It’s nights like tonight, when I drink and hear the problems of my friends that I’m thankful for you.  Tonight I remembered our beginning, how I loved you and knew, the way I hear my friends now say they know.  And the excitement behind those words, when you know you’ve met someone you cannot wait to see again.  Seeing a missed call from him, a text message, anything, and you smile to yourself.  Everyone can see it on you.  It’s better than losing ten pounds.  It’s giddy love.  And I remember ours. 

It was the morning after I finally slept with you.  We’d been out on nineteen dates before we slept together. I knew what we were, and it felt very much like love.  You held my hand in the street.  I walked closer to you and didn’t want to let go.  We had breakfast. And the weird dude working there, the dude with the sideburn chops, got it all wrong.  Forgot something.  I didn’t care.  I loved being across from you at the table.  I didn’t want to let go.

The night we began to try to have sex, I couldn’t believe it was finally going to happen.  It felt like I was about to have sex with my best friend.  “Oh my God,” I said, “this feels like a one night stand because you feel like such a stranger.”  The sex in you was a stranger to me.  I didn’t know that part of you, so it seemed so foreign to me, like I was cheating on you with you.  You’d never touched me like that before.  It felt too right. 

The next day, you helped me brainstorm book cover ideas.  You took me to your dust collector dealer.  The Asian lady in the flower district who sold you silk flowers.  Then we bought a bag of dirt together because I would bury a wedding band at the bottom of a martini glass.  Then I’d fill it with dirt.  "A dirty martini," I said.  "Yeah, I get it," you said, the way you still do now.  "But I’m going to have to show something growing from it.  Something to show a new beginning," I had said.  You just squeezed my hand and offered me the dirt.  I knew I loved you then.  You tucked me into a cab and put the bag of soil in after me.  I felt taken care of and hated not knowing when I’d see you again.  I don’t remember if I saw you later that night, only that I hated the idea of leaving.  I turned to watch you growing smaller through my cab window. 

It amazes me how much has changed since then, how I forget in our fights that I really wanted you.  That you are the dirt-bag guy I fell in love with. That I am so lucky we’ve found each other.  I never want to lose that, that way we fell in love over stories and wine and food and bars.  Not quite kissing you.  Loving to kiss you.  Falling in love with you everyday is what I want.  Hearing my friends tell me about the new guy they’re dating, how excited they are, I smile to myself, thinking, “I’ve got it the best.”  Carly would be proud.