Laying it on the Line

Wiping away the tears quickly with my fingers, I kept my head down hoping that he wouldn't notice. {Sniffle, wipe}

"Hey," he whispered across the tables and over his books, "are you okay?"

Oh man, I thought. This is the last thing I want to be doing right now. I didn't want him to think I was a sniveling girl. How many times, as a teenager had I dreamt of a day when I could sob on the shoulder of a strong, handsome man? I'm dying, I'd say, and he would hold me. In real life crying was so much more ... wet and snotty.

Head down, I shook it left to right.

"Is it your mom?" he asked.

I nodded, head still down, lying silently to the man I adored. My mom, who had just been diagnosed with breast cancer was the perfect scapegoat. I was crying over a mom, but it wasn't mine. It was the future me. Stupid Ensign article. Why did I pick up it to read while he studied anyways? The quote asserting that some women may never know motherhood had left me sobbing. Would that be me? Would this man, sitting across from me, ever wake up and realize how head over heels I was for him? Would he, could he, ever feel the same?

"Do you want to get out of here and talk?" he asked after a moment of silence.

I peeked up at him from under my wet eyelashes and nodded again.

Out in the dark parking lot we climbed into his ancient, once fire engine red, now a sun burnt orange, Volkswagen bug. The seats were frozen and I chattered as he drove slowly out of the parking lot in silence, cold winter air creeping up from the wooden boards covering the holes in the floor.

"Where do you want to go?" he asked.

"Anywhere." I said quietly. "Why don't you drive up the mountain, over there by the Y."

And so he drove, as the bug climbed the hills slowly, both of us sitting in the still silence. Finally he stopped the car next to an open field, across from a house sitting warmly lit on the mountainside.

"Do you want to talk about it?" he asked me.

Of course I wanted to talk about it. It seemed like all we did these days. Talk. The "what ifs" were constantly in our conversation, but they were not getting us anywhere. It had been almost 3 years to the day that we had met. From the very beginning I was smitten with his dark looks and broad shoulders. Then his dry humor and quiet confidence had me in a dither. Since meeting him again, after he returned from his two-year stay in Argentina, I knew that nothing had changed for me. The girl crush was still there. But after dating for 6 months, I felt like I knew, but he didn't.

But now was the time for the pitch of my life. If he couldn't do it, I needed to. Just to know that I had put it all out there. No regrets.

"I've never loved anyone before. So I don't know how it feels. But I think that I may be falling in love with you."

Silence. The cold air hung between us. My heart was pounding. I had told him in the safest way possible, not wanting to be totally crushed if he confirmed my worst fear. I could see that he was thinking. This could take a while. Sometimes we sat for hours, in silence, just waiting for him to think his thoughts through before committing them to speech.

"I think that I may be falling in love with you too," he said, making me wait only a minute.

Relief. Joy. Elation. Unbelief. Pinch me ... did he just say what I thought he said? The cold winter air seemed to dissipate as a warmth spread through my body. In that moment a clear picture of our future unfolded before me.

"If we decide that this is worth moving to the next step, I know that we would be happy together. I know that we would make each other happy. The only thing that would get in our way is time ... time for work, time for others, time taking its toll on us. But if we could balance that, we would be so happy."

Glancing over my shoulder, out the window of the bug, I stared at the house standing straight against the hill, as if slowly climbing upward. Looking at the comfortable glow of the golden windows, I realized there must be a family in there. Cleaning up dinner. Dancing to music. Working on homework. Tucking little babes into bed.

That could be us, I thought. And I smiled.

What if?

I've wanted to start journaling some past experiences that I failed to record in the moment. One of the blogs I read had the prompt to write about the first time you said "I love you" to someone one outside of your family. So I thought it was the perfect thing to start with. Join in, if you'd like!