It’s all for you.
Becauseof you, Maryn.
I have to blink to clear the tears from my eyes in order to keep reading.
I certainly don’t deserve to love a woman like you, but I need you to know that I do.
I love you so much it feels like I’ve been in a fog since I left California.
I had them install bird feeders outside my building. I watch them sometimes and think of you.
I’m fucking terrified, Maryn.
But you asked me once if my mom had taught me not to ask women their age.
I laugh at the memory.
She taught me something far more important, it just took meeting you for me to realize it.
My mother loved fiercely. She loved with everything she had. She loved even when the men in her life didn’t deserve to be loved like that, by a woman like her, and that was often. My father and I are cut from the same cloth.
We don’t deserve women like you or my mother, and yet… you manage to find us, shake us, get us to wake up.
I’m ready to love fiercely, Maryn. I’m ready to love you with everything I have.
If you’ll let me.
Look out to the street, baby.
With a gasp, I turn around quickly.
Cassius.
My soul sighs his name.
It’s a beautiful name for a beautiful man.
He’s dressed in a black suit, jacket open to reveal a vest, his hands in his pockets as he leans back against a sleek, black town car.
Our eyes lock. His twitch, teetering on that smile I’ve missed so much.
“Come here, Casanova.”
He licks his lips, biting the bottom one as he pushes off the car and strides toward the gate. He opens it and I brace myself for Ribbit to charge toward him, but the dog just wags his tail, thethump-thumping beat matching my excited heart as Cas struts up the walkway. He must have already given Ribbit all the attention he needed so this moment wouldn’t be ruined by my goofy dog.
He stops at the base of the steps and looks up at me.
Smiling, I whisper, “Give it to me, Cas.”
And then he grins, that blinding, debilitating, panty-dropper of a smile that breaks me and puts me back together all in one motion. I fell in love with that smile.
And I fell in love with that man.
