To Fernando,
When your fingers danced across my shoulder and glided up my neck, finally finding strength to grasp my chin gently and pull it upwards, that is the moment I first fell in love. Our eyes had met in that second and all previous infatuation I may have had for your physique, armor, or personality vanished until all I could see were those eyes. Blue as an ocean with the sun shining so brilliantly that it couldn't help but sparkle, demanding the attention of all who gaze upon it. I know I could not look away, in that moment, held in your eyes, I couldn't imagine anything in the room other than you and I. My heart had stopped when your eyes met mine but started again in a furious stampede as you leaned your head towards mine. Our eyes stayed connected, and I knew soon much more of us would be joined together.
At the first sensation of skin against skin time as I knew it stopped. I could have stayed standing, with your lips to mine for an eternity without noticing anything but the connection. At first like a small buzzing, numb and tingling all at once. Then the feeling spread throughout my body until that small kiss ignited my whole self on fire ablaze with something unrecognizable to me in that moment.
Love. I had never experienced it in quite that manner before that day. Before you.
It didn't last. It couldn't. That passion, that fervor, that unquenchable thirst for each other was my demise, and you were smart enough to see what I could not. Where I saw love, you saw nothing but a physical attraction. Where I saw emotions and a future, you saw nothing but the pressing of one body to another. And so, it ended. As fast as it began, with just as much shock and yet compliance on my part. I always was someone you knew how to shape and mold into what you wanted from me. You absorbed my love and left me, never looking back. What pain! What agony! And yet I craved it again. I craved love, emotion, security and comfort in the arms of another, despite the heartbreak you put me through. Love, like a drug had given me a taste, and I was addicted.
But to my surprise, not all love was like you. Love was not always a hurricane: fierce and passionate, destruction in its wake.
Love could be the sun: warm and brilliant, comfort and security. I learned that from Torvald with his comforting words and protective shielding. He was like a father to me, consoling and protecting.
Love could be a cloud: soft and delicate. Light and airy. Uncommitted, and free and spontaneous. That was given to me from my dearest friend Evie. She put the pieces back together after you. She made me laugh, let me cry, and dragged me into shenanigans with her and Maeve until I felt a part of something bigger than myself.
But the love I enjoyed most was the rain. Sometimes fierce and sometimes a simple drizzle, sometimes cold and sometimes humid. I gained something I never thought I would from Lex. My favorite love was an ever-changing presence. It was love though all the changes, and yet while I thought we shaped it, it was shaping us. Making us into people that were better and stronger. Kinder and wiser. Content and happy. My rainy lover would never give me a passionate kiss upon our first acquaintance, nor would he take me on a whirlwind adventure ending with a broken heart and a door he never walked through except to leave. My rainy lover was walking in the park, talking over lunch, chicken soup with a cold or a glass of lemonade in summer. My rainy lover was not the first lover I ever had, but he was the last. He didn't introduce me to love, but he showed me what true love really is. He didn't give me a passion that swayed from love to anger in the blink of an eye, but he demonstrated a love that remained there through all trials and struggles, good times and bad.
I used to think that you were the only love that mattered. Now I know that our love never mattered to you, but I found someone it does matter to. I'm taking back the piece of my heart that I gave to you all those years ago, the piece that I've never tried to pry from the memory of you. That piece of my heart has a new owner now. It is reunited with the rest of my heart in the arms of my rainy lover. Whoever said hurricanes and rain were similar was wrong. You may bring rain, but you also bring destruction. With his rain, he brings life. And he's sharing that life with me.
Lex may not be a front line, but he's protected me since the day we met. He is my shield; he is my knight; he is my love.