He had no idea what to say.
“Do you love me?” she repeated.
He had often pondered what it meant to be in love with someone. Time and time again, he realized that he hadn’t the vaguest clue.
“I mean, like that, you know? I’ve always thought of love as agape, like the unconditional love thing. Well, at least when I say it that’s what I mean. But it seems like there is something else for when a man loves a woman. You know? I’m a woman. You’re a man. It just seems like when we say that we love each other there should be something else too. Like, an ideal. Agape and being in love.”
Still, he could think of nothing to say to her. He thought of the Greeks and their many words for love and how lucky they were and how they would have never had this conversation. Even if they did, he wondered, what would they say? Do you eros me? Strange, but not unthinkable, he supposed. The only thing that he could do was look into her blue eyes, touching her face with the back of his hand. His hand would find her stomach, and he noted its softness and how much he enjoyed her bellybutton. But still, he had no answer to her question.
“It’s just that, for most couples it’s a pretty big deal when they start saying ‘I love you’ and I don’t know that it was for us. I don’t know,” she continued.
He thought of the way she looked in the morning – makeupless and glorious. He remembered the first time he woke up next to her and how, for once, he was glad to be awake. She laid beside him, still asleep. He recalled admiring the curve of her nose and the little bump it had toward the top, closer to the brow. He remembered the way her lips parted as she breathed – he thought them to be the most kissable lips he had ever seen. The scar below her right eyebrow was a true beauty to him. The freckle on the bottom of her right earlobe, just below her piercing, came to mind. He thought the sound of her breath when her mouth was close to his ear and the resulting shivering sensation that flooded down his back.
“Will you ever tell me if you’re in love with me?” she asked.
He didn’t know that he could because he didn’t know what this meant. What he did know was how she looked as she explained the contents of her room to him. He knew that she had treasures from childhood. She shared them generously with him, omitting no detail, and he knew that she was beautiful. He knew the sound of her laugh and knew when she was on the verge of announcing, “That’s what she said.” He knew they had inside jokes that would always be funny to only them. He knew that he would forever think Oprah was in every limousine he saw. He knew that she was, without a doubt, one of, if not the, funniest women he had ever known. He knew that when she smoked, she was transcendent. He knew the sound of her voice, the rhythm of her speech, and had learned that scathing sarcasm was her love-language. She insulted him a lot.
“I mean, obviously you will, but will you make sure that I know it’s in love with?"
He couldn’t make that promise. But he knew that she celebrated and respected him. He knew that he was his true self when he was with her. He knew that he could sit with her forever.
He loved her.
And she knew.
