I have a type, and it isn't a look, it's a performance. The charmer. The one who says the perfect thing at the perfect moment and makes you feel like the only person in the room, then disappears just long enough to make you wonder if you imagined it, then comes back saying something even better than before. I call them Romeos because that's exactly what they are, all grand gesture and no follow-through, fluent in the language of wanting someone without ever learning the language of staying.
I know now why they get me every time. It was never the steady, plainspoken kind of attention that hooked me, it was the uneven kind, warmth then silence then warmth again, and somewhere in me a switch flips that says pay attention, this matters, don't let it go. That's the addiction part, chasing the next hit of being chosen by someone who only chooses on their own schedule. And it isn't only romantic. I've done it with friends too, people who charmed me first and showed me who they actually were later, because I was raised to forgive fast and stay open, to look at what someone could become instead of paying attention to what they were already showing me. Every Romeo I've fallen for gave me plenty of proof early. I just kept reading it as potential instead.
I see them coming now, most of the time. The too-fast intensity, the disappearing act dressed up as mystery, the way they make absence feel like part of the seduction instead of the red flag it actually is. Recognizing it faster is real progress. What I'm still working on is not giving my energy away the second the charm turns back on, because some part of me still wants to believe this Romeo is different. I'm learning that the performance is the tell. Love that has to keep proving itself with grand gestures usually isn't offering anything underneath them.
x Angela Bella Morte x
