So I gave it some thought and concluded that I couldn’t plan our relationship on sex. If I ended up sixty and he still looked thirty, the intimacy we shared would be nonexistent.
But after it’s all said and done, don’t you want to grow old with your best friend? At the end of the day, that’s who you want to share your life and laughter with. Someone who will be there in hard times to hold you tight. Someone who will fight for your honor and support your decisions. Someone who will encourage your dreams and help you to fulfill them.
Do I think I’ll be having great sex all the way into my eighties? Probably not. But I’ll have someone there to make me bacon and tell me I’m beautiful. Someone to sit on the porch beside me and listen to the crickets in the summertime while we share a glass of lemon tea, talking about old times.
And I’m okay with that.
I’m more than okay with that.
I hate that I won’t be there for him after I’m gone, but Reno will find himself a woman one day—maybe a Shifter. Perhaps I’ll play a part in helping him become a man who is finally ready to make decisions about adoption and having a family of his own. Or maybe he’ll finally realize that giving a woman babies is not what defines him as a man. The courage to love is.
Nothing lasts forever. But maybe I can carry a little piece of that happiness in my pocket for as long as I’m here.
Just like Reno carried that earring.