It’s a kind of magic, what Ash does for me, and it makes everything that came before seem irrelevant, so long ago, as if it were only half a life, a preparation for her.

Even my dad can’t get to me anymore. He calls me from a payphone in Arizona, and I almost don’t recognize him for the fragility and humility in his voice. Even more so when I tell him about me and Ash. He doesn’t say much, and I can tell he wants to ask for help but doesn’t know how. Once we get off the phone I tell Ash, and she somehow convinces me to try and help him, repeating my own words back to me, you can’t fix your parents, and at some point you’ve just got to accept them.

Before she even starts moving her things over, Ash has me painting the house with her, turning the anonymous grey siding different shades of duck blue, mint green, and pastel red. Then, after a lot of cute begging, I finally give in and allow her to convince me to put my artistic talent to good use and paint a couple of murals. Moonlit trees against one wall of the bedroom, a watercolor landscape in the breakfast nook, a flock of birds in the bathroom.

The place starts to fill up as she brings over her stuff, and buys plenty more. Furniture and ornaments, newer, more stylish appliances for the kitchen and lounge chairs in the yard. For a while I freak out a little, start getting uncomfortable, as if the place isn’t mine anymore, as if a place this alive and stimulating couldn’t possibly be my own. Then Ash does something amazing.

It’s an off-hand suggestion. One I made while we were drifting away in bed, to the smell of paint and freshly bought flowers, the moon visible beyond the windows at the foot of the bed, beyond our heavy eyelids. I’d always wanted my own place to make art.

When I get home from work at the end of the week, the spare room has been transformed into an art studio. I’d almost forgotten the spare room—a locked door I never opened. But it’s perfect, with those big windows facing the Pacific Ocean. Ash covers my eyes and leads me there, pulling her hands away so I can take in the canvases against the wall, the work bench stacked with paints and brushes. A chaise-lounge for portraits, stools and stands. She even got Ginger and Kayla in on it, to come and help tear up the carpet and put hard flooring down, with shelves along the walls for any other art supplies I want to add to the mix. I make love to her right then, up against the window, unable to express how much it means to me in words alone.

But it’s not just the objects and colors—it’s as if the place has a soul now. The record player always turning, spilling our favorite music through every room, the smell of pasta sauce simmering in the kitchen, and more than anything, the sound of other people stopping in, of family coming over to visit. Jenny starts dropping by for brunch on the weekends—bringing Eli with her every once in a while. Barbecues with Kayla, talking about how she’s finally planning to go back to Seattle and start her own tattoo shop, where Ginger and I finally build Duke that kennel in the yard, taking way longer than we should over it because it’s kinda fun. Isabel crashes when she’s in L.A. for a weekend and plays some songs as Ash and I watch from the couch. It’s almost perfect.

Almost…but there’s still one thing we need to get around to.

“You ready?” I say, taking Ash’s hand as I get off the bike and lead her through the back door of Mandala.

“No,” she says. “I think waiting so long’s just made me more nervous.”

We move through the shop to the chairs and I turn to the table to get my equipment ready.

“What do I do?” Ash asks, as she settles in one of the chairs.

“Take your shirt off and try to relax,” I say, then look back over my shoulder. “I can help with the shirt if you’d like.”

Ash laughs.

“I can manage.”

Gloves on, everything ready, I move the wheeled stool beside her and start preparing her arm. I glance up and find her looking at me with a little trepidation in her eyes, and surprise her by darting in for a kiss. Then I begin.

Ash and I have spent hours talking it over, and this time, this is what we’ve come up with: A blooming purple nightshade. Her mother’s favorite flower—the one her garden had always been full of, the kind Ash would help her plant, the kind Ash still plants wherever she lives to remind her of her mother.

After completing the outline, the familiar soothing buzz of the needle cutting through the tracks of Ash’s favorite album set up on my mp3 player, I take a break to let her see my work and to ask how she’s feeling.

“It’s looks amazing,” she says, settling a little. “And I’m fine. Go on.”

“Just tell me if you start getting uncomfortable.”

She looks up at the ceiling again and I continue, filling in the details, finalizing lines, taking my time over the shading.

“You know,” she says, when I’m pretty much done, adding a few last touches to set it off just right, “I didn’t realize getting a tattoo was so intimate.”

I laugh gently. Moving my head back to look at the tattoo and see if it needs anything else.

“Uh-huh. You’ve got to trust someone completely.”

“And I do,” she says.

I kiss her slow and deep, then pull away and gesture to her arm. “You’re done.”

Comfortable enough to take her eyes from the ceiling now and look at the finished tattoo, adjusting her arm as I clean up my equipment and look for the ointment. She casts a smile in my direction and says, “Is that why you like them? You like feeling that trust?”

I lean back to her arm, dabbing a little. She hisses through her teeth gently.

“Not really.”

“What is it then?” she asks.

I take off my gloves and look at her directly.

“I’ve thought about that a lot. It’s the permanence. I think…you get a tattoo and it lasts forever. A single moment in time—a decision, a memory or a feeling, or some version of who you are or what you stand for—and you make it something eternal. You force yourself to live with it, to see it when you look in the mirror, to stick to you like a shadow.” Ash smiles at me, and the air between us seems to cloud, dream-like and ethereal.

“Humans…there’s not much about us that’s permanent, you know? We break promises, we change our minds, life throws you curveballs... So the idea of taking something, something you weren’t born with, an expression of yourself, something or someone you love, a decision you made, and turning it into something that endures…I think that’s rare. Unique. Something only tattoos really do…”

She’s glowing now, face soft as if exposing herself, a tenderness in both of us connecting. I reach into my pocket for the small box I’ve carried around for days.

“Well,” I say, getting up off the stool and down on one knee in front of the chair, “tattoos, and maybe one other thing.”

Ash gasps and sits upright on the end of the chair now, hands covering her mouth, eyes wide.

“Marry me, Ash. I want to make this happiness as permanent as anything. I want you in my life for eternity.”

I flip the box open, revealing the white gold custom ring I designed, inset with a halo of diamonds surrounding the shiniest, most light-catching version of her birthstone I could find in the city.

She lets out an involuntary sob behind her hands, then shrieks a ‘yes,’ and leaps off the chair at me. I stand up just enough to catch her embrace.

“Ow!” she wails, remembering the tattoo, then laughs.

“You ok?”

“Yeah,” she says, voice still wavering with shock.

I take her hand and slowly slide the ring onto her finger as she watches in wonder.

“Always a little pain at the start of something beautiful,” I say, and she raises her eyes from the ring to my face.

We kiss, and it feels as good as the first time, as good as any other, as good as it’ll be until we’re old together. A kind of perfection that was meant to be, that even the universe seems to want.

Me and Ash. A love so strong nothing could tear it apart. Not the mistakes I made, not the years we spent apart, the parents who didn’t want us together, or the fact that we came from different sides of the tracks. All of it just obstacles, just a bumpy road that was always going to lead us here.

Us against the world.