You and Me on Vacation

by Emily Henry

“I don’t regret telling you,” I say. “I said I’d give anything up, risk anything for you, and I meant it.” Even my own heart. “I love you all the way, Alex,” I say. “I couldn’t have lived with myself if I hadn’t at least told you.”

I think one more look at him might be the tipping point, the thing that breaks my heart forever, but he’s saying my name.

“And I want that so badly. I do regret every chance I missed to tell you how I felt, all the times I convinced myself I’d lose you if you really knew, or that we were too different. I want to just be happy with you. But I’m afraid of what comes after.” His voice cracks.

“I’m afraid of loving you for our entire lives, and then having to say goodbye. I’m afraid of you dying, and the world feeling useless. I’m afraid I won’t be able to keep getting out of bed if you’re gone, and if we had kids, they’d have these horrible lives where their amazing mom is gone, and their dad can’t look at them.”

“I never want to live without this,” he whispers, and I knot my fists into his shirt as if to keep him from slipping through my fingers.

We’re happy, and even when we’re not, it’s so much better than it was without him.

Tomorrow we will love each other a little more, and the next day, and the next day. And even on those days when one or both of us is having a hard time, we’ll be here, where we are completely known, completely accepted, by the person whose every side we love wholeheartedly. I’m here with all the versions of him I’ve met over twelve years of vacations, and even if the point of life isn’t just being happy, right now, I am. Down to the bones.