The Rule of Three

      3 minutes in, and they've looked at each other and seen a challenge.  Clever blue has met passionate green and they both see a chance to simply satisfy urges that have been present but never fully satiated. It starts physical, the girl looking at the boy out of the corner of her eye, admiring the body that hides beneath the black as she sips her tea and listens to the music. He sees the possibility of doing one of the more difficult things, sleeping with an ex's best friend.
      
      3 days later, they see each other again. Something they weren't counting on. He's working a booth at a public event. She is not a fan of what he's selling, so she only comes around when she needs to, to fetch her friend. Besides, she's there with someone else. Someone who has the chance of being more reliable, more dependable, more there than some guy, who always talks of sex and of his conquests, of his dangerous life before he changed, and who sees far more than he ever should.
      
      3 days after that, he finds her in the laundry. She's wearing a shirt she knows is revealing, and after what happened with the boy-child from before, she's willing to give him a shot. She's ambitious though, and she swears that it's just the physical and not the way he makes her laugh or how he smiles.  When he asks her to dinner, she agrees. Nervous as hell, but agrees.
      
      3 dates in he asks to be more to her, more than just a date, a boyfriend. And she readily agrees. She bounces home, happy and excited with a broad smile on her face. Her heart is lifted in ways that  he can't even imagine. She's had bad relationships, and the fact that he's here makes her heart want to burst, even after he's found out.
      
      3 weeks in and she knows she's in love. When he says certain things, her heart sinks through her ribcage, like it's made of lead and comes to rest somewhere past her feet, through the earth and is lying somewhere in China. It kills her to hear him say those things, and it makes her want to hide away. Maybe it is only physical on his part, maybe she is looking for love in places it doesn't exist. Regardless, it hurts. Hurts worse than when her ex tried to force her, hurts worse than when the ex lied to her, hurts worse when her ex came around to say  "goodbye" to her.  
      
      30 days in. And it's the rule of three. Some pagan saying that she doesn't subscribe to, and she doesn't believe in until now. Things happen in sets of three, when threes line up in groups so nicely, too neatly.  3 months he says.  She laughs it off with some stupid corny joke but when he leaves, and she must go back upstairs after she walks out with him, her heart sinks again. 3 months.  She's already wasted one of them thinking she has more time. He's said he loves her after all.  She's not naive, she's seen far, far, too much to think that love must be involved with sex. She isn't the innocent little girl people think she is simply because she has excessive energy and bounces around, inside is an old tired soul waiting for release from this suffering.
      
         She opens the door to her bedroom and collapses on the bed.  She looks at Fluffy the Three Headed Dog sleeping on her bed. And unbidden, Hagrids quote rises to the surface of her mind, "What will come will come, and we will face it when it does." And she will, as women before her have when men say they love and only want one thing, and as women after her will, for time eternal.