I glance over and see you there—“nerd necking” in your usual posture, completely immersed in your game. Your fingers move effortlessly, guiding you through a world built for you. I sit beside you, headphones on, book in hand, thumbing through pages, tracing words that feel like echoes of my own thoughts. Two different rhythms, yet we move in sync.
You press forward, unlocking new levels, and overcoming obstacles with persistence. I flip the page, following a storyline that twists and turns, folding myself into the comfort of the unknown. The room is quiet except for the soft clicks of your controller and the occasional rustle of paper, a quiet symphony of presence, of knowing that even in separate worlds, we are never apart.
It’s in the smallest gestures—when you instinctively reach for my hand between rounds, when I feel your gaze on me before I even look up, when you smile at something on your screen, and I find myself memorizing the shape of your happiness. I highlight these moments in my mind like the most tender passages, the kind that stay with you long after the story ends.
Missing you comes in waves, and when I’m not with you, I’m drowning in it.
I still feel the echoes of you—your laugh lingering in the corners of the room, like an unfinished chapter, like a game paused mid-quest, waiting for the next time we press play.
Hugging you is like embracing someone for the first time—every single time. Holding you so tight, like I could press us into the moment like time itself might listen and slow down. There’s something about the way you pull me close, the way your hands settle against my back, as if grounding yourself in the fact that I am real, that I am here. That we are here.
Finding you at the perfect time in my life feels like the universe whispering, “You are exactly where you are meant to be.” It is as if every choice, every loss, every longing brought me to this moment, this love, this feeling of something I never want to lose.
I look around, appreciating everything we have and how young and in love we are at this moment. Echoing the appreciation that is always in my soul for these moments.
The funny thing about appreciation is that it didn’t show up…
…until I was no longer in your presence.
