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There were times in my life when I wished I hadn’t been born. Times when I felt so much pain and fear that the world stopped looking the same, that I stopped being who I was and turned into someone else. Even over this last year with Landon, despite how safe a haven he is for me, waking up from my nightmares and thinking back on the memories and really dissecting my past has beenhard.
But it would’ve been even harder without him.
Itwasharder without him.
And then he came into my life and was so unapologetically, irresistiblyhimself, and I learned what it really means to breathe, to rest. No, it hasn’t been easy, but at least I’m moving toward healing now. At least I’m no longer standing in the middle of the wound—I always thought I was keeping it from bleeding by being there, but what I really needed was to move out of the way so it could mend, and Landon has helped me with that.
Thinking about all this leads to thinking abouthowhe came into my life: him choking in the hallway just outside our front door.
“Do you know,” I say, “that I actually wasn’t sure I could properly do the Heimlich? I only ever knewin theoryhow to perform it on a child—in case Rae needed it—so while I was standing there trying to help you that night, I was thinking,‘God, I hope this guy doesn’t die because I don’t really know what I’m doing.’”
His slightly clouded expression lightens before he laughs. “Oh, man, I thought that once! I thought about how lucky I was that you succeeded!” He laughs more. “Actually, hell, I thought it more than once.”
I’m laughing, too, now. “I bet.”
“Not really something I could forget, was it?”
“Not choking to death is significant, yeah.”
“As hell,” he agrees.
With that, we’re able to get back into our buoyant mood. We cook dinner, finish off the bottle of champagne, call Rae for a minute. Then we eat some more cake, and that gets messy because being in pajamas instead of wedding attire makes having a small food fight too tempting to pass up. And that leads to us trying to kiss the mess off each other.
And that doesn’t really work, so we get in the shower.
And that gets rushed through because we’re ready for bed in more than one way by now.
Unlike when we got home earlier, though, we take our sweet time. We draw out the foreplay (which is something else I’ve grown to enjoy thanks to him) and we draw out the lovemaking, because it’s like he told me earlier: we can do absolutely anything we want with our alone time, with each other.
Mmm…. I love the way it feels to be free.
Not just this weekend, but on the inside, too.
I find more and more freedom all the time with him.
It feels…
…golden.
*
Saturday is even more relaxed than Friday because we have literally nothing to do butbe.
Be lazy.
Be sexy.
Be playful.
Be snacky.
Be chatty.
Be whatever we feel like being as long as we’re being it together.
It’s wonderful.
We do keep coming back to Rae, though—to tomorrow’s plans—because our happiness isn’t only for ourselves. Every time we mention her, the mass of love that’s lived in my chest since the day she was born gets a little bigger, and the adoration that I know lives in him grows a little more palpable.
