Title: “Of Course I’m Yours”
—Joe’s POV—
The first time I played Nelly, Def Leppard, Love Bites, something inside me twisted. Not in a bad way—more like a key turning in a lock I didn’t even know existed. Her yellow dress was so beautiful, the kind that makes a man want to promise things he shouldn’t.
“Love bites… but I’m yours.”
I said it before I could stop myself. “Of course I’m yours.”
She laughed, thinking I was joking. But I wasn’t.
I never planned to be the kind of guy who got tangled up in his own lines. Back in internet med school, a buddy, Dr. Bill Harford, tossed me a dog-eared copy of The Game by Neil Strauss. “Read this,” he said, grinning. “You’ll thank me later.”
I skimmed it. The tactics felt cheap, like fast food for the soul—filling but empty. Still, some of it stuck. The confidence tricks. The push-pull. The way you could make someone need you if you played it right.
But Nelly wasn’t some random girl at a bar. She was my first patient when I opened my naturopathic practice, Namaste Wellness. Cystic Fibrosis. I fixed her with herbs, roots, foods, the works. She called me a miracle worker.
And then, one evening after a session, she sang.
“You can’t marry anyone else,” I told her months later, half-joking, half-dead serious.
She arched an eyebrow. “Why not?”
“Because you’re my first patient. It’d be bad luck.”
She laughed again, but her eyes held mine a second too long.
That’s the thing about love—it does bite. And once it sinks its teeth in, you don’t get to decide when it lets go.
The End.