You're curled tight on your end of the soft black leather couch, not floating loosey goosey after a wine drenched day like he is. Dark pattering thrum of Spanish guitar beats out, a riot of hot yellow candle flame jitters and blinks from the fireplace packed with flickering votives. You each face separate paintings hung on opposite bright white walls. You ask which he likes more.

He says "They're both very nice"

They aren't nice. Nice doesn't make your heart pound, nice doesn't feel like a fist unclenching in your chest. You're annoyed by the choice of such a benign word.

Finally, he says of the elegant, languid nude, the faceless reclining woman with a slight rise in her creamy swollen belly, "It's more refined."

Not that he likes her more, that it is more refined. It. Not she. You're not surprised that he likes her better. She is refined and earthy, organic, a fertile curving composition, the color of apricots and champagne. You could stare at her for hours. Soft and sure.

You face the second painting. The one he spent five hours hanging for you, the one he wired special lights for. The one you stood barefoot in front of in the artist's studio, breath shortened, quickened and about to cry. Pulsing red energy throbs out and over you.

The abstract woman, larger than life, sits in loose cross legged pose with her arms up over her head. Nape, waist, belly, hip, thigh all made up in short quick strokes. Behind her, a decidedly male presence. His blue arm reaching down between her legs, his head nestled in the curve of her neck, so intimate you cannot look for long. The painting is like a drug. You go back for sips all day, tasting the wide swooping, burning brush strokes of scarlet and sapphire that hum with unabashed, unapologetic desire.

The gentle downturned angle of her face, chin resting on her own shoulder speaks relief and realized need. He is her choice and her answer. She's given in to his cool cerulean hand, it's set her ablaze, cracked her open, flooded her. The energy is a hot, moving presence that stirs the air it inhabits.

You finally tell him that you love both paintings, but that you cannot live without the man and the woman. To not own that one would be like not having part of yourself anymore. To not own that painting would be to give up the depiction of your own longing. You realize that you are jealous of her.

You say that you'll need to find out what the artist wants for each. He is mellow, unmoved.

"You don't have to convince me. Buy both."

You know he sees you in the refined nude, elegant in her repose. You see yourself in the fire filled coupling ablaze in the light he's rigged to bathe them, bring them to life. You can't say who it is that kneels behind you, reaching in, to give you joy.

Jenny Hay is that girl you like to talk to. Her honesty makes you squirmy, but is also strangely addictive. She lives and writes in Belgium, her work has previously appeared in flashquake. She can be reached at Jennyhay3@gmail.com.