“Headphones,” I remind him, plugging them in before handing him the one for his right ear as I put the other into my left. “I know we used to do this and we wouldn't say a word, but this time, I have some explaining to do.”
“Then I will sit back and let the master work,” he jokes, and I laugh as the first song plays. It’s the song playing at the concert when we first met.
I let the lyrics play for a few seconds before I open my mouth.
“This song reminds me of the first time I saw you,” I say, my voice already shaking. “Obviously, it was playing when you came up to me, but the first thing I noticed about you was how familiar you felt when I had never met you before.”
“Really?”
“There was just something about you,” I tell him. “I still can’t put my finger on it.”
When the song finishes, another comes on by a completely different artist. This one is more upbeat, but underneath it are dreamy lyrics and beautiful metaphors about life.
“This one reminds me of your smile,” I giggle to myself. “Honestly, I have no reason, but every time I listen to it, all I can see in my head is you smiling at me, but in that specific Henry way.”
“What does that mean?” He laughs with me.
“Well, you smile differently. If you're with your friends, you show your teeth a bit more. When you’re focused on something you just wrote and you like it, you only turn your lips up, as if that smile is for you and your characters.” I start to trip over my words. “But when you smile at me, it’s unique and beautiful, and I’ve only ever seen it pointed at me.”
He tilts his head with the exact face I just described, and I don’t even think he knows he’s doing it.
The song finishes and another starts, and I’m thankful I burned this disc properly. Well, properly, with help from the girls and Oliver.
“This song reminds me of our first kiss.” I smile as the memories play in my mind.
“This was the exact song playing as we walked around campus, a shared headphone between us.”
I nod, happy he seems to remember it too. “It was a perfect night.”
“It was,” he agrees with me.
“You told me you loved me to this song,” I say as we let the music flow. “I was in that parking lot, terrified you were going to say something else, but then you said you loved me. For the first time ever, I believed it. IknewI was capable of it because I felt the exact same way you did, but hearing it…” I trail off, unsure what to say. “It changed a lot for me.Youchanged me, Henry, and I’ll never be able to properly thank you for that.”
He shakes his head. “You don’t have to thank me for loving you, Amelia. It’s the most natural thing in the world. Hell, even when I was supposed to hate you, I couldn't—not fully, at least.”
Henry grabs my hands, and I meet his eyes.
“Loving you made me realize what most writers talk about in their novels. I never understood it—the feeling, at least. Obviously, I love my family and my friends, but romantically? I never understood it until you came into my life, and that changed. You made the words on the pages I read have meaning, and any time I thought of love, or read about love, or wrote about love, all I could see was you.”
“Henry—”
“Amelia, I love you. I have always loved you, and I always will. All the days we have left together, I’ll spend every single one of them loving you.”
I feel it again. I feel like I deserve this man in front of me. Somehow, he’s forgiven me for what I did, and out of the billions of people on the planet, he’s chosen me to love.
And I’m choosing him.
“You’re the only man I’ve ever loved, Henry.” I smile as a few tears come through. “I’m so excited I get to keep it that way.”
He grabs my face in his hands. “You love me?”
“Fuck, of course, I love you, Hen.”
“No more past tense?”
“We’re in the present now.” I smile as he captures my lips in his, the two of us connected in more than one way—our lips, our bodies, our shared music playing between us, our souls. Henry has and always will be part of every atom in my body. I can recognize him simply by his presence, the way his body takes up space in rooms, and I never want to be apart from him. Not now. Not ever again.
He leans me back on the couch, deepening the kiss as the two of us get tangled between the strings of the headphones.