He woke me from where I had been sleeping with my head in his lap. A few gentle shakes of my shoulder and I was roused enough to extricate myself from against his stomach.

      “Come on, sleepyhead,” he said softly. “Let’s move into the bedroom for this.”

      Blinking a few times, I sat up and rubbed my eyes. He was smiling at me with a playful, cloying grin. Grogginess kept me from fully understanding what he meant. Was there more to what he said?

      “Surely you don’t mean we’re going to have sex again right now,” I yawned, my eyes suddenly watery with exhaustion. I arched my back a bit and twisted from side to side to get rid of some of the cricks that had formed there from the odd angle I had been lying in.

      He laughed and helped me off the couch. I walked beside him, against his chest and under his arm. I didn’t need to have my tired eyes open since he led me forward assuredly. We reached the bedroom door and he flicked off the hallway light.

      “No, no,” he chuckled, steering me to my side of the bed. We had been in a relationship having sex for only a short amount of time–maybe a week and a half–and already we had claimed sides on his double bed. “I meant for sleep. We can make love in the morning after you’ve rested.” He leered at me, but I saw fatigue in his eyes too. He needed sleep as much as I did.

      Frowning, I pulled my socks off with my toes then slid my jeans off onto the floor. He pulled his T-shirt over his head, his back facing me as I swung my legs up onto the bed and under the covers. Even tired, my brain chewed on what he said until I couldn’t help but spit out what I was thinking.

      “Don’t you think it’s a bit early to call it ‘making love?’ I mean, we’ve only been fucking for like a week.”

      He was pulling the covers back as I spoke, climbing into bed beside me in the semi-darkness. He paused midway under the sheets, however, and looked at me. Headlights from the road caught his face for a second, and I saw the raised eyebrow, saw the frown tugging at the corners of his lips.

      “What do you mean? I don’t understand,” he said, pulling himself the rest of the way into bed and against me where I lay on my back. His arm went over my ribs and I held it in my hands, feeling his warmth settle beside me.

      “Well, I mean, shouldn’t we just call it ‘sex’ or ‘fucking’ or ‘screwing’ or ‘banging’ or something? Isn’t it early in our relationship to call it ‘making love?'”

      He breathed on my neck. I didn’t take that as a response, so I waited.

      He kept breathing on my neck. When his breath didn’t form words after a minute, I turned my head to look at him. His eyes were open; he was awake; but he was thinking. I wanted to know what about.

      “Well, what do you think?”

      “I’m not sure I get it. Isn’t ‘fucking’ the same thing as ‘making love?’ It’s just different words for the same thing.”

      “But I don’t see it as the same thing. I think that anyone can fuck–hell, that’s all I did with some of my exes; I’m sure you did the same with some of yours–but in order to make love, you’ve got to be in love first.”

      “So you don’t think all sex is making love?”

      “No. I think that most people just bone without really getting emotionally attached to the other person or not even feeling emotionally attached to the person at the time they’re humping. It’s just intercourse, coitus, whatever–but not making love.”

      “You make it sound so erotic,” he mused, nuzzling my neck. He brushed his nose against my ear before settling his head back down on the pillow and asking, “So do you have a problem with making love?”

      “Oh, no, I’m all for that. I think two people who are in love or even just really strongly emotionally attached to each other can make the experience so much better than just normal sex. And I’m not saying that everyone in love is always making love or that they always have to make love–they just fuck most of the time–but that they can make love and have a much greater experience.”

      “So–wait, what? What’s the problem here then?”

      “Well, it’s really not a problem. I’m just wondering if it’s too early in our relationship to say that what we’ve been doing all week is making love.”

      He was silent. I must have stumped him again.

      “Are you saying we’re not in love?”

      “I’m–hmm. No–I’m not specifically saying that. What I’m saying or sort of trying to say is that we haven’t even talked about anything like love yet. We’ve been a little busy screwing, if you hadn’t noticed.

      He laughed, pulling me closer to him in a crushing embrace. “I have noticed, thank you very much,” he retorted. “Me and my man here have been doing a lot of ‘noticing’ lately.”

      I smiled at his remark and leaned my head against his, looking up at the dark light fixture on the ceiling. He caressed my side lightly and I idly ran a finger back and forth across the knobby bones in his wrist.

      He kissed my shoulder and asked, “So why haven’t we talked about love before? Have you been thinking about it?”

      I shrugged a little and said, “Some, I guess. I generally don’t like bringing it up at the beginning of a relationship. I’d hate to sound jumpy or clingy or pushy or obsessive or anything like that, and honestly, I’m almost never quite sure how I feel at the beginning of a relationship anyway. I can tell you that I like you a lot, that I care for you, and also that I’ve had a crush on you for a really long time, but none of that equals love. That may equal lust–hence all the fucking–but it doesn’t equal love. I don’t know that there are very many people at all out there who could honestly and truthfully say at the start of a relationship that they were deeply and truly in love. Lots of people confuse love with lust.” I turned to look at him then twisted my body to face his as well. “Besides,” I said, “who’s to say if you love me? I can’t tell that without you telling me or without asking you. Even then, how can I tell if it’s the truth without also experiencing it? Either the truth is you’re just telling me what I want to hear or maybe don’t actually know and understand what you feel.” I shrugged, running a finger along his jawline where a five o’clock shadow was looking like it was ready to celebrate a birthday or two. “I just think that sex at the beginning of a relationship is just that–sex. I think making love generally comes later. Sometimes it never comes at all.” Snickering, I grinned and said, “Like in the cases of several of my ex-boyfriends.”

      He laughed and ran his hand up and down my bare arm from shoulder to elbow and then back again. He did this for about a minute, his eyes not on my face but on his hand on my arm. Finally, he put that hand on my cheek and looked me in the eyes.

      “When will we know we’re making love?”

      “When we know we’re in love–both knowing it for ourselves and with each other–or we’ll just know. Making love is different from fucking. You can just feel it.”

      A passing car’s headlights made a brief box of light on the bed, starting where I could see his feet and moving rapidly to his face. In that flicker of light, I saw a bemused and adoring smile on his face.

      “I think,” he said in a soft voice, “that I’m feeling something for you right now.” He held my face in his hand and leaned forward to kiss me. I suddenly felt it too.