And they all lived

If there is one thing that is inevitable about life is that change occurs. As much as you might be happy and content with the way things are going for you right now, there is always something waiting to throw you off course again.

We fell into a routine. A fun, comfortable and content routine. I was with her most of the time to be honest. To people on the outside we would have looked like a happy little family. The amount of waitresses, store clerks and street vendors who referred to her as my wife or the twins as my kids had gotten to an uncountable number.

That terrified me to begin with. I was always quick to correct them. 'We are not married. She is my friend. My friend.' I'm not sure when I stopped correcting them. I remember it still annoyed me, but that I just couldn't be bothered any more. Then I just didn't care any more. It didn't matter how other people saw us. If they thought I was a husband and father that was okay. There was worse things they could think about me.

Something changed. I'm not sure when. I don't know if if was this sudden thing where I woke up and just felt this way. Or if it was something that gradually happened. All I know is I actually started liking when people thought of me like that. Then I started liking thinking of myself like that. Then I realized that maybe I didn't just want to be friends with her any more. I didn't just love her any more. I was in love with her. Not in a huge fireworks massive declaration way. I just was in love with her. I wanted to spend the rest of my life with her.

How do you tell someone that exactly? I've tried it before. In that case I had nothing to lose. Now I had everything to lose. I could scare her off. Or worse, she might be thinking the same thing, and we go all in, and it fails again and I lose her. Then what? Then I have nothing. It was worst this time too. This time I meant it.

So I sat on it.

Yeah, I sulked. Shut up.

Turns out trying to keep a secret like that is impossible. She tried to be patient with my sulking. She tried to coax me out of my self-pity party. Eventually she snapped.

"If you are just going to sulk around and not tell me what's wrong can you please do it at your own place?"

"I'm sorry. I'm scared." I whined.

She pulled me to my feet and dragged me to her bedroom and pushed me so I was sitting on her bed. I hadn't actually been in her bedroom before. Worst place to have this particular conversation.

"Spit it out!"

"I love you." I said.

"I love you too. So hurry up and tell me what's the matter before I strangle you."

I shook my head. "No. I mean, I'm in love with you."

She spun away from me and banged her head on the door. "Fucking great. Great!"

I suddenly remembered that I'd lived through this before. This had happened with Mallory and I stormed out on her and drank a bottle of vodka. Fuck. I needed to call her and apologize for being such an asshole. First; the problem at hand.

"Please talk to me." I said softly.

"What am I supposed to do with that? Now we've been ruined. I can't be that, and now we can't be friends either."

"Look, I am not going to force you to do anything you don't want to. It's just how I feel. If you want to stay as friends, I'm fine with that. I love you. I want you to be happy. That's all I want. I'm not going to complain that you put me in the friend zone. Or keep pushing you for more. But I do want more. I want all of it. I want to wake up in bed with you and watch you sleep. I want to go on horrible family vacations with you. The kind of vacations that you need an extra week to recover from. I want to help you get the girls ready for their first day of school. I want to make sure they don't end up dating people like me. I want to take you on dates. I want to hold your hand and kiss you, and fuck you and make love to you. But if that's not what you want, and it's never what you want, I just want you to be happy. If you can't be happy with me like that. I'll take whatever you're able to give."

She held her hand over her mouth and tears formed in her eyes. "I'm not good enough for you. Why would you want that with me and all my fucking baggage?"

"Why would you even think that about yourself? If anything it's the other way around. You're my best friend."

She sat down on the bed and flopped backwards staring at he ceiling. Tears slipped down from the sides of her eyes, and rolled down onto the bed. I lay down next to her and looked at her.

"What if it blows up on us? I don't want to lose you." She asked, her voice barely over a whisper.

"Do you feel the same way?" I asked ignoring her question. "About me that is?"

"Yes. I have for a little while. I don't know when it changed. I just buried it. I bury those thoughts. Like I bury everything that make me uncomfortable."

"I'm not going anywhere. If we can't work out like that, we'll figure it out."

She turned to face me and we looked into each other's eyes.

"Okay." She breathed.

"Okay, we'll try being a couple?"

She nodded and I leaned in towards her. She put her hand up. "We need to go really slow though. Like, really, really slow. If it looks like things are going sour we stop, straight away before it gets too serious."

"Whatever you need."

She pulled her hand away and we kissed. It was nice. Just the right amount of tongue, and she did that thing where they scrape their teeth over your bottom lip when you pull away for air. Mostly though, it felt right. Like that's what we were supposed to be doing.

When things are supposed to be a certain way, they just naturally fall into place. Forcing them to behave any other way will just cause them to break.We took things slow. Just like she wanted. Mostly things didn't change at all. Except now we held hands and kissed a lot. Carrie and Chrissy hated it. So I especially liked doing it in front of them so they'd tell us we were gross and that I was going to give their mom cooties.

Her brother started picking the girls up from day care on Fridays and keeping them over night so we could go on dates. I was so terrified the first time I met him picking the girls up on a Saturday morning. I was sure he must know everything about me. I needn't have been concerned. He was so happy that she was dating again, and that she finally trusted anyone else to have the girls overnight, that he almost didn't care who I was. He did give me the typical 'don't hurt her or I'll kill you' warning. That was nice.

Our dates were simple ones. Dinner in Old Town getting serenaded by Mariachi bands. Movies. Mostly it was just us, being alone together because that was rare. We'd always end the night by sitting outside smoking and having our usual end of the night talk. We'd then kiss goodnight and go home.

I took her out to Balboa Park one night. Just before sun down. There had been a butterfly release at the Zoro garden during the day and the butterflies were still fluttering around. We climbed off the path and sat down in between the roots of the giant Morton Bay Fig.

I pulled her to me and we made out. Butterflies would alight on us only to take off again when they realized what an unstable platform we were.

We eventually pulled apart and just sat, watching the butterflies floating around the garden.

"Look at all the idiots who carved their initials into this poor tree." She said.

I pulled out a pen knife and flicked the blade out. "We should do it."

She grabbed my hand. "Okay first of all, why the hell do you have a pocket knife?" She asked.

"I was a scout." I answered puffing out my chest.

"Bullshit." She scoffed.

"It's true." I said. "Granddad insisted."

She burst out laughing and hugged me.

"Are you done?" I asked when she finally got control over herself.

"I think so. Don't carve our initials in the tree. It will doom us."

I rolled my eyes. "How will it doom us?"

She waved her hand over the tree. "How many of these people who were so in love they had to deface this tree do you think are actually still together?"

She did have a point there. Probably none of them. I'd be surprised if it was over 1%. I put my knife on the tree and carved a heart.

"I said don't." She whined.

"Just trust me will you."

I carved the word 'me' then a plus sign and then the word 'you'.

"See now no matter what it will be true. There will always be a me and you."

She grabbed at her chest like she was having a heart attack. "That was so fucking saccharine I feel like I developed diabetes."

"Thank you." I said kissing her forehead.

"Which one is me and which one is you." She asked.

"Well obviously I'm me. And you're you."

She scoffed. "I don't think so, pal. I'm me I think you'll find."

We went and had dinner at a courtyard restaurant. All mood music and candle lighting. It was late when we got home and I headed straight to the bench outside her apartment.

She grabbed my arm and pulled me up. "Not yet, I want to be in complete control of my senses for what happens now."

"What happens now?" I asked.

She raised her eyebrow.

I'd like to say we made love that night. She'd been without sex for over three years though, and she came at me like a hell cat. There was a lot of throwing each other up against walls and scratching. I had to pin her hands over her head at one point to give my back a break. She didn't complain.

I'd also like to say I lasted a really long time and made sure she was thoroughly satisfied. I had been without for nine months, and I pretty much shot my load as soon as I was inside her. I'm not an asshole though. I made sure she got there with some aggressive fingering.

We lay together sweaty and panting. She curled up against me. No one had ever done that before and had me actually pleased about it. I wrapped my arm around her running my fingers up and down her side.

"Give me about twenty minutes and I might be able to go again." I said. "Do it properly."

She laughed. "It's fine. We should revel in our successful coupling."

I burst out laughing. "What. The. Fuck?"

She started giggling too. "I don't know. I was trying to be poetic. Fuck off."

"Leave the poetry to the experts." I kissed her forehead. "You wanna go outside and smoke?"

"Not tonight. I don't think I need it." She said snuggling against me. "Will you stay?"

"I'd never leave if I could avoid it." I said.

And I didn't. That's the end of the story. We're those people now. The people who you see who are just comfortable in their relationships. The ones who don't need to boast about it but you just know are happy and in love.

I didn't officially move in with her right away, but my place became storage for my things. I only ever went there to get stuff when I needed it. After a year we bought a house together. It was a three bedroom, adobe thing a block from the beach that had a small office I could do my writing in. Although I tend to like to just bring my macbook out and do it around all the noise of my family.

My first novel made it into the New York Times best seller list. Not for long, but it got there. It was optioned for a movie. My book contract was extended. The second novel hit the best seller list immediately on release. I still don't know what to do with that kind of success and I've written seven novels now.

Carrie and Chrissie started calling me dad a little after the four year anniversary of us meeting. It didn't scare me one bit. By then I was already telling people they were my kids. A year after that I adopted them. They still have their dad's last name. He was a good man. They should have that. It just means now if something were to happen to her, they'd stay with me. That does scare me, but just because I can't imagine my life without her in it.

We never got married. I don't think that's us really. We've talked about it. It's just not something either of us need.

We're now expecting our own kid. Just one thank fuck. But they're on their way, and I'm excited.

I guess what I learned was that love is lots of things. It passion and romance and declarations. It's also patience and kindness and selflessness. Selflessness most of all. It's not making a stranger cheat with you and then going to break up her wedding. It's holding your best friend's child when they're sick because they need that help. It's cooking for them because you know if you don't their anxiety will take control of them. It's all those little things that just make you glad you have that person in your life.

It's funny how life can end up so far from what you expected from it. I thought I'd end up dying alone face down in a pool. I had no love to give, I didn't expect to have it given to me.

Now I just feel love.