Jake
I was crazy in love with her. Mind-blowing, crazy, all-consuming in love with her. And she was so easy to fall in love with because she was beautiful and sexy, and funny, and I couldn’t get enough of her.
In all the chaos of playing for a new team and training hard for a conference win, she was my sanity. My ground. The days I came home to find her sitting on the porch reading, or napping in my bed, or in the kitchen attempting to make some kind of edible meal, were the happiest days of my life. I would scoop her up in my arms and spend the next few hours slowly making love to her until we were both spent.
It was an incredible time. Everything was so new. Our relationship. My job. Where I lived. And best of all, I got to do it all with her. Together we explored Galveston and I began to fall in love with the island where everyone was so warm and welcoming. We lost hours exploring the nineteenth-century charm of historic, downtown Galveston, sightseeing and drinking in the sunshine and activity around the bustling seaport, and the different bars and restaurants that peppered the eclectic town. And it was easy to be seduced by the lazy, calmness of living on an island where it took you no more than twenty minutes to get anywhere you wanted to go. It was a stark change from New York.
We traveled all over the country together and man, I can’t tell you how good it felt knowing she was right by my side.
And at the end of the season when we placed fourth on the leader board and secured our wild card entry into the Western conference campaign, there was no-one else I wanted by my side.
When she was gone I missed her. Like my right arm. But then she’d fly in and when I’d pick her up from the airport she’d run toward me and leap into my arms, and wrap her legs around my hips as we kissed like we were absolutely thirsty for each other. And I was thirsty for her. Always. When we were apart I longed for her. When I was training, I was counting the time until I was with her and could do all the things to her that my body begged me to do.
It was also a magical time of getting to know her body. A time of learning what she liked. Of what made her moan that long, drawn-out moan of hers as she writhed and came undone in my bed. We spent hours exploring one another’s bodies in the shadow and light of my bedroom. Touching. Licking. Caressing. Discovering. It was an incredible time. One that filled me with a vibrant happiness that I didn’t even know existed before her. We would make love and she would evoke things in me, make me feel things I had never imagined, make me hope for things that I had given up wanting or believing in when my life had taken its downward spiral. She made me want to breathe again.
She was my everything.
I knew she loved me and I longed to tell her that I felt the same way. But I had never traveled down that path before, had never said those three words to a woman before, and I had no idea how to say them.
Until one night.
It was at the magnificent Galveston Festival of Lights that I turned to my amazing girlfriend and finally told her that I was in love with her.
We had just brought ice creams and were strolling hand in hand through the resplendent forest of lights when I stopped walking. Mackenzie swung around, her ice cream paused mid-lick as she looked at me questioningly. “Everything okay?”
Standing there, in the glow of more than a million lights she looked like an angel. A beautiful, mesmerizing angel I now knew I couldn’t live without. My heart swelled in my chest.
“I love you,” I said. As simple as that.
Mackenzie looked at me with surprise. “What?”
I didn’t move. “I love you.” And I meant it with every atom of my being. I shook my head as if I couldn’t quite believe it. “I’m so in love with you, Z.”
A slow smile spread across her beautiful face, and light from overhanging light-icicles bounced off her incredible lips as she closed the space between us.
“You love me?” She looked up at me, her dimples deep in her cheeks on either side of her lovely mouth.
I slid my arm around her waist. “Baby, I’m so crazy in love with you I can barely think straight.”
She bounced up on her toes to kiss me and I pulled her up into my arms and kissed her hard. Her ice cream toppled to the ground and we both turned to see it splatter across the concrete. When she turned back to me she stared into my eyes.
“I love you, too, Jake. More than I could ever show you.”
We made our way along a pathway paved in fairy lights and animated light displays, and in my room back in the house on Seawall Boulevard, I made love to her long and slow, savouring every inch of her, relishing every touch of her skin against my skin, every touch of her tongue on mine. It was so damn magical I felt swept away by all the sensations.
As she lay in my arms afterwards, I felt an overwhelming feeling of joy in my chest. Despite the cold weather outside, sweat beaded on her forehead from our lovemaking.
“I never thanked you,” I said, wiping a lock of her blonde hair from her eyes.
“Thanked me for what?”
As I gazed down at her I tried to make sense of all the new emotions coursing through me. My emotions were running deep tonight. “For giving me a reason to breathe.”
Lines creased her brow. “You didn’t need me to do that, Jake.”
I looked down at her beautiful face.
“That’s the thing, Z,” I replied. “I did.”
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