with his thumb, in the middle of a sentence, like it was nothing, like it was still his to do. And then carried on talking.

That's all it takes. Six months. A whole rebuilt life. An entire personality I put together out of being fine — and it came down in about a second and a half because a man touched my mouth in a coffee shop.

I hate that. I want that written down. I HATE that he can still do that, and I hate more that he knows he can.

And he kept at it all morning. My wrist. The back of my hand when he took the cup off me. Getting closer than he needed to be. Nothing you could point at, nothing you could complain about, everything deliberate.

And making me laugh. Not politely — the ugly one, the one I can't stop once it starts. Nobody else has ever got that out of me.

That was him. Not the man who stopped noticing the house or the calendar or me. The one I met. The original. He walked back in wearing that like he'd never taken it off.

He asked me to dinner. Tonight.

I said yes.

I wanted to say no. I had the no ready — I have had the no ready for six months, I have practiced it, I have said it out loud in this car. And it did not come out of my mouth.

What is wrong with me.

Six months of work. Six months of Tyson driving out here to make sure I'd eaten. Six months of turning into somebody who does not do this. And I'm about to put all of it out the window of a coffee shop because he touched my lip.

I'm going to go home and pick something to wear. That's the honest end of this entry.