L-O-V-E Spelled Backwards Is E-V-O-L

He looked at me, daring me to answer yet afraid that I would actually do so. “Why don’t you believe in true love?” he asked.

Seeing that look on his face I paused first, did some mental editing, and then I spoke.

“Oh, you got me wrong,” I said. “I didn’t say I don’t believe in true love. In fact, I do believe that love should be true and honest and genuine.”

His eyes relaxed with relief.

“What I don’t believe in,” I continued, “is everlasting love.”

Baffled eyes. Again.

“I don’t believe in love that lasts forever. Nothing lasts forever. Everything ends. It only seems forever because the other one dies first and everyone thinks, oh his love will go on and on, every night in my dreams. Yeah right. On and on—right onto the ocean floor. The moment he froze to death his love ended. The end. There’s always an end. Even if you have superfluous scenes with old Rose in the present day throwing the necklace into the ocean—‘Oops’?! Can you believe that?—you’ll still end up with credits. Even the whole Universe—that’s with a capital ‘U’, mind you—will collapse once again into a Singularity. With a capital ‘S’ no less. And that’s the beauty of it: you get a fleeting glimpse of the eternal, and then it ends. Maybe you’ll mourn, maybe you’ll grieve; maybe you’ll dance for joy. But the finiteness is what makes it so special. Otherwise, imagine being in love with the same person for all eternity. No wonder it sucks to be a vampire. In more ways than one.” Then I took a swig of San Mig Lite.

He was about to say something but I cut him off.

“Now let’s exempt God from this,” I said. “Or Buddha or Mohammed or any form of deity. The love of Supreme Beings is of a different plane, okay? They don’t count.”

“But I wasn’t—oh, never mind,” he said. Then he looked out the window, at the blinking lights of the city below.

“Just have another Lite,” I said, and pushed a bottle towards him.

The stars in the sky echoed the lights down below.