Fairy Tale Beginning

There is something sweet about late night kisses that go on and on into oblivion, your fingers making circles on my back until I’m purring in your arms. I remember these nights, I thought I had lost them blocked them forever but it’s not true. I remember them but now I see clearly what I couldn’t see then. It wasn’t a game, was it? The night you ended things and then asked me to hold you. When you told me even before then to wait and see. When you said you were obligated to do it in person, but that you were going to do it.  It was real but I was already too far gone to understand.

And if we had? If I had jumped then, when I was so full of unrest and darkness.  Could I ever have fought my way out the other side? Would I be the woman I am now? No, probably not. But I know now that you were always honest with me. That you cared for me, even as I fell in love with you I think just maybe you were falling in love with me too.

Butterflies, you said I gave you butterflies. Well babe I suppose it goes both ways, because I knew the moment I got your message that I was a goner. That’s why my phone buzzed in the cafe, exactly 25 minutes into our coffee catchup, my best friend ready to fake whatever emergency I needed. That’s why my fingers were tracing the bottleneck of my mango peach juice, imagining the cold glass to be your warm lips.  That’s why, when I finally made my way back to the office, I left you at the back porch and sprinted inside-grateful to find the dressing room unoccupied so that I could slump with my back against the door and sink ever so slowly to the floor in a puddle of long dormant longing.

The pitch of the roof in my room is just the same as yours was all those years ago. Do you remember leaving your window open all winter? That night when we watched bad zombie movies and I snuggled so deeply into you trying to capture your inner warmth. Or the time you brought out oils and smoothed my skin with your tender hands, expecting nothing in return and working the nervous energy out of my skin.

You taught me these kisses, and then when I turned up on your doorstep all these years later you kissed me again before I had time to think or be nervous or god forbid run. Right there in the car, making me squirm until I had to remind myself that I hadn’t taken the car out of drive and I needed to keep my foot firmly on the break.

I’m ready to fall back into flannel nights and the same running jokes we’ve had through years and all of our diverse relationships. I’m ready to believe now what you tried to tell me all those years ago. I don’t know what made me different from the others, or what made you stand out to me (that’s a lie, it was your sparkling eyes and your quick grin and your kind ear) but I know that somehow we are the only ones who matter. The mind-blowing sex doesn’t hurt, either.

Love. My love.

I used to imagine what I would do on the day that I heard you were married. Now you’ve  told me that not even me saying “I do” with someone else would have stopped you from trying. I’m glad. I’ve begged you for years, in my dreams and on these digital pages, to tell me that you wanted something more. I should have just asked you, as you said we could have been together for the last 10 years.

But again, I wouldn’t have been all of me. And I want to be all of me. For myself first, but also for you. So I’m glad. I learned so much, and when I meet your parents again- this time as your partner, I’ll know where I stand. Where we stand.

I can’t wait for our adventures. Everyone else is settled in the story they’ve written for themselves, and ours is just beginning.

Once upon a time...