Stupid love makes people

She cried at the dinner table.

Just mentioning his name brought the sheen of tears to Lee-Ann's eyes. It's not often that one sees her emotions overwhelm her like that. Lee-Ann is usually quite resilient -- like me. But not many people understand like I do how much she loved Josh. And how much she misses him still.

But it was only while driving home, that I found out why: he had found someone else.

Josh -- still living in her house, still sleeping in her bed, biding his time waiting to move out -- would talk each night on the phone to what Lee-Ann mockingly called her replacement. She laughed at the notion of sharing a bed with Josh as he talked to his new girlfriend, but I knew it hurt her. Turning my eyes from the road, I offered to come inside and smash his head in with a baseball bat, but she declined. She still loves him too much.

When I think about how much she has been hurt over the years, it makes me realise how stupid love makes people. He was, and remains, the wrong man at the wrong time at the wrong place but still she loves him. And still, and just as stupidly, I love her.

But that is the downfall of Stupid Love I suppose. I prefer to think of my love for Lee-Ann as Smart Love: it's cautious and clandestine and risk-free. But no risk means no return of course, making Smart Love --if it can be called that-- a poor investment.

No, it's Stupid Love --the one associated with pain, mental illness, rashness, irresponsibility, recklessness, and fearlessness; maybe it's just called Love -- that keeps the chaos of the world churning and lubricates our optimism and soothes the logical beast in our stomachs who is always whispering to us, "don't!"

My policy however is to succumb to the logical beast. The drive home was quiet.

I pulled into her driveway and Lee-Ann hugged me goodnight. I watched her slowly walk up the front steps of her house in the moonlight. Her body sighed as she slid the key in the lock.

I guess sometimes heartbreak is inevitable in both smart or stupid love. One learns to settle for either kind really -- the difference being, in one your failures are private.

But tonight I'd have given up either kind to offer an empty house and bed for that girl. Or a swift ash bat to an asshole's head. Though I know of course, that she wouldn't want that for a second.

Lee-Ann waved goodnight as she closed the door behind her and I waved back. I drove home without the radio on, exhausted.