Wednesday, May 1, 2013

Love Story Part 3

I knew what he said but I wanted to hear him say it..."I really like you."  He wouldn't repeat it, he refused. But I knew exactly what he said and that was enough. That was all I needed.

We had an amazing rest of the day and a wonderful dinner just the two of us. Our entire drive home was different. Things changed.  Our conversations were lighter, it was more heartfelt, it was more invested.  Something changed on the slopes that day and I have no idea what it was.  We parted ways that night and as I was getting ready for bed a flood of text messages came in to my phone. I was reading words from BW that I only dreamed of hearing, he said things you'd only hear in a movie... his tone changed, he changed. This was the man I waited for..and it was worth every second.

Every day following we were on fast forward. I started spending a lot of time at his apartment and I spent a lot of time making sure he was happy. His laundry was always done, I cooked for him and I cleaned. There was nothing I was trying to prove to him, but I wanted him to know that he meant the world to me and I wanted to take care of him. I wanted to show him that I was invested, and I hoped he was too. We started talking about living together, and began spending our weekends apartment hunting. We also planned a trip to Florida to visit his Mom.  Like I said, we were on fast forward...like when you hit the button twice.

We drove down to Florida to visit his Mom in March and it was an amazing opportunity to get to know each other better as we had 10 hours in the car together. We laugh when we think back about how we didn't listen to the radio the entire 10 hours because we talked THAT much.  He's a talker....I'm a storyteller. In case you didn't know.  We had awesome days on the beach, got to spend time with his Mom and brother, and drank way too many frozen drinks.  We spent a day at Panama beach and started obsessing over the idea of getting a tattoo. I already had a few, and was ready for another.  Wanting tattoos turned in to wanting tattoos that were related to one another and that turned in to wanting matching tattoos.  Like, identical. I could count on two fingers the number of months we had been officially dating but getting matching tattoos seemed 100% reasonable. Hell, it sounded perfect. Where do I sign? The tattoos were done, we went to dinner, and joked with each other about how we were now bonded for life. What in GODS name had I just done?

We got home from Florida and began our apartment search. We spent our weekends driving with the top down (cue Ludacris) looking for our perfect first home. In May we finally settled on a place to live but it was a long process before we actually moved in together. BW had to leave for two week for the Army. I was left to do a lot of it alone, and spent several days cleaning, packing and moving our stuff to our new home.

BW spent a day painting our bedroom while I was at work. We disagreed on the color for weeks. He hated the color I picked, and was determined to convinced me otherwise.  He agreed to paint them the dark purple that I wanted and I couldn't wait to get home from work to see the progress. I came home to a freshly painted purple bedroom that looked great. He had worked so hard all day so I figured I'd treat him to dinner. There aren't many restaurants around where we live so we always find ourselves at this quaint Italian restaurant up the road.

We had a nice dinner together and came back to our home to spend our first night.  I sat on the couch exhausted from my day when BW came over, kneeled between my legs and put his head on my lap.  He started rambling about something that I was half listening to but my attention was grabbed when I heard him say, "I don't ever want to live without you."  I laughed, and told him that's ridiculous, we have tattoos, we are never living without each other.  He told me that he had something for me, and when he went to dig in his pocket, fumbling around a few times, I had no clue what was about to happen.  He opened the box and he asked me to be his wife. 

And just like every other girl, I screamed "DID YOU ASK MY DAD???"

I almost re-wrote the title, "Love Story the Final Chapter." But I couldn't, it didn't sound right. This story is only a small chapter in my book. We will see other deployments, we will have more babies, we will go through ups and downs so the book will have more pages.  The chapter that followed this one has been one of the hardest.

As I type the last part of this love story, in this exact moment, my husband is stepping on to a plane that will bring him home to me.  I don't know what it will say, and I don't know what it'll be called, but I can not wait to read that next chapter.



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