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After we off-loaded our luggage, we left Woofarine in his crate and went into town. We got books at the small bookstore, checked out the boutiques, went to dinner. I sang him happy birthday over a slice of chocolate cake with a candle in it.

Later, after we’d taken a bubble bath and tried out the bed, we lay naked, tangled together under the comforter, the rain pounding on the roof. We’d lit the lemongrass candle we got at one of the boutiques we stopped at, and it flickered, casting a warm light against the wall. Chris was kissing me softly and everything felt still and calm and perfect.

There’s something about going on a trip with someone. Seeing how the love exists everywhere, that it’s something you carry wherever you go and not just the product of the world it was created in. Going grocery shopping together in a store you’ve never been to, figuring out what new place you want to eat at, discovering everything together and it all feels different and new except for them. They’re the constant. The safe space.

“I almost woke you up last night,” I said, drawing lazy circles on his bare chest.

He tucked an arm behind his head. “Why didn’t you?”

“I didn’t want to wake you, but I also didn’t want you to be asleep anymore. Remember on that walk you showed me your water bottle?”

“Yeah.”

“I saw your stomach,” I said. “I liked it.”

“You saw everything that day. I took my shirt off.”

“Yeah, but that felt like I wasn’t supposed to see it,” I said.

He smiled with his eyes closed. “The first week you lived with me, you were reaching for a glass in the cupboard and your shorts rode up.”

I gasped playfully. “And you looked?”

“I couldn’t help it.”

“Hmm,” I said. “I did it on purpose…”

I felt the laugh rumble in his chest.

“Did you think about it later?” I asked.

“More than once, actually.”

“I used to smell your clothes when you weren’t home,” I said.

“I knew that.”

I drew my brows down. “How?”

“They weren’t exactly where I left them?”

I put my ear to his heart and closed my eyes.

“I liked how your hoodie smelled,” I said, remembering. “And that shirt you gave me on that walk.”

“You can have it if you want.”

“The shirt? Or the hoodie?”

“Both,” he said. “You can have anything of mine.”

I smiled. “You want to give me things? More than you already are?”

“I want to give you everything. I want to give you something that never ends,” he said, tucking my hair gently behind my ear. “A book series you’re obsessed with that has a hundred volumes. A song you never get tired of hearing on loop, a favorite meal you never get sick of eating. A love that never fades. Someone you can’t wait to get home to, every day for the rest of your life. Something eternal.”

“I think you’ve already given me something eternal.”

I grinned up at him and he opened his eyes.