Page 172 of The Score

I'm still caressing her face, her hair. She stares at the ceiling. A small smile tilts her lips. She looks beautiful and at peace. My heart is calm and secure in its nook in my chest. This could be like every other day of our lives, if not for the way everything has changed today. Over the past few months.

"Does all of this feel strangely normal to you, too?" I ask.

"It shouldn't feel normal but, yeah. It is."

My lips curl. "How did I not realize what I felt before? Everyone kept telling me I was in love with you."

"When did you realize?"

"It didn't fully click until recently." I take a deep breath. "But I think I've loved you from the start."

Her head turns, and her smile grows. She gazes at me with clear eyes, taking in the details on my face like she's seeing me anew.

I trace one of her eyebrows with the pad of my finger. "When people told me I loved you, I used to get so angry. Of course I loved you. But I thought I loved you as a friend. Which I do. But looking back…"

The kind of affection that blooms in my chest isn't platonic, yet it's familiar.It expands and floods my torso, cascading into me with all the promises it still wants to make.

"I was afraid, Pen. I thought there was no way you'd love me like this. I thought if I admitted what I felt, you'd feel betrayed. I think that's why I had to work so hard at hiding it from myself."

"I thought you'd decided friendship with me wasn't enough," she admits in a soft voice. "That you watched your shows and saw the difference between what we had and what you truly wanted."

"Hey. No." I shake my head. "Come here."

I bring her to my lap. She sits between my legs, sideways, so we can look into each other's eyes. Her legs stick out and curl around my thigh. It's a knot made of Pen and me. The way we're interlocked gives a new meaning to those Celtic knots people use to signify love and connection.

"What we have is perfect to me," Pen says. "But I was convinced it would only be friendship, and that being friends with me would never be enough for you. That because of it you would always go back to finding the kind of love you and I have today— elsewhere."

"I've always wanted what we have. I've wanted the kind of love they write about for myself too and, guess what? I had it. I've had it this whole time. It's what I meant with my letter, right? I saw what we have on those shows. It's why I chose us every time."

"The sex is good, too." She smiles. "It adds a little something to what we have."

I laugh. "Yeah, it does. Especially the kind of friendship we have."

"Imagine. We could have added sex to it a decade ago."

"Could we have? I'm not so sure. Maybe it's the romantic in me, but I think we needed the past decade to make sense of it all."

She looks at me with a puzzled wrinkle on her brow.

I smile. "The thing is, when people told me I felt 'more than friendship' for you, I didn't get it. Friendship is beautiful and worthwhile on its own. I didn't think I needed anything else. But now that I know I'm in love with you, I understand. It's because when you're in love, there are things you want to add to the friendship. A certain type of intimacy. A physicality. An understanding of what the bond means. It's not that friendship isn't enough— it's plenty. It's necessary. It's just that you need more with someone you love this much, this way."

She sighs. Kisses my lips softly.

"If it weren't for our fears," I add, "would we have loved each other as friends so fiercely? And if we weren't so close as friends, would we have fallen in love like we did?"

"Maybe it's what we needed with each other," she says. "To go through all of this, to be ready to add this new layer to what we have."

"Maybe. What I know is that loving you is what I was meant to do," I whisper. "We found each other so young so I could love you all of your life. It's been so easy and difficult for the past twenty years. Can it just be easy for the rest of our lives?"

"It'll be easy between us for the rest of time."

I kiss her. "This is what I always wanted from the shows I watched, Penélope. For the couple to hold hands and walk away into the sunset together, facing life next to each other."

"Then I suppose we always had that," she says, and lays her head to rest over my heart.

Everything has changed, but one thing doesn't. Holding her in bed that night feels as easy as it ever has.