The Impossible Valentine

I was recently cleaning and came across something I thought I'd lost a long time ago... maybe I just forgot about it.  No, I hadn't.  It was my iPhone.  I recognized it sitting under the bed because of the cool shell you bought for on Redbubble, the Dr. Who/Chuck Taylors one.  That was probably the coolest gift anybody ever gave me.  You said you wanted to find something that combined some of my passions, and hoo-boy did you.  It's almost as disheartening as it is joyous when you get something like that.  You had to not only pay attention to my interests, you had to figure out which iteration of phone I had, and then you had to be internet savvy enough to know where something like that would be found, and you had to get it for my post-Valentine's day gift.  It was even in the faded white and not the optical white, which is a different shade but not the faded white Chucks the Doctor wore.  It's hard for somebody even as jaded as I am about love to think it doesn't exist after receiving something as a gift that shows that somebody you love has been paying as much attention to you as you have to him.

It was so great a gift.  I was so happy that I had you in my life, and I felt again what I felt for you so long ago.  Not that it ever changed.  I just had to push it away, holding that old gift in my rare fit of cleaning, because you were never going to be part of my life like that again.  I would just be refusing to let go of the past, and it would hurt me to revisit it again. 

So of course I had to see if the phone still took a charge.  Yeah it did.  And I had to look at our chats.  Most were from me, thanking you for coming into my life again.  But there was one in particular that touches me to this day, because I remember what caused the exchange like it just happened.

You'd come to bed late.  We were never on the same sleeping schedule, I knew that.  I accepted it a while before.  But my morning routine was to wake up and slam off the alarm so it wouldn't wake you.  It never did.  Bathroom stuff, shower, dress, then lean over you on your side of the bed and kiss your forehead before leaving.  You were always such a deep sleeper it never woke you.  I'd go to work and come home to you on the couch, smiling your heart-melting smile.  Good times.

I remember that morning I was wearing my green cargo shorts and the white pin-striped shirt that looks too big on me now.  It looked good then, it fit me perfectly.  I know I'd had my hair and goatee trimmed recently and was quite impressed myself with how I looked in the mirror.  

I came over to your side of the bed and leaned down to kiss your forehead.  You were as deep a sleep as you ever are.  I don't know what happened that morning... maybe I jostled you too much leaning down.  Maybe I put on too much deodorant and it bothered you but...  You woke up after my kiss, and leaned up with that smile, reaching out to shirt for another kiss.  It was very sweet.  You started to fall right back to sleep afterwards, still in the arms of Morpheus.  I left the apartment with what I must imagine was a very silly looking grin on my face.

Later at work you texted me, saying how handsome I was that morning.  I was surprised and flattered, because it wasn't like you to break out of your sleep to text something like that.  I replied, "Is that why you wanted another kiss?"

You told me you just wanted a kiss on your lips before I left.

I read those chats and others with customary tears that day, with that forgotten iPhone in the impossible Valentine gift, and never thought I'd be happy like I was that one day at work, knowing you'd be waiting at my apartment for me in just a few hours. I don't think I'll ever be as happy as that again.