When I first met you—you with your tight lips, tense jaw and green velvet jacket—I wasn’t sure.

Not about you, I mean.

I wasn’t sure about me. I wasn’t sure what I would do with someone as smart as you. Someone as grown up. All I’d ever known was men who needed baby-sitters for girlfriends.

Then along came you.

Successful and independent with this fine-tuned sense of self. You knew who you were, and you weren’t afraid to share it with anyone. With everyone.

Not even an hour into our in-person meeting and you raised your white linen shirt above that pink rhinestone-studded belt of yours to reveal half a torso covered in tattoos and scars. Your own demons inked across your skin. Your pain made into a painting. You made no excuses or apologies for any of it.

I wanted to press my lips to them. The ribs. The scars. The darkest parts of you. I had no excuses or apologies to offer you either.

You could afford to buy me all the Jack and Coke I’d ever drink that night, but you didn’t mind if I needed to pay for a few rounds on my own. You let me be me.

I asked question after question after question. I fought for a smile. Then pushed for a laugh.

I ended up with your hand wrapped around the nape of my neck as you held me against a wall in your bedroom and kissed me in a way that felt like an entirely foreign experience—like a complete revelation.

I knew then. Even then. I never had a chance.

I lost myself in the feeling of you. The candle-lit darkness of your downtown apartment. The swirling of alcohol in my head. The melodic urging of “The Discussion,” a playlist we curated over text messages before we even met. I lost myself in the falling for you.

Because fuck it if it was too soon. And fuck it if you told me not to.

I wasn’t going to not love you. I wasn’t going to deny myself that kind of pleasure. The once-in-a-lifetime kind.

So love you I did. And incredulously, you loved me too.

Two years later and I still struggle to believe this reality is my own. Some days I’m so happy that I can’t help but expect something horrible will happen to one or both of us at any minute. Because that must be what comes next when you get everything you want. Some days I panic about not being present in every moment with you. That’s how happy you make me. So much that it actually stresses me out. And then you’ll sneak up behind me while I’m getting ready for work and kiss the back of my neck, and I swear to God my knees give out and I fall from the very top of our love all over again.

Last November, when you proposed to me—me with my unwashed hair, sloppy cream sweater, and oblivious laughter—I wasn’t sure.

Not about us, I mean.

I wasn’t sure how I would ever repay you for making me the happiest human that’s ever existed.

I still don’t know how I’m going to do it. But I’m so grateful you’ve given me this lifetime to figure it out.