"My school had a playground with a metal slide, and it burned you in summer, but it was fast." Dark said, pushing Ivy back, "I would sneak onto the school ground at night, when no-one else was there, and that is when I would use the equipment. Even when I was a bit too old, it was nice to have somewhere to go to."
Daizi shook her head, pressing her back against the tree, "You and your brother love asking questions and then recoiling when they're answered honestly. You ask about health and safety of an 'intimate relation' and flinch at the word 'condom.' I'm not sure what you were expecting me to say..." She was less certain about Alec's continued commitment to never being in a relationship, giving the nature of these questions, but she doubted inquiring about how firmly still believed that seemed unwise, "Protecting your heart is a little more tricky, because it comes down to who you are, and who they are, and how deeply you felt about them. There was no protecting myself when Dark and I decided to break up since I was being called home to Egypt, even though we both decided it together. I didn't dump him because I was going back, he didn't dump me, we just decided long distance was stupid and wouldn't work. But we loved each other so much, it was one of the most painful decisions we ever made, even though we hadn't even been brave enough to say, I love you yet. We didn't say I love you until we reunited, because we thought being boyfriend and girlfriend was 'cringe.' And even if you are in a relationship that isn't ending, like what Dark and I have now, sometimes you still get hurt. But when a person is dating, before they find their future spouse, before it's permanent, it helps if you love yourself, first. If you are comfortable single and maintain your identity in your relationship, if it ends, you have enough of yourself left to fall back on. But you're still going to grieve it, often even if it was your choice, even if you knew it was the right thing. But that's true for anything. If Peter moved away tomorrow, it'd hurt. All of the sadness people feel after a breakup is just grief someone they cared about is no longer in their life, when you get down to the core of it."
She sighed, taking a few moments to think through her relationships with people other than Dark, "I don't think I was ever in love with anyone else the way I am in love with your father, but I did love others. I loved the fiancé I abandoned, and it took me a long time to admit that, because admitting it meant having to admit what I did was unkind to him. And I know he loved me. I had a three month fling with a Parisian drag queen--she came to our wedding, actually. She gave us an espresso machine," she laughed, a bit sadly, "I think what has helped me the most in romance, and even in friendship, because platonic friendships falling apart can be just as painful, even though we don't talk about it, is to judge the relationship by how it was when things were good, not by how it was when they were ending. I used to be friends--just friends--with this woman named Beatrice. We met in high school, she was my roommate, my Cooger, you could say. She was my best friend, but she just... Didn't grow up. Married her high school sweetheart right after high school, had a brood of rotten kids, and we had a really one-sided relationship, I was always having to rescue her from a crisis, and she was never willing to support me. We had this huge fight one day, because she wouldn't teach her kids how to not endanger me, and by the end of it she said some really horrible things about me, and that was that." She ran her fingertip against her knuckle, "It hurt like a breakup, because even though we had never been 'in love,' I loved her. And then she was gone, and I was so angry at her. But do you know? Even though it ended like that--I don't regret staying up late and talking with her when we were friends, I don't regret being in her wedding, or teaching her Arabic curses. I don't regret being her friend, and that is how I protect my metaphysical heart."