Excerpted Love Letters to LH.

June 11, 2013 - You take a deep breath and push your face into your pillow. I watch silently beside you as your face emerges from your pillow once your sleeping self realizes you can’t be without breath for long. Your ears frame your long eyelashes and pouty lips...lips that are so perfect.

I leave kisses on the crease your arm makes when you fold it to rest beneath your head. I slowly push myself up onto my elbow and kiss up your arm and onto your shoulder. Your chest is warm while your back is cool, so I pull the blanket up to cover your exposed back. Stomach sleeper. I sniff your ear because it’s always sweet smelling. I’m weird, I know, but it smells good so I can’t help myself. My fingers want to gently pull through your hair but that always wakes you up. Instead, I gently brush my lips against yours.

My favorite part of the day when we're together are the few minutes I have with you before I try to lull you out of slumber. They’re my favorite because you don’t pull away when I try to kiss you in places you normally think are ticklish. They’re my favorite because you won’t hold me too tightly or kiss me too hard, when I only want you gently.

* * *
June 21, 2013 - We fought on the subway tonight like little children, stomping our feet and making empty threats. I never thought that we’d be a couple, that couple, to fight in public. To me, it’s embarrassing. Maybe it’s because I have too much pride to be yelled at in public. Or maybe it’s because I don’t want anybody thinking it’s your fault I’m crying my eyeballs out. It’s probably a combination of both.

Sometimes you frustrate me beyond words and I can’t speak.

* * *
July 26, 2013 - We dragged our stools closer together but it wasn’t close enough. You stood up and moved behind me. You stretched your arms out and grabbed the bar counter in front of me putting my body between two bridges, your arms. I pulled my hair away from my right ear so I could feel your skin. You kissed the area behind my earlobe and smiled into the back of my head.

Being close to your body is addicting.

* * *
August 21, 2013 - I pushed you against the wall and remember thinking...why do you have to be so cute...whyyyy whyyy? Because I didn’t expect you to be so cute and charming. I thought you would be awkward and weird like the rest of the guys I had casually dated the couple of months before I met you.

I vaguely remember you shrugging. And then I released you from my grip. You hailed a cab for us and we leaned into each other and laughed the entire way to Houston and Suffolk. I kept trying to sneak my fingers under your armpits but you kept laughing and pulling away from me. It was the most fun I’ve ever had in the back of a cab. Ever.

Why did you have to be so damn likable? You made it so easy and fun to fall for you.