Love is Not for the Loved in Creative Writing

This one is SUPER rough. This is a scene I'm hoping may spawn the next story. However, I have more than enough editing and writing to do on my FIRST story before I can allow myself to actually work on this. But I had to get the concept scene out.

~

“I’ve been thinking. What if love is for yourself?”

There was no response from the boy staring deadly at the screen, the only signs of life were his fingers tapping out the appropriate order of buttons to make this or that enemy disappear in a flash of red laser. She cleared her throat and, without looking away, he responded, “Does this need a pause?”

“I’d appreciate it,” she answered.

He whined. “Can’t you just let me finish this game? I’m almost…” and with a blast of light, the picture on the screen changed to one of his dead body. He threw the remote on the ground and turned around on his stomach to face her. “Ok, what’s up?”

“Did you hear what I said?”

“Um, yeah. Something about loving yourself.”

She sighed. “Not exactly. I meant…what if you love someone, and the benefit is not to the other person, but yourself?”

“Why do you use me as a sounding board for women things?”

“Because who the hell else am I going to use at 2am? You’re up, anyway.”

He shrugged and rested his chin on his hands. “Ok, I don’t get it. Explain.”

Her eyes wandered around the room for a minute while she searched for a way to make him understand. They landed on his wallet, discarded on the end table beside the couch.

“Ok. Like, when you give a panhandler money. You earn your karma by doing the good deed. If they go out and buy drugs with it or whatever, that’s their karma, not yours.”

“And…you’ve decided that somehow this relates to love. You know you’re weird, right?”

She tossed a throw pillow from the couch at his head. “Yes, I am fully aware that thinking makes me ‘weird’. Can I continue?”

“Please do, considering I hope to sleep sometime tonight.”

“Technically, it’s already tomorrow.” Then she continued, “Or like, you know how they say forgiveness is for you and not for the other person? Like, staying angry at someone does nothing for them. But you have to forgive them to keep from poisoning yourself.”

Silence. “It’s 2am, Lisa. Enough with the damn metaphors. Just get to the point.”

She took a deep breath. “Well, what if we love someone for us. Because, let’s be honest. When someone loves you, it’s nice. But it doesn't do anything for us, personally. But if you love someone, you want to be a better person, for them. So maybe it shouldn't matter if someone loves you back or not. The act of giving love is what makes you shine, what makes you be your best. What they do with that love…” she shrugged, “maybe that’s their karma to deal with.”

Jax stared down at the carpet a moment, turning the thoughts over in his head. Then, very quietly, he said, “This is about Jade, isn’t it?”

Lisa tried to keep the blush from rising into her cheeks. “I really was just speaking in generalities,” she mumbled. “But since you brought it up, yeah. Maybe that’s why I’ve been on this train of thought.”

Jax sat up and grabbed the pillow that had fallen beside him and put it in his lap. He thought about his words carefully. “That seems like a dangerous way to live,” he finally said.

“How so?”

“Well, Ms. Metaphor, it’s like The Giving Tree. Some people see it as this beautiful love story about how much the tree loved the child. So much that she gave him everything.” Lisa nodded. “But I’m not done yet,” Jax added. “Then there’s the other side of the story. The one where she loved the child so much she’d given him everything, and that child didn’t love her enough not to take it all.”

“So you mean that by loving someone completely who does not return it, you risk them taking advantage of it,” she said thoughtfully.

“Uh, sure. Yeah, that sounds about right. Like I said earlier, you’re the weird thinker here.” They both shared a short laugh, and then Jax’s face turned seriously. “You know she can’t ever love you.”

Lisa sighed long and deep and nodded her head. “It’s not her fault. She is incapable of being with a woman as much as I’m incapable of being with men, no offense.”

“None taken. I gave up on that train long ago, sister,” Jax stated, laying back on his back and tossing the pillow up toward the ceiling.

“I love her, Jax,” Lisa said quietly. “I know who and what she is. And I love her because of who she is. I just can’t imagine that I could stop loving her just because it’s not a two-way street.”

“Sounds lonely,” Jax responded as he stopped tossing the pillow up in the air and laid still, letting the quiet settle over them.

“Maybe. But maybe I’m better off lonely and in love than lonely and without it.”