Me, My Life & Why Part 25

Part 25

We were on the floor again.

Where else?

Two mugs between us, one still warm, one forgotten. My ankle pressed awkwardly into the table leg, hoodie sleeves pulled halfway over my hands. We’d talked for hours, then not at all. Easy silence. The good kind. The kind that doesn’t itch.

I don’t remember what sparked it.

A half-joke about how I’m the human equivalent of an unread email.

A comment about how he always seems to know when I need space and when I need snacks.

He just said, “You’re easy to be around.”

And I laughed, because that’s the first time in my entire life anyone has said that about me.

People don’t usually describe me as easy. They say intense. Or a lot. Or “a handful”, like I’m a rescue puppy someone regrets adopting but won’t admit it.

But Alex… he never flinched. Never tried to dim anything.

He didn’t tell me I was too much.

He just made more room.

And I think somewhere along the way, I started building my days around that room. Around the lightness he brings without even noticing.

That night, it hit me, again, not loudly, just… like a fact. Like the sky being there when you look up.

I loved him.

Not in a scribble-his-name-in-a-notebook way. Not in a romcom montage way.

In the quiet way.

In the way you notice someone’s laugh before you notice their eyes.

In the way you start saying we in your head before anyone makes it official.

In the way he brings home cereal you forgot you liked, and remembers how you take your tea, and never once makes either feel like a favour.

I sat with it.

Didn’t say it.

Not yet.

Partly because the old panic voice still lives inside me, the one that says, don’t ruin it, don’t name it, don’t be too much too fast.

But mostly because I wanted to be sure that saying it was mine, not just a reflex or a need.

He was rambling about something, a new video game? A robot that can sort socks? When I leaned my head against the wall and thought, this is it.

Not the end.

Not the answer.

Just… the thing that makes me want to keep showing up.

I was about to speak.

I had the words lined up in my mouth like nervous party guests. Not rehearsed, just real.

But before I could say anything, he looked at me.

Like, really looked.

That quiet check-in he always does without asking first.

And then, like it was the most obvious thing in the world, he said:

“I love you.”

Like it wasn’t a question.

Like it wasn’t news.

Like it was something we both already knew, and he’d just happened to say it first.

I blinked.

Smiled.

Laughed once, sharp and small.

Then said, “Well. That was supposed to be my line.”

He shrugged. “We can pretend I stole it.”

“No,” I said. “You didn’t steal anything. You just… knew.”

And he did.

Of course he did.

There was no grand music swell.

No sudden clarity.

Just the same couch, the same mugs, the same weird night lighting.

But everything felt different.

Lighter.

Like I’d dropped the bag I didn’t realise I was still carrying.

Maybe this is what it’s all been building to.

Not the career.

Not the reinvention.

Not the brave new self.

Just this:

A quiet night.

A person who gets it.

A life that finally, finally feels like mine.

And maybe… just maybe… that’s the plot twist.