Standing out here on the balcony of my, no, our apartment has never felt this right. His dark, auburn hair is swept to the side by a lazy breeze and I’m trying to compare this to something, anything, that would give someone else the ability to see how strongly I feel about how beautiful he is as I do right now.

He’s my angel.

He smiles up at me and I can feel my world tilting and swaying as though it’s a rowboat in the middle of a typhoon. My mind isn’t functioning enough to refrain from reaching out to hold his face in my hands before leaning down to steal a kiss. My brain doesn’t work because my heart is in the driver’s seat.

He laughs when I pull away and his vivid green eyes crinkle oh so slightly at the corners. It’s maddening how I can yearn for every part of him. How everything about him makes my heart skip.

“I love you,” I choke out and pull him to me. I do love him. Every bit of my heart is screaming it, right down to my last perkinje fiber.

“You’re so serious,” he mumbles into my chest, tickling me through my shirt. It feels right.

“Love is serious,” I counter and he pulls back to search my eyes with his own. They drop to the floor after a moment.

“It could be fun too, if you let it,” he frowns and then in the blink of an eye a mischievous grin spreads across his face. He’s always like this. He changes as quickly and unpredictably as the weather. One moment he’s a tempest of deep emotion and the next he’s a brilliant, sun-drenched day.

I’ve fallen in love with it. Hell, I’m scared of how much I feel when it comes to him.

“C’mon,” he smiles coyly and I tilt my head and roll my eyes. He simply grabs my wrist with a laugh and tugs me inside. I put up little in the way of resistance and find myself staring at my shower.

“No.”

“What!? You don’t even know what I want to do!” he gapes at me and then wags his finger in my face, “Just because it’s impossible for your mind to not be dirty doesn’t mean that what we’re going to do in the shower is dirty.”

I throw up my hands in defeat and open my mouth to reply but he silences me by pushing my chin up and placing a finger over my lips. He gives me a no-nonsense look and I roll my eyes again but resign myself to do whatever it is he wants to do. I know I don’t want to do anything hard-core with him until we’re married ‘cause that’s just who I am… but I trust him.

Jesus.

We’re getting married.

As he pulls me into the shower with him I remember when I asked him. I know we can’t right now because we’re living in a state that doesn’t allow gay marriages but we’re getting it done right after we move. But as we sat there under the stars with that ring resting between us I knew nothing would get in the way. Because I love him. And I could see it in his eyes when I asked him. He feels the same.

Right now he’s grinning up at me while turning the water in the shower on. Our clothes are going to get wet. Hell, we haven’t even taken off our shoes.

I find that I don’t care.

I’m still in this state of slow numbness to reality as the water spurts out of the showerhead, seeping through my clothes and plastering my bangs to my forehead. His throaty laughter is my drug.

He’s grinning all kinds of silly as he starts to, or should I say attempts to, belt out a song by The Darkness. The sound of the shower in the background makes the song odd and out of place but I find myself watching his lips move to give voice to the words of the song. I think I’m spellbound.

“C’mon! Sing with me!” he pouts and then starts to dance while renewing his song. The laughter bubbles up inside of me as the water tugs at my sopping clothes. A soft smile creeps up and I join him in the finale, “I believe in a thing called love! OoOoOo! Get down!”

He continues to dance and playfully steals my hands in order to force me into mock dancing. I allow him the honor of rocking me back and forth in a pathetic travesty of dance. He even gets my feet to move a bit, which I soon find, is a bad idea.

My shoes have no tread. The shower is slippery.

I slip and he’s yanked down with me as I crash against the back wall of the shower.

Breathless, he collapses into me and then bats his wet eyelashes.

“You suck at dancing,” he pokes me in the side and I shrug against the wall, loving the weight of him against me, knowing that he loves me, dancing or no dancing.

“You don’t,” I reply with a wink.

His mouth moves for a moment trying to decide whether he wants to start a round of playful banter with me or not. I watch every detail of him as he decides to accept the compliment and leave it at that.

The water is dripping from the ends of his tangled hair and a drop hangs from the end of his nose. I sloppily kiss it away before it falls and he stares at me with unreadable eyes after I pull away.

The water falling around us is part of a different world because we’re the only world we need. We lean there staring at each other for an immeasurable amount of time that doesn’t seem to go anywhere. It doesn’t need to go anywhere because this…

This is heaven.

Maybe, just maybe, we can’t get into the heaven Christians believe in because we get our own divine eternity in little moments like these. I guess I believe heaven isn’t heaven unless you’re with the people you love, and when you are…

You make it last for as long as you can.

So I brace myself against the wall of the shower and press dozens of kisses to his exposed face and neck.

Each one is soft and gentle. Each one is an attempt to open him up to the undying flow of love that pours from my heart and animates me each and every day.

He accepts them and simply lets me show him how much I need him to stay alive. We’re all we’ll ever need and it’s a long time before we eventually stumble out of the bathroom, dripping and looking like a pair of drowned rats. The whole time, all I can think of is how much I love him and want to spend the rest of my life with him. I want this to last forever.

Two days later he’s killed in a car accident.

The rushing sound of the shower fills me with an overwhelming sense of nostalgia. The water swirls around my sneakers, sucked down into the drain. Soon it’ll be stained pink.

I stare into the barrel of the revolver and smile. Now that heaven’s gone, it’s time to face the only thing left.

Hell.