The first time he kisses you, your body becomes an earthquake. His hands are warm against your back in the chill night air. He is soft at first, unsure, his breath rattling in his chest as if the smell of you is making his heart erupt. When you lean in, he kisses you with every ounce of pent-up desire he has been folding into his back pocket and saving for the right moment. He kisses you desperately, puts his hands to the side of your face, pulls you into him, presses you against the side of his car. You cannot breathe and your cheeks are bright pink and that moment stretches out like sunlight, you are both wild and all heat and quick bloodstreams and passion like hoofbeats.

Dating him is a dream. Every moment seems as if it has been taken out of a romantic manual on perfection. The two of you are wrapped around each other as if you are one body. Your friends tease you and you roll your eyes. They wouldn’t understand what it’s like to be set on fire by him. The two of you discover each other and rediscover the world. Watching the mirror of museums in his eyes reteaches you art. Holding his hand reshapes your childhood park. Being with him is like learning you have always lived in darkness and finally here a torch.

You dance around serious emotions. Neither of you wants to ask too much, to speak of the future lest your expectations muck it up. You live in the moment, you celebrate one-two-three-four month anniversaries with ice cream and nachos, you laugh at yourselves for the silliness of it. Neither of you admits there is something serious brewing between you, some deep emotion that trembles in your bones, something scarily foreign - and at the same time, terrifyingly familiar.

You know. You know. This boy has become your love. Somewhere in the cute texts and cookies and tiny presents, he has built a home inside of you.

On a night where the rain is pouring and the two of you are watching a train pass from the warmth of his car, you finally find the courage to say the words that scare you more than any other combination of eight letters. You open your mouth and are about to form the words when he kisses you along your jaw and whispers them in your ears, fear shaking his voice but certainty in each syllable

and you want to call up the younger versions of yourself, so full of spite or hopelessness, so empty of faith; you want to say, “hold on, little one. You find him one day.”