I roll that around in my head for a minute, trying to imagine them as friends. The things they would talk about. It’s hard to draw even a couple of parallels between them. But maybe I’m misjudging her. Maybe she’s different in real life than the persona she portrays online. She wouldn’t be the first.

“So you...you really think she’ll talk to him for me?” I ask.

“I’m sure she won’t mind. I’ll hit her up later.”

I can’t help but smile, a real, flash-my-teeth kind of smile. “Thanks, babe. You always have my back.”

He tilts his head down at me as if I should know better by now. “Get out of here with that. You know you don’t have to thank me.”

Nate kisses my forehead and I look up, then kiss his lips. I want to tell him I love him, how much I appreciate having him in my life, how I can’t imagine my world without him.

I don’t remember exactly when things got serious between us. It was...intense right from the start. We’d only known each other for a little over a month when Nate left New York for a few weeks. I didn’t think it would be a big deal. I thought in the time we’d be apart, I could finally be objective and find something wrong with him. An annoying habit that I just couldn’t deal with. A tic of some sort. Some fatal flaw. But no. I just missed him. His perpetually hoarse voice. His easy smile. His hand in my hair. Everything. Not just being with another person, being with him. That’s when I knew he was different. This was different.

It makes sense that we met at an airport since Nate’s always on a plane, and I’m always thinking about leaving, going somewhere new. I had a summer job at JFK then. Nate was flying out to California and came up to me asking about his flight, why it was delayed. He wasn’t trying to pick me up. There were no cheesy lines. No forced, awkward laughter. We ended up talking for hours while he waited for his flight. It felt more like a conversation with an old friend than a stranger. There was something so disarming about how immediately familiar he felt that I inadvertently told him about my misophonia and my IBS. He didn’t think I was weird, just laughed at each idiosyncrasy I shamelessly hurled at him, and that was when I knew I could fall in love with him.

The words sit like lead in my throat. I love you.