“Is everything okay?” Aldo asked as she pulled him toward the far end of the parking lot. She found the spot in the gravel where her life had almost ended before it began and turned to face him and took a breath.

“More than okay,” she said, watching the worry ease from his handsome face. “Everything is perfect.”

“You’re going to freeze to death out here, Glo,” Aldo said, rubbing her arms with his hands.

“Nothing could freeze what’s inside of me tonight,” she told him. “You glued on a fake mustache and got on stage in tie-dye to support a friend. You didn’t care if you looked silly or if someone would make fun of you. You did it because you love your friend and you wanted him to be happy.”

“Also the mustache. I’m totally digging it.”

“I love how big your heart is, Aldo.”

His hands slowed their motion on her skin. His gaze turned serious. But she knew that he understood that she had things to say.

“You love so big, Aldo. And that’s what makes you strong. Your love makes me stronger and braver than I ever thought I could be.”

She looked down at the gravel under their feet. At the spot where it had begun…and ended. “This is where it all started. This exact spot where my life almost ended. And now I’m standing here with you, and everything is just beginning. I can see us years into the future. I can see babies and football and Sunday brunches and that damn cat. I can see college visits and Mediterranean cruises. Wrinkles and doctor appointments, retirement accounts. Quiet nights with nothing but your skin on mine. I see a life with you, Aldo. Not just the good pieces.”

He reached up and cupped her face in his hands.

“I’m going to spend the rest of my life loving you, trusting you, supporting you,” she promised. “And this, right here, is just the beginning.”

She kissed him. Softly, sweetly, with all of the hope and joy that threatened to burst free from the tetherings of her soul.

He held her like she was precious and strong and infinitely perfect. Kissed her like he’d never have enough. And together they loved bolder than pain, fiercer than history, and brighter than all the Christmas lights.

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Hmm, I wonder what Gloria and Aldo are doing seven or eight years in the future?

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