fakediary

The moment the elevator doors closed, David turned toward me and kissed me hungrily.

I hadn’t expected it to happen so suddenly, but I kissed him back, laughing a little at his impatience.

When the elevator reached our floor, he took my hand and hurried me down the hallway. I could barely keep up with his long strides.

At our door, he tapped the key card against the lock with such urgency that he nearly missed the sensor.

I laughed.

“David, relax!”

He gave me a look that suggested relaxing was the last thing on his mind.

The lock finally clicked.

As soon as we were inside, he pulled me close and kissed me again, harder this time. I wrapped my arms around his neck and returned his kiss with equal enthusiasm.

Whatever traces of tiredness remained from our long day disappeared.

There was something almost overwhelming about the intensity of his affection. David was passionate in a way I had never quite experienced before. He seemed to love with his entire being, without hesitation or restraint, as though every kiss mattered and there were no reasons to hold anything back.

He was, I thought with some amusement, the very epitome of a Latin lover.

And goodness, he was living up to the reputation.

That night, we lost ourselves in each other once again. He held me as though there were nowhere else he wanted to be, and for those hours, I felt the same.

But what stayed with me most wasn’t simply the passion.

It was how he made me feel about myself.

I had struggled with my body image for as long as I could remember. There were parts of myself I disliked, imperfections I examined far too closely, and comparisons I made almost automatically. Even when someone complimented me, I often found reasons not to believe them.

With David, something was different.

He looked at me with such unmistakable admiration that I found it difficult to retreat into my usual insecurities. There was no hesitation in his affection, no sense that he was overlooking something or graciously accepting my flaws.

He seemed genuinely captivated by me.

At first, I almost didn’t know what to do with that.

I was accustomed to being conscious of my body, to wondering whether I looked attractive from a certain angle or whether I should cover some part of myself.

But David never gave me much opportunity to entertain those thoughts.

He made me feel wanted, entirely and unapologetically.

Not because I had somehow become more beautiful overnight or because all my insecurities had magically disappeared. I knew they hadn’t.

But for once, I wasn’t preoccupied with what my body lacked.

I was too busy enjoying what it could feel.

And perhaps that was what made the experience so extraordinary. It wasn’t merely that David desired me.

It was that, in his arms, I could experience being desired without immediately questioning why.

David reached for the buttons of his shirt.

He undid them slowly, one by one, and shrugged the shirt from his shoulders. Beneath it, his body was lean and powerfully defined—not bulky, but shaped by years of hard work managing the mines. His muscles were the kind earned through long days, physical demands, and responsibilities that required strength rather than display.

I let my gaze linger over him.

David noticed and smiled, a quiet spark of amusement in his eyes.

————

Later, as we lay together catching our breath, his expression changed.

He began to speak, and the seriousness in his voice caught me off guard.

“I never used to believe in love,” he said.

I turned toward him, listening.

He explained that, in the past, he had thought he loved someone, only for her to break his heart. After that, he had vowed never to love again.

Then he gave a quiet, almost disbelieving laugh.

“I can’t believe I used to think that way,” he said. “After meeting you, I’ve felt something on an entirely different level. I don’t even know if I can call what I had before love anymore.”

His words settled over me, tender and startling at once.

I smiled at him, still a little dazed.

For years, I had looked at my body as a collection of things I wished were different.

David seemed to see a woman he couldn’t get enough of.

And for the first time in a long while, I found myself wondering whether I could learn to see her that way too.