All Your Perfects

Graham

I don’t know how long I cry after reading the final letter. Long enough that my head hurts and my stomach aches and I’ve gone through half a box of Kleenex. I cry for so long, I get lost in the grief.

Graham is holding me.

I don’t know when he walked into the room, or when he knelt on the bed, or when he pulled me to his chest.

He has no idea what I’ve even decided. He has no idea if the words about to come out of my mouth are going to be nice ones or hateful ones. Yet here he is, holding me as I cry, simply because it hurts him to see me cry.

I press a kiss to his chest, right over his heart. And I don’t know if it takes five minutes or half an hour, but when I finally stop crying long enough to speak, I lift my head from his chest and look at him.

“Graham,” I whisper. “I love you more in this moment than any moment that has come before it.”

As soon as the words are out of my mouth, the tears begin to fall from his eyes. “Quinn,” he says, holding my face. “Quinn . . .”

It’s all he can say. He’s crying too hard to say anything else. He kisses me and I kiss him back with everything in me in an attempt to make up for all the kisses I denied him.

I close my eyes, repeating the words from his letter that reached me the deepest.

We haven’t lost yet, Quinn.

He’s right. We might have finally given up at the same time, but that doesn’t mean we can’t get back that hope. I want to fight for him. I want to fight for him as hard as he’s been fighting for me.

“I’m so sorry, Quinn,” he whispers against my cheek. “For everything.”

I shake my head, not even wanting an apology. But I know he needs my forgiveness, so I give it to him. “I forgive you. With everything I am, Graham. I forgive you and I don’t blame you and I am so sorry, too.”

Graham wraps his arms around me and holds me. We remain in the same position for so long, my tears have dried, but I’m still clinging to him with everything in me. And I’ll do everything I can to make sure I never let go of him again.





Chapter Twenty-nine




* * *





Then


I couldn’t imagine a better way to end our first anniversary—wrapped up in a blanket outside, listening to the waves crash against the shore. It’s the perfect moment for the perfect gift.

“I have something for you,” I say to Graham.

He’s the one who usually surprises me with gifts, so the fact that I have one for him grabs his attention. He looks at me with anticipation and pulls the blanket away from me, pushing me out of the chair. I run inside and then return with his package. It’s wrapped in Christmas paper, even though it’s not even close to Christmas.

“It’s all I could find,” I say. “I didn’t have time to wrap it before I left, so I had to wrap it with what was in the closet here.”

He begins to open it, but before he even has the wrapping paper off, I blurt out, “It’s a blanket. I made it.”

He laughs. “You are so terrible at surprises.” He pulls away the tissue paper and reveals the blanket I made out of ripped pieces of our clothing. “Are these . . .” He lifts up one of his ripped work shirts and laughs.

We sometimes have issues with keeping our clothing intact when we’re pulling them off each other. I think I’ve ripped a half dozen of Graham’s shirts, at least. Graham has ripped several of mine. Sometimes I do it because I love the dramatics of the buttons popping off. I don’t remember when it started, but it’s become a game to us. A pricey game. Which is why I decided to put some of the discarded clothing to good use.

“This is the best gift anyone has ever given me.” He throws the blanket over his shoulder and then picks me up. He carries me inside and lays me on the bed. He rips my nightgown off of me and then he rips his own shirt for show. The whole scene has me laughing until he climbs on top of me and smothers my laugh with his tongue.

Graham lifts my knee and starts to push himself inside me, but I press against his chest. “We need a condom,” I whisper breathlessly.

I was on antibiotics last week for a cold I was trying to get over so I haven’t been taking my pill. We’ve had to use condoms all week as a preventative measure.

Graham rolls off me and walks to his duffel bag. He grabs a condom, but he doesn’t immediately come back to the bed. He just stares at it. Then he tosses it back onto the bag.

“What are you doing?”

With a heavy amount of assuredness, he says, “I don’t want to use one tonight.”

I don’t respond. He doesn’t want to use a condom? Am I reading his intent wrong?

Graham walks back to the bed and lowers himself on top of me again. He kisses me, then pulls back. “I think about it sometimes. About you getting pregnant.”

“You do?” I was not expecting that. I hesitate a moment before saying, “Just because you think about it doesn’t mean you’re ready for it.”

“But I am. When I think about it, I get excited.” He rolls onto his side and puts his hand on my stomach. “I don’t think you should get back on the pill.”

I grip the top of his hand, shocked at how much I want to kiss him and laugh and take him inside me. But as sure as I am about having children, I don’t want to make that choice unless he’s just as certain as I am. “Are you positive?”

The thought of us becoming parents fills me with an overwhelming amount of love for him. So much, I feel a tear fall down my cheek.

Graham sees the tear and he smiles as he brushes it away with his thumb. “I love that you love me so much, it sometimes makes you cry. And I love that the idea of us having a baby makes you cry. I love how full of love you are, Quinn.”

He kisses me. I don’t think I tell him enough what a great kisser he is. He’s the best I’ve ever had. I don’t know what makes his kisses different from the men I’ve kissed in the past, but it’s so much better. Sometimes I’m scared he’ll get tired of kissing me someday because of how much I kiss him. I just can’t be near him without tasting him. “You’re a really good kisser,” I whisper.

Graham laughs. “Only because it’s you I’m kissing.”

We kiss even more than we usually do when we make love. And I know we’ve made love a hundred times before tonight. Maybe even a thousand times. But this time feels different. It’s the first time we don’t have some kind of barrier preventing us from creating a new life together. It’s like we’re making love with a purpose.

Graham finishes inside of me and it’s the most incredible feeling, knowing that our love for each other might be creating something even bigger than our love for each other. I don’t know how that can even be possible. How can I possibly love anyone as much or even more than I love Graham?

It’s been such a perfect day.

I’ve experienced a lot of perfect moments, but entire perfect days are hard to come by. You need the perfect weather, the perfect company, the perfect food, the perfect itinerary, the perfect mood.

I wonder if things will always be this perfect. Now that we’ve decided to start a family, part of me wonders if there’s a level of perfection that we haven’t even reached yet. What will things be like next year when we’re possibly parents? Or five years from now? Ten? Sometimes I wish I had a crystal ball that could actually see into the future. I’d want to know everything.

I’m tracing my fingers in an invisible pattern over his chest when I look up at him. “Where do you think we’ll be ten years from now?”

Graham smiles. He loves talking about the future. “Hopefully we’ll have our own house in ten years,” he says. “Not too big, not too small. But the yard will be huge and we’ll play outside with the kids all the time. We’ll have two—a boy and a girl. And you’ll be pregnant with the third.”