I Know.

I spotted a picture, the below picture to be exact, and it made me realise something.

That’s exactly how it feels with Brown Eyes. There hasn’t been a single point where I thought I had fallen in love with him, I just did. I just do. It’s like we’ve been together a hundred years and we know each other. I know how he snaps and gets shirty with me when I get snappy and shirty with him over the phone first thing in the morning. I know to leave him alone to calm down for a little while and then message him later, forgetting the entire silly row completely because that’s all it was, a silly row. I know how to make him growl, how to make his entire body erupt in goosebumps, how to make him forget his name. I know how to make him smile, when to leave him to concentrate on whatever it is he’s doing and when I can take his phone out of his hand, sit astride him, and plant lots of childish wet kisses along his cheeks and forehead until he gives in and showers me with the affection I crave. I know him. And he knows me.

He knows that when I have period cramps to just make me a cup of tea, kiss me on my forehead and leave me the hell alone. He knows how to make me laugh until I cry, and what new TV shows I’ll inevitably become obsessed with. He knows that I have a short fuse and I’m easily wound up but the anger is short-lived and sometimes I just need to shout about it. He just knows. He knows what to cook so that I don’t get sick and I’ve never been sick around him (yet) which, for me, is saying a lot. He knew to laugh at me when I coughed, laughed and accidentally farted in his kitchen, taking me in his great big tattooed arms as I tried to cover my face with my hands. I was mortified, my first fart, but he just took it in his stride because he knows. He knows me.

Better than that, he loves me. He really, really does I think. It’s not because he says it, it’s because he DOES it – he shows me. He says it a lot but he doesn’t need to. I know how he feels about me because his eyes tell the whole story. I’ve noticed that when he looks at me, he smiles. Not sometimes, every time. I spot him out of the corner of my eye as we’re sat watching something late, no lights on, just a couple of candles and the glow from the TV falling over us, and he’ll look at me and smile without realising I’ve seen him. Sometimes I turn around to smile right back but mostly I just sit and grin inwardly, smug, happy. They say when you know, you know. Well, I’m smiling because I know.

I fall in love hard and fast and I like it that way. But this isn’t falling in love, it’s not bumping and sliding, tripping and screwing it up, it’s nothing like that at all. Even when we fight we’re not really screwing it up, the fights aren’t really fights at all. More like petty grievances. But it’s nothing. It’s not worrying or concerning or frightening. It’s just nice, calm, comfortable.

I didn’t fall in love with this man, I’m not falling in love with him, I just am in love with him. From the very first moment he threw his arms around me that first time I met him to the very last squeeze he gave me yesterday as I got out the car and kissed him goodbye, I just know. I knew. And what makes it even lovelier still, he knows too. I have no need to say those words which is good because somehow, I can’t. I’m not ready to say them yet. I’m not ready to give him what I know he wants. I’m not ready. I want to bask in this, the I-know-something-you-don’t-know feeling that makes me look at him and smile sometimes before giggling when he asks me why. I like knowing this. I like the way it makes me feel. It’s like time stands still yet zips by so fast, all at the same time. Like three days wasn’t enough and I want to spend every waking moment with him. Like I want to spend forever with him.

Call me crazy but I know. And I like.