From Lukov with Love

by Mariana Zapata

He was argumentative, arrogant, blunt…. I’d just described myself, hadn’t I? Shit.

He’s lucky I promised Squirt I’d behave or I would’ve ripped him an asshole the size of my fist, and punched it.” If I wasn’t supposed to smile to that, I wasn’t sure how to make that happen.

Love to me was honesty. Being real. Knowing someone’s best and worst. Love was a push that said someone believed in you when you didn’t.

I loved him. I loved this man so much that losing him was going to break my cold, dead heart into so many pieces I was just going to have to stick them in the same box I kept my dreams and carry it around with me forever.

“I love you so much I spend all day with you, and it still isn’t enough for me,” he kept going. I stopped breathing. “I love you so much, if I can’t skate with you, I don’t want to skate with anyone else.” Holy. Fuck. “I love you so fucking much, Jasmine, that if I broke my ankle during a program, I would get up and finish it for you, to get you what you’ve always wanted.”

“You mean so much to me that that’s why whatever happens doesn’t really matter to me. Not like it used to. Not like it ever will again,”

“Because I’m okay with you having ten other people be your favorite. But you’re always going to be my favorite person,” he finished. “Always. No matter what.”

Everything he had said to me, I felt the exact same way about, except I would have skated with someone else if he’d truly wanted to go back to his old partner, but I would have done it as a tribute to him, for all the ways he had changed me and my life.