"Oh." He grins. "Yeah, that too, I guess. But that's different."

"Do tell."

"I dunno. I love people, you know? They're so," he gestures expansively with his good hand, "...people. But I don't love everybody as specifically as I love you or Ethan. And some people when I get to know them I don't love them so much."

"So you love people, I've been promoted for some reason - which puts me in company with Ethan, grand - and demotion's also a possibility."

"You're not anything like Ethan," he snorts. "You're like the opposite of Ethan."

"That doesn't help this make more sense!"

"Why not? I love pumpkin pie and I love butter chicken, that doesn't mean they have anything much in common besides both being orange foods."

"People aren't food."

"So? Are all your friends exactly the same as each other? Bet not."

"I will daresay that, for example, you don't have that much in common with Andi," Bella concedes.

"Let me clarify something here - are you just saying you love me in a friend kind of way or are you claiming to have fallen in love with me?"

"I love my sister. I am not in love with her," shrugs Bella. "As an obvious example."

"Sure," says Trouble. "But I don't have any sisters. So if the only difference is whether or not you'd make out with them if they wanted, then I don't think I love anybody in just a friend way, and other than that I'm stumped."

"There are other subtleties, I have heard, but I have never been in-love so I cannot verbalize them. You would literally make out with anybody?"

"Anybody I liked. Definitely anybody I love."

"But you have your generalized agape for the entire human species, yeah?"

"Yeah. That's not the kind of love I was talking about there, though. I meant - I dunno, do you have another Greek word handy? The kind that means I noticed somebody specifically and I love them for being the exact person they are and not anybody else."

"There are more Greek words for love but I don't think any of them mean that, exactly."

"Okay. Guess we're stuck with English, then."

"Which alas has only the one word. Terribly inadequate."

"We were trying to figure out if your noticing-people-specifically love thing is romantic in nature."

"Right," says Trouble. "Fucked if I know, man."