Lemon and lime

"Do you think you weren’t loved enough?"

She tilted her head and looked at me. Then she gave a sharp, little nod. "Somewhere between ‘not enough’ and ‘not at all.’ I was always hungry for love. Just once, I wanted to know what it was like to get my fill of it - to be fed so much love I couldn’t take any more. Just once. But they never gave that to me. Never, not once. If i tried to cuddle up and beg for something, they’d just shove me away and yell at me. ‘No! That costs too much!’ It’s all I ever heard. So I made up my mind I was going to find someone who woud love me unconditionally three hundred and sixty-five days a year…"

"Wow," I said. "And did your search pay off?"

"That’s the hardest part," said Midori. She watched the rising smoke for a while, thinking, "I guess I’ve been waiting so long I’m looking for perfect selfishness. That makes it tough."

"Waiting for the perfect love?"

"No, even I know better than that. I’m looking for selfishness. Perfect selfishness. Like, I say I tell you I wanna eat strawberry shortcake. And you stop everything you’re doing and run out and buy it for me. And you come back out of breath and get down on your knees and hold this strawberry shortcake out to me. And I say I don’t want it anymore and throw it out the window. That’s what I’m looking for."

"I’m not sure that has anything to do with love," I said with some amazement.

"It does," she said. "You just don’t nkow it. There are times in a girl’s life when things like that are incredibly important."

"Things like throwing strawberry shortcake out the window?"

"Exactly. And when I do it, I want the man to apologize to me. ‘Now I see, Midori. What a fool I’ve been! I should have known that you would lose your desire for strawberry shortcake. I have all the intelligence and sensitivity of a piece of donkey sh*t. To make it up to you, I’ll go out and but you something else. What do you like? Chocolate mousse? Cheesecake?’ "

"So then what?"

"So then I’d give him all the love he deserves for what he’s done."

"Sounds crazy to me."

"Well, to me, that’s what love is. No that anyone can understand me, though." Midori gave her head a little shake against my shoulder. "For a certain kind of person, love begins from something tiny or silly. From something like that or it doesn’t begin at all."