Before meeting her, life was pretty dull. I would wake up to the awful sound of my alarm clock, to the sun rays hitting my eyes, and the dreaded thought that I wanted to go back to sleep and not face the day. Many people would say that I am being just a spoiled brat, but I would say otherwise.

Yes, I had the job I've always wanted. Yes, I lived in an expensive apartment downtown. Yes, I did what I loved.

But it wasn't enough.

I had no one to come home and share my music with. I had no one to talk to about my frustrations.

I had no one.

I open my eyes, and I see her there, all disheveled, sleeping like a log. Her torso is bare to the cold air; the marks of our activities earlier are still visible on her soft skin. Her lips are parted, her thick arm is lying across her waist while the other is tucked securely behind her head and under the pillow. I turned to the clock at her nightstand; next to it was a framed picture of us on one of our many dates.

My tomboyish girlfriend wore her leather jacket, tight black pants, and boots while I was clinging to her arm, smiling brightly at the camera. She was smirking as she always did. I sit up on her bed and see her stir in her sleep. She mumbles something, calls out my name, and turns to her side facing me. Her blonde hair falls on her face. She is calm, content, and relaxed.

I inhaled deeply through my nose and pulled the covers off my naked body. I grabbed the extra bathrobe Haruka bought and wrapped it around my body as I exited the chamber and headed to the kitchen.

I can hear the coffee machine pouring its first batch out of many, and I can't help but let out a satisfied moan. I look at the wall clock again, five in the morning. On cue, I hear the alarm clock in our bedroom. I hear an annoyed groan and then silence.

I… I can't stop smiling.

Haruka is not a morning person. In fact, her earliest hour to wake up on Sundays is at ten, but she has prepared a date for me, and she sacrificed some hours of sleep for me. If that's not love, then I don't know what love is.

I open one of the kitchen cabinets and take out two mugs from inside; a beautiful seashell-shaped and another one with Haruka's favorite car brand. I fix myself a cup, black sweetened with a tablespoon of honey. Then, I prepare Haruka's with hazelnut creamer and black sugar. I think it is too sweet, but she always tells me that's how she likes it and kisses me as if to prove a point.

I…. I wouldn't call myself a sweet person. I am moody; I get angry easily. My frustrations get the best of me.

I haven't told her, but I've broken more than five violins before meeting her in fits of rage and anxiety. I didn't have nice-looking mugs when I had my breakfast in the morning. I wasn't the kind of person that even had breakfast in the morning… I let out my frustrations on others and went to sleep, dreading waking up the next day and repeating everything.

And yet, she sees me like the sweetest, kindest person.

I am like that only with her. The world can burn and go to hell, it can crumble around me into a dystopian graveyard, but as long as I woke up and saw her next to me… everything was right.

I take a sip of my coffee, roll my eyes to the back of my head, and sigh happily. Delicious. I move to the fridge and take out the ingredients for a hearty breakfast—eggs, bacon, peppers, and onion. An omelet with bacon and toast sounds good.

We are going to need all the energy we are going to get out of this breakfast. Today we have a hiking date, and Haruka had specifically said that we needed to eat breakfast. Making breakfast has become a ritual for me. A love ritual.

I find no greater happiness than to feed her in the morning and the evening. To see her eat the stuff that I prepare for her and see how she enjoys every bite is addictive. Completely different from me before meeting her, who would sometimes even forget to have a meal.

I hear her suddenly dragging her feet to the kitchen. Still naked from the waist up, she looks at me from the corner of the hallway. She is scratching her head, trying to get her hair to look decent.

"Morning, love," she mumbles, sleepiness still draped over her voice and features.

I smile widely, grab her mug and hand it to her. As I try to go back to the eggs I pulled out of the fridge, she wraps her arm around my waist and pulls me back. She kisses my temple and takes in my scent as she always does. It has become her ritual, her way of saying hello every morning. Sometimes she would walk up and hug me from behind and kiss the junction of my neck and shoulder. Whichever, I loved the attention, but I love her more.

Haruka takes a sip of her coffee after letting me go out of her embrace. "Ah! Perfect!" She walks around the kitchen, sets the coffee on the island, and starts to crack some eggs as I cut some vegetables to add to the scramble mix.

"We are heading to the trails up north by the beach." She says, turning on the stove and taking out a large frying pan from the drawers underneath.

"Oh! Can we take a dip afterwards?" I ask, hopeful.

She nods eagerly. "I would love that." She leans towards me again. This time she wraps both arms around me and mashes her lips against mine. I can taste the hazelnut and coffee; I can smell her sweat fuse with last night's cologne. I sighed, let go of the bowl I held and enclosed my arms around her naked torso. Her arms snaked around to touch the skin under my robe, and I moaned into her kiss.

If we don't stop, breakfast will be ruined, and we won't be able to do the hike on the proposed schedule.

Another thing that had changed about me when I met Haruka. I take things as they come. I was always on tight schedules, anxious to follow them at all times! Haruka took those schedules and burned them.

She burned them on my skin with her lips and tongues; she burned them in the shower walls, on the kitchen counter, or the sofa. On random parking lots, on deserted hallways.

To Haruka, time was nonexistent when I was with her, and every minute of every day was perfect for making me come into her arms.

Yet, as much as I wanted to dive into that way of thinking, of saying 'screw you' to schedules, we still have things to do and places to go…

I sigh and pull back, but she fists my hair in her right hand and tilts me sideways to devour me again, to slither her tongue in my mouth and moan her warning into me.

The warning was loud and clear. Haruka is still hungry for me, and she will have me now.

"Haruka…" I grab her face and pull away. Her hooded emerald eyes stare at mine with such intensity that I can't help but find myself being lifted into the kitchen island, knocking out the bowls of vegetables I had prepared.

"It is our free day. We will use it as we see fit." She dives into my neck and gives me another warning, a soft bite to my neck to steady me and stop my squirming. "Do you have someplace important to go to?"

I shake my head. "No. But I really want to see the beach."

She stops her movements yet nods against me. "Alright. We will go see it." She takes a step back and goes back to the eggs… just like that.

My Haruka always considered my ideas; she always listened to me, always asked me what I wanted. My opinion mattered. I mattered.

I slip off and gather the bowls and try to salvage the vegetables I had cut while my blonde tomboy put some bread on the toaster.

She smiled at me for a second before taking the bowls from my hand and adding them to the eggs.

I try not to think about the past much. I try not to think of the angered solitude that suffocates me day in and day out. I don't think about the tears of loneliness that always slipped in the quiet "relaxing moments." Instead, I think of her, her boyish grin, her teasing, her fire. I think of the way she makes my body burn and how my soul flutters inside of me whenever she looks at me.

I think of how my life has quieted down, sweetened by her affections, and I can't help but think that she has made me a better person.