Nathan always told her, “Dein liebe für mich ist verboten.” In English it meant, “Your love for me is forbidden.”  Sometimes Catherine said the same to Nathan, only in English, and they would both laugh.  Although this statement seemed funnier when Nathan said it to Catherine, than when she said it to him.  When she said it, the laughter seemed a bit more forced from them both.  She wondered if there was something lost in statement’s translation, “Your love for me is forbidden;” Catherine refused to believe there was anything lost in making his words hers, so she wasn’t sure why the joke lost its humor in reverse.  The relationship belonged to both of them.  Catherine believed it was equal, a meeting of the minds, a crossing of the hearts into one.  She thought maybe it was because the joke had originated as Nathan, since he was still seeing another grad student during the time when they first came together, but that possibility seemed to remain equally flawed.

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