Chapter 36
Chapter Thirty-Six
HAPPILY EVER DURING
Will
The thing about not knowing is that when you do, suddenly recognize this thing that you had no concept of understanding before, there is a ground swell that is uncontrollable. There is no way to return to the moment prior. There is no resetting a course. There is only forward.
I think people have confused death and love. I was always under the impression that when you die your life flashes before your eyes, but if that’s the case why did I see hundreds of futures when I looked at her in that moment?
My feet hit the pavement, and I pick up speed.
It wasn’t the first time I’d been overcome with this sense of prophecy. That there was some greater entanglement for us as we’d spent time hopping between beds. We were being woven together, we already had been, and just never realized it. But now, it’s the music we hear in every silence.
My lungs fill with air that pushes me forward.
I’ve been sitting on this feeling for longer than makes any sense. I knew I loved her one morning when I had gotten up for this exact purpose, to start my day before the day with my feet against the cement.
And as I kissed her, soft against her temple, light on her cheek, lingering at the corner of her mouth, trailing down to her jaw, catching the spot below her ear that makes her sigh, and finally, inevitably, finding her lips, she stirred in her sleep but still reached for me, muscle memory seeking warmth. As if I was worthy of the attention. In her fog of slumber with eyes barely cracked open she and a whispered sigh escaping her parted lips, she mewled a whimper that had me close to crawling back into bed.
"Why do you do that?" she asked in a way that I could tell was part of a dream, slow and strung together like cursive. In the vulnerability of sleep, she radiates a peace so profound it makes my chest ache, as if I'm witnessing something sacred in these quiet morning hours.
"Do what, darling?" I asked. The first time I used the term of endearment it was in mock necessity, but there is no one and nothing more darling. I twine my fingers in her hair and pick up a morning curl.
"It’s always six," she says between a yawn, "whenever you get out of bed, it’s always six morning kisses."
I hadn’t noticed the pattern, but it makes sense she would. I lean down to her lips and kiss her more deeply than the previous ones. Her mouth awakens and she stretches her arms around my neck. I kick off my running shoes as she pulls the shirt over my head.
Her eyes are open, alert now, pupils wide in the dimness of the morning. The sleepy blur is replaced by something electric, more urgent. And besides the momentary break where she stripped me of my shirt, I can’t break our kiss in any way that would separate me from her and it’s clear neither can she. I crawl back into bed; I’d crawl on my hands and knees over broken glass to get to her. My hands slide up the curve of her waist, raising her arms as I toss the t-shirt aside and the bareskin of our chests are pressed together with our breathing in tandem. Her eyes are bright and not clouded by any of the sleep she was wrapped in moments ago.
I push up on my elbows, where she's caged underneath me, ironically I’m the one with the inability to leave. I look down to where she lays, and for all the art I’ve seen, there’s nothing more beautiful than this woman.
"Why is it always six?" I repeat back as I kiss the column of her neck. Inching my way up to her ear kiss after kiss. "This is why. One more and I can’t bare to leave"
"I noticed." And there’s no surprise on my face that she knew the answer before she asked.
Her teeth pull against my lip and the flash narrows her eyes in a smirk. Her leg tightens around me and I’m hers as she has me on my back. Sitting up for me to see as she’s straddled across my lap. She is morning-warm and sleep-soft, familiar now but thrilling, like your favorite song coming on unexpectedly. My palms find purchase on her waist as my hands follow her shape to the elastic of the underwear I know are about to find their way to the floor with the rest of our clothes, have me harden beneath her.
We stay in the veil of the moment until we’re both sated beyond any sense of reason. And I have no reason. I don’t need it. This is enough.
There is this idea that time slows when you realize you love someone. In a way that everyone and everything around you pauses. That’s not what it was for me. The world was always slow as I ran through it. But not looking at her. It took six seconds to see all the outcomes of our life, and know . I saw them all. All the paths my life could take. And it is undeniable, whatever it may be, there isn’t an ounce of sterling in the world worth more than our future.
No choice I would ever make to take me from here, with her .
These moments where words are diffused by sleep and kisses stretch like honey being pulled from a jar. The thickness of each shared breath suspended between us, time caught golden and viscous, as morning pours through windows to find us wrapped in amber moments that crystallize rather than break. Preserving every sigh, every touch, every whispered truth, every one of these six-morning-kisses before the world can steal them away.
I don't understand it. I don't need to understand it to know it exists. Like gravity, I can feel it without being able to comprehend why every time my foot hits the pavement it is weighted by a greater force.
That's her .
I think people have confused death and love.
They say life flashes before your eyes when you die and that the world comes to a halt when you fall in love.
They are wrong.
It's one and the same.
I'm fairly certain that falling in love is the greatest loss of life one could imagine. It's soul-ripping, world-ending, a beautiful annihilation. And I fall to my knees in painful gratitude at the opportunity, offering myself up to this exquisite destruction. Ceasing to exist as I was before, a willing sacrifice to who I'm becoming. I'll dive headfirst into the River Styx swimming for my life, or rather, to welcome a welcome death.
It turns out love isn't some grand revelation that strikes like lightning. It's more like finally noticing you've been breathing underwater this whole time, your lungs filled with something deeper than air, and somehow that's exactly where you're supposed to be.
Not drowning, but finally, perfectly, alive.