The tall man was rugged and beautiful. The sandpaper on his face was always the same length. It took her months to realize he looked disheveled on purpose. This disappointed her.

The tall man was rugged and naïve. The contradiction was endearing in a way that both annoyed her and empowered her. She felt that, in spite of his obvious physical strength, she was the strong one. At first she loved this feeling. The times she pressured him to try new foods or travel to the wrong part of town or dance to the street musician’s tune. She loved that he hung on every word of every story she ever told. He wasn’t sure if he wanted to travel, but every time she spoke of one of her exotic places he said someday he’d like to go there. But he wouldn’t go there. Not without her to show him around.

She didn’t know how the tall man got on when she wasn’t around. Did he ever go anywhere new? Did he enter restaurants and order a hamburger like the last time and the time before?

It must have been the tall man’s ruggedness that made his naïveté seem so beautiful. After a year she was tired of it. She didn’t mind being the adventurous one, but it exhausted her to know that the tall man would never do these things alone. It bothered her because she wondered if she was making him do things he didn’t want to. Or was he just like a puppy, blindly following along?

She didn’t really care for puppies. They cried too much and piddled on the floor.

The tall man was rugged and beautiful.