Obvious disclaimer: I don't own Even Stevens. Nope.
"You ready?" Louis asked with a smile as he stood at the doorway.
"Yes, my love." Tawny walked up and gave Louis a kiss. They joined hands and headed out of their modest Bay Area apartment. Today was the day they would head back to Sacramento to attend their tenth high school reunion and then celebrate their fifth anniversary – modestly, as they liked it, amongst their families. They had gone back to Sacramento now and then, of course, but this time, they knew it would be different. They would be traveling back to their past, not only to celebrate it and revisit it for its own sake, but also to celebrate their present in the place where it had all begun. They would be traveling back to a past that seemed so distant, but that they knew they ultimately owed the happiness of their present to.
Tawny had completed her PhD in comparative literature the year before and landed a tenure-track position as an assistant professor. Of course, she wasn't just the literary scholar and critic, though she had become a formidable one at that. She was the public intellectual, with her current affairs commentary making it into numerous periodicals; she was the standout polyglot, who had begun freelance translating in grad school; she was still the tireless political activist, who had been active in Occupy Oakland and was still a fixture at local rallies. And, of course, she was Louis's loving wife, who never failed to make time for him and leave him in no doubt that, in the midst of everything, he was always the most important part of her life. It never ceased to amaze Louis how she managed to keep up all these engagements with such tirelessness and determination. She always told him that it was all thanks to him – him and his love never ceasing to inspire and motivate her – and after all these years, he knew that it had to be true. Tawny never ceased to provide the proof for it herself, day after day.
Louis, on the other hand, had founded a start-up cooperative with a group of college friends. He had found his niche as the precocious engineering talent ever since high school, something that he maintained and developed further through college. But he, too, wasn't just the engineer and tech entrepreneur. All these years with Tawny had shaped him profoundly as an individual, made him more thoughtful, conscientious, socially aware. Tawny had taught him the beauty of literature already in junior high; he had begun by reading her poetry, then reading classics that she introduced him to. Ever since, he had stood out in the engineering crowd as one who "appreciated the beautiful things in life," as Tawny had put it once. Moreover, he had become influenced by Tawny's ideals, not by adopting them uncritically, but as the cumulative result of all the discussions they had, in which she invited him to think through, question, and debate all the things she introduced him to. The result was a bond between them that was twice as powerful: the bond not only of a loving relationship, but also of a companionship of shared convictions, a camaraderie of common cause.