Nothing to Everything (Roommate for Roommate Book 1)

by Maia Aaron

“But I’ll do anything and everything for you. I’ll go wherever you go. I’ll listen to every Taylor Swift song and read every romance book you read to ensure we always have something to talk about. I’ll give you flowers every day so that you’re never left without them. I’ll work hard every day to make sure I deserve you because you deserve nothing but the best in the whole goddamn world.”

I’ve got the most riveting thing in the world back home, and she’s currently in our bedroom getting all dressed up to look even more stunning than she already does so we can celebrate three years of our life together, and that? Well, that sounds like a pretty damn spectacular life to me.

“Doesn’t matter. I’ve got the most wonderful girl in the world, and I’ll be damned if I ever stop trying to sweep you off your feet. I don’t care if we’re seventy and living together at a nursing home. I’ll still come knocking at your room door, bouquet of flowers in hand, just to take you to play bingo in the recreational room.”

“You look like something indescribable. You look…you look Wendy.” She sputters out a laugh, tilting her head. “I look ‘Wendy’?” I nod. “What does that even mean? I look like myself?” “No,.“ I shake my head. “It means you’re a kind of beautiful that belongs only to you. One of a kind. Nothing in this world is more perfect than you are, and it’s a crime to use words that people use all the time to describe you, because there’s nothing like you.”

“F.H. and W…W.H?” She pauses, the confusion clear in her voice. “Fitz, what—” But she doesn’t get to finish the question, because she stops in her tracks when her eyes land on me, now on one knee, a velvet box in my hand.

“Wendy…I love you. I love you so much it hurts, but in the best way. I want to build a home with you. A life with you. I want to live with you and die with you and be buried with you.” I pause, smiling up at her tearfully. “I want to give you ten children. I want a home with you because you’re my home. I want a life with you because you are my life. Without you, Wendy, there’s nothing. I’m nothing. You make up all the good parts of me, and without you, I’m just a man.”

“But you, baby, you make me everything. You make me a man who’s worthy. A man who loves and dreams and hopes. A man who can get through anything if it means seeing you on the other side. You’re my whole entire world, and no matter how long I spend here, on one knee, telling you words that hold only a semblance of the way I feel about you, it will never be enough. I’ll never be able to tell or show you just how much I love you. But maybe, maybe, if you give me a lifetime and whatever there is after it, I can try.”

I may have had nothing for the first twenty years of my life, but if there’s anything I’ve learned in the last ten years, it’s that anyone can take the nothing that they have and build it into everything they’ve ever wanted.

And for that, I throw my head back again, my face pointed towards the sky, and I mouth the three words I’ve been carrying around with me for so long, because I’m finally ready to let them go. To let her go. I forgive you.