We spend the better part of a year circling each other: careful never to get too close yet prevented by some inescapable magnetism from straying too far apart. Returning from parallel dating app escapades, we regale each other with tales of kind men who can never quite manage to rid us of the pit in our stomachs.
(You are my friend because you understand me. You understand me so well that talking to you is like peering into a mirror, like kneeling over a crystal-clear lake, like breathing. So effortless, this blending, this process of learning each other’s souls.)
Keep me updated!, we say about these men, and then go home to scream into our pillows. To listen to our respective playlists. To fall asleep and dream of each other in the dark, in that early-morning haze where all caution falls away and all we are is two beings of uninhibited desire. I wake up every morning with Richard Silken echoing in my head: this small, good moment that I wished for. I am embarrassed by its tenderness and impossibility.
We spend the better part of a year bleeding out: no matter how hard we try to press down, we cannot contain parts of ourselves from swirling into each others’ lives, soaking through the sterile fabric of every social interaction. I chase after eye contact with you like a high. I lose track of the number of times I find it, then glance away, afraid that you will see something in my eyes that scares you into leaving.
When we finally start dating, everyone in our lives pokes fun at how long it took. I knew it all along, they say. Just by the way you look at her. Just by the way you laugh.
I have been liked before, of course. But I have always been liked without being known. And so this is so different that to still use the word “liking” feels absurd, dishonest. You know me down to my bones.
And when you hold my hand for the first time, a part of me cracks wide open. The care between us might be the softest thing I have ever felt. You brush your thumb against my knuckles and I understand all at once that some things cannot possibly be imagined alone. I understand that every piece of media, every Buzzfeed quiz in the world, did not come close to preparing me for how it feels to belong to a person who loves with intention.
I understand why we say in love, now. It is all-encompassing, the knowledge that I have been chosen by you. I bask in it, let it wash over my eyes and ears and mouth, like I am still eight years old and tilting my head back as I float, soaking in the last five minutes at the pool under dusk’s golden glow.