Truly, Madly, Deeply

by Alexandria Bellefleur

No one, and I mean no one, deserves to be living rent free inside your head if they aren’t making you come so hard your brain leaks out your ears.”

“Maybe I don’t want to play nicely with you.”

“When I come up with my characters, I think about what’s happened in their past to make them who they are. They have wounds that cause them to develop fears, and those fears lead to false beliefs. Misperceptions about who they are and the world around them and—and love. Obviously. Everything they do, every choice they make, it all comes back to that. What they want, what they’re willing to do to get it, their personality traits, the choices they make, even their jobs. Sometimes especially their job. And I don’t think we, as people, are any different.”

I’ve seen enough to know that sometimes letting someone go can be the greatest gesture of love a person can make.”

But peace doesn’t mean the absence of conflict.

Colin McCrory didn’t have to try to be cute. He just was.

Words were her thing, and Colin gave as good as he got.

Colin’s praise was like swallowing the sun. It left her hot all over, flushed not just in the face but from her hairline down to her feet, damp in the creases of her elbows and her knees, uncomfortably sweaty all over.

there’s no such thing as being queer enough. Action and attraction are two different things. You could go the rest of your life never dating a woman and it wouldn’t change a thing. If anything, I think you’re the perfect person to talk about bi-erasure in media because you spent the last six years in a straight-presenting relationship that was queer because you’re queer. And the gender of your partner? Doesn’t change that.”

“Because I like you. Because I like spending time with you. Because I’d like to spend more time with you.”

Truly (11:16 p.m.): Screw you, McCrory. Colin (11:16 p.m.): Promises, promises.

Taste, trace, mark. Want, take, have.

As much as she got a thrill from playing verbal tug-of-war, there was an argument to be made for this tenderness, in laying down her sword and letting Colin hold her.

With anyone else she might’ve considered the moment broken, but with him it just felt like turning to the next page in a book she’d never read. A book she’d left lingering on her nightstand for weeks, picking it up and putting it back down, her hopes for it so high she feared there was no earthly way the reality of it could live up to her expectations, too afraid she wouldn’t like the ending. She didn’t know what would happen next, but for the first time, the thought didn’t make her want to close the book and it didn’t make her want to flip ahead.

I do like you. I like your obscure facts and how your eyes light up when you talk about them, when you share them with me. I like it that you aren’t afraid to call me out on my bullshit and that for some reason that’s completely beyond me, you haven’t given up on me even though I’ve given you a hundred opportunities and a thousand reasons why. For some reason you like me and most of the time I’m not even sure why, but you do and I like that, too. I pretty much melt when you say my name, it sounds better when you say it, and when I’m with you, it’s easy to forget what I’m afraid of, but when I’m not, I guess I have a tendency to get in my head.”

“You’re also passionate and when you believe in something, you believe in it with your whole heart. And maybe”—the softest of shuddering sighs escaped him—“I’ve been looking for someone who believes in me like that.”

“We were sitting inside a coffee shop. There was no view.” “Sure there was.” He grinned and she already knew what was coming. “I was looking at you.”

“Someone wise once told me peace isn’t the absence of conflict. It’s about being able to have disagreements without being contemptuous or defensive and I’m pretty sure that requires both parties be on board.”

“You said it yourself; we’ve all got flaws. But the day I don’t want you is the day the earth starts rotating backward, okay?” “That’s a hell of a bold statement from a guy who’s known me two months.” “Remember this moment in twenty years. Can’t wait to tell you I told you so.”

Your daughter, she has one of the biggest hearts of anyone I’ve ever had the pleasure of knowing. And I think anyone would be lucky to be loved by her.”

Her brain did the equivalent of a keyboard smash, and she let out an undignified little “Hngh?” He chuckled under his breath. “Did I break you? Already?”

“I see, caffeine and kisses are the way to your heart in the morning. Good to know.”

Love launched ships and started wars and inspired sonnets and drove people to madness. Love was heaven and hell, sin and redemption. It was as real to her as any other force of nature, hurricanes and earthquakes and lightning storms and meteor strikes. It fascinated her as much as it terrified her as much as it humbled her and— She’d spent her whole life trying to put it into words, eighty thousand of them at a time. Love had to be enough. There was no point if it wasn’t.

“I happen to be wildly in love with you. Isn’t it obvious? You fucking own me, Truly,” he said, voice raw, rough with emotion.

“Because marriage is work, but it’s also play.”