The Small Word He Wouldn’t Stop Saying

Lina had told him six times.

The first time it happened, Tomas leaned in at the end of a date and murmured, “Wuv you, sweetheart,” with an embarrassing little smile, as if he had just invented charm.

She blinked at him. “What does that mean?”

“It means I wuv you,” he said again, grinning.

They had known each other for months, but they had only been dating for one. Lina had spent most of that month trying to decide whether she liked him enough to keep going. She liked his dry humor, his easy way of filling silences, the fact that he listened when she talked. She did not like baby talk. It made her skin prickle. And the word love, dropped into the middle of such an early relationship, made her stomach turn.

“I don’t like that,” she said carefully. “The baby talk. And the love stuff this soon.”

He had nodded, contrite enough to seem sincere. “Got it. Sorry.”

So she believed him.

Then it happened again. When he texted her goodnight: Wuv yooooou <3. When she was leaving his apartment and he wrapped his arms around her and muttered it into her hair. Once, while they were half-watching a movie and he was gaming with one hand, he turned to her and whispered, “Wuv you,” in a syrupy voice that made her want to laugh and cringe at the same time.

Each time, she told him to stop.

Each time, he promised he would.

By the sixth time, her patience had worn thin. It wasn’t even the word itself anymore. It was the stubborn little refusal underneath it, the feeling that her discomfort had become a game to him.

When they met that evening, she decided to ask him directly.

“Why do you keep doing that?” she said. “You know I hate it.”

He frowned, as if she had accused him of some terrible crime. “What are you talking about?”

“The baby talk. The ‘wuv you’ thing. I’ve asked you to stop.”

His expression hardened. “I apologized for making you uncomfortable.”

“That isn’t the same as stopping.”

He folded his arms. “Maybe I should be clearer. I’m apologizing for the fact that you’re taking my affection the wrong way. I’m sorry you feel that way, but I’m not sorry for being cute.”

Lina stared at him.

He lifted his chin, as though he had won something. “You just need to get used to it.”

The room went very quiet.

“So you don’t care that it makes me uncomfortable,” she said.

“I do care,” he snapped. “But you need to stop being weird about a normal, cute thing. You’re being impossible.”

Her chest tightened, not from hurt exactly, but from the ugly clarity of it. He had heard her. He had understood her. He simply didn’t think her boundaries were important enough to respect.

“If I said I was uncomfortable with something you did,” he went on, “would you change?”

“That’s not the same thing.”

“No,” he said sharply. “It is. You’re being a hypocrite.”

Lina looked at him for a long moment, seeing him now without the softness she had been willing to lend him.

Then she stood.

“I wouldn’t want you to suffer the burden of dating a hypocrite,” she said, her voice steady despite the heat in her face. “Goodbye. Don’t contact me again.”

For a second, he looked stunned, as though he had never imagined the game could end.

Then she walked out before he could find another word to shrink her with.