"Jess?" the teacher called out, leaning on the desk in front of me. "What do you think? What is love to you, my dear?" I blinked, shaking my brain out of its daydreams.

"I--uh--what?" I asked stupidly.

He repeated himself, a slight frown on his weathered face. "What is love?"

"Oh. Love. When my father left my mother for his girlfriend..." I glanced around the room nervously. "I uh started to wonder, what's the point of love if you're only going to get hurt? Is betrayal its own form of love? Why bother with love at all? So... I guess for me, love is heartbreak."

I ducked my head at the quiet murmurs echoing through the room. I wasn't usually so candid, but he had caught me off guard. I don't think anyone was ready for me to give him such an honest answer. 

"Liar," one of the voices called.

My girlfriend.

Shit.

"You love love," she said.

I heard her chair scratch against the concrete floor, but I didn't look up. When she tapped my shoulder, I leaned back out of habit and opened my arms. She plopped herself right on my lap. I felt like a well trained dog.

"And I know that because you love me." She smirked.

"Mmm. Yeah, I guess," I mumbled.

In reality, all love had ever done was break me. It would tear me down till I was nothing but a beating heart stitched with scars. It would show me who I was beneath the layers of who I pretend to be, and I never liked what I saw. It ripped me apart and spilled my guts across the dirt for all the world to see. Love was terrible.

She grinned down at me triumphantly, her arm thrown over my shoulder, and I was curious why the teacher hadn't told her to go back to her seat.

"You guess what?" she prodded.

I shook my head, unable to keep the smile off my face.

"Y'know. Stuff."

It was something I never expected to feel, and a feeling I had fought against from the moment we had met, but I loved her.

"Stuff?" she teased. "You're saying the undying affection you feel for me is 'stuff?'"

I shrugged, trying to be cool "Yeah. Just a normal part of my day. i.e. 'stuff.'"

She shook her head, a slight blush dusting her cheeks, and had the teacher not chosen that exact moment to send her back to her seat, I would have kissed her in front of the entire class.

She would probably break me, throw me in a blender and watch my blood spray across the walls, but I was willing to risk it.

Or rather, I wouldn't have had it any other way.