What do we do now?
Now we hide
Now we sneak kisses, make beautiful love in my shed at three in the morning.
Cook pretends he doesn't know and maybe he doesn't but I don't believe. He can tell.
The days slip by like my hand down her back and I'm sorry, but then again I'm ecstatic I can't believe that I get to hold her, feel her, get to reciprocate all that love bundled up inside her. And she is happy; her eyes sparkle like the sea at noon, crisp and sapphire. Her smile is wide and playful and lovely. Uneasily the three musketeers go back to our routine, as if nothing has changed, but everything has. We are the softer gentler three, all at once riled and soothed by her presence. She never comes alone, she is always with Pandora or Katie or Emily or Naomi, never alone. Cook never sighs or is wistful but I know, she knows, everyone knows. Never do I ask Cook again if it is OK if he will let us, he will never accept, and I know what its like to feel her deep in your heart like a rose, sometimes beautiful, soft and passionate sometimes hard, pricking and painful. So what do we do now? We go on, we tentatively reach for friendship that is just within our grasp. And love, love so much that our hearts nearly explode with the feeling, the joy. Once more I hear the words that I have been dying to hear since I first met her, first kissed her, first made love to her. I love you. Three simple words that cannot attempt to express all that we feel, all that we touch. But they merely admit that this feeling we're having, it is deep. Not playful. Not a game. Not a contest, but rather devotion. And she says them, to me. I l o v e y o u I l o v e y o u IloveyouIloveyou. And we say them so much that they run together and fill the world I love her and me and us and life that's worth living worth moving forward and tripping over and experiencing. Together. At last.