Milena loved the way Pavle moved his cup aside before embracing her. She loved his kisses, funny messages from the shop, and how he left her the warm side of the couch in the morning. After two months of dating, she knew she was falling in love. Precisely because of that, she could no longer treat the conversation she had postponed as an unimportant detail he would somehow understand without words.
She had known for years that she was asexual. The word did not explain every feeling, but she had stopped trying to become someone she had never been. She had not yet discussed it with Pavle. They had made no agreement she had broken, but she could see he imagined their closeness as the beginning of something she did not expect of herself. Enjoying an evening grew harder while she thought ahead to how it would end.
She told him on Sunday while they sat on her balcony. Pavle first asked whether he had done something wrong. Then he asked whether she liked him at all. Milena said she liked him very much, that this was not a carefully softened way of rejecting him. She struggled to explain how strongly someone's closeness could attract her without the desire he took for granted.
Pavle listened, then admitted that sexual intimacy mattered to him. He did not ask her to promise change. Nevertheless, when he said perhaps they could find a way, Milena heard how much both hoped for a simple answer. They left the conversation unfinished and went to buy bread. They held hands in the shop, momentarily making everything both easier and much harder.
They continued seeing each other for several more weeks. There were lovely evenings, but also a caution entering every embrace. Pavle feared exerting pressure; Milena feared treating his restraint as a permanent answer. Finally they admitted they were attempting a generosity that made both insecure. Neither wanted love to become waiting for the other to desire a different life.
They separated without a major argument. Several times Milena wanted to call and offer something she could not comfortably sustain, simply to hear his voice in her kitchen again. She did not do it. When they met outside the market months later, they embraced for a long time. Pavle still carried the same canvas bag. Afterwards Milena continued home with a sadness that required no culprit, preserving both what had been beautiful and what she had needed to take seriously about herself.