a) At the risk of sounding like a mind-body dualist here, but I’m obsessed with you, Frances, in and out.
4) I will hold your hand and tell you to breathe whenever you need me to. Let’s remember that not everything in life is a variable to control and I get that that’s a scary thought, but also: look where serendipity has brought us.
5) I promise I won’t push you away when things get tough. Whenever we let each other in about what went on in our minds, it was scary but it always turned out for the better. So how about, moving forward, I’ll make hot chocolate and we talk things through?
6) I will help you paint your walls and nail pictures into them wherever you live. Even if it’s a rental and for a limited time, I want you to feel at home wherever you are. I promise I’ll restore it back into original condition afterward.
7) I will continue asking you to explain to me everything I don’t know (and everything I do), be your safe place to land whenever your determination gets the better of you, and keep asking for all the nerdy jokes.
As I’m reading, Lewis leaves his place at the lectern and comes up the first few steps of the lecture theater. When he stops on the step below me, my pulse is close to tripping over itself from wonder.
“Related to point 3… May I?” he adds, gently touching the metal-wire frame on my temple.
I give him a small nod because I don’t trust my voice right now. A smile creases the corners of his eyes, and it warms me within my heart as he gently pulls my glasses off. When they’re clean, he returns them to me, then holds up his notepad. “I knew you’d have suggestions, so…”
I pull the pencil stub out of the spiral bind of the notepad and add to the list.
8) I will set boundaries in my life, so I get to keep all the things that I love in it, and that, first and foremost, includes you. I’m done pushing people away for the sake of my career.
9) I will not allow you to cut off your hair, ever, but I will give you back your favorite T-shirt if you let me steal other ones.
10) I will engage with you in scientific discussions for as long as you want, but I will also ask you to tell me about yourfeelings when I know that you’re deflecting. I’m here to take care of you, too, Lewis, so let me make the hot chocolate sometimes.
11) I will help you shorten your abstracts and let you use the wrong emojis because these are things you really don’t need revisions for. They make you the way you are and that’s a good thing.
12) But I also promise to encourage and support you when you need to make changes. Sometimes things need to get hard before they get better, and I will stand beside you while you figure out your relationship with Ben. I will hear you out so we can solve complex situations together. Caring for someone is communicating with them and finding the best way forward as a team, and I promise to make you all the grilled cheese sandwiches so we get there together.
13) I promise to pay attention to you every day and tell you all the ways in which you are enough.
a) Just to name a few right now: your curiosity, attention to detail, that grumbling laugh.
b) Also, that move of your hand.
I hand Lewis the list. Although I saw him reading it upside down as I was writing, he goes through it once again, eyes sharp with focus. He nods as he reads through each item, his cautious smile burrowing deeper.
“Can I?” he asks then, waiting until I hand him the pencil.
“Um. Sure.”
Lewis draws a14)at the bottom of my list. He tilts up thepage so I can’t see what he writes, and I push up onto my toes to get a glimpse, but it’s only when he finally hands me the note that I get to read his words.
14) I promise to tell you every day that I love you.
“Starting with now,” Lewis says. As he takes me in with an infinitely tender expression, he pauses his gaze like each part of me is something precious, Eyes, cheeks, lips, jaw, the frame of my glasses, and back to my eyes again.
“Ich liebe dich,” he whispers. “I love you.”
My heart balloons and this time, I let it fly.
