A Pocket Archive (51)

"Have you ever considered using a mug?"

The giant swallowed, our now-empty coffee pot in one hand, grinning before wiping his mouth with the back of the other. "What? I wash it afterwards."

I rolled my eyes, a half-smile playing on my lips as I watched him rinse it out in the sink before starting a fresh pot. His hair was still messy and unstyled, making him look a little bit less like Ivan Drogo than usual, but somehow more handsome. He was still in his boxers and had a faint speckling of stubble on his jaw, which was still a bit swollen, but much better than it had been. He was humming 'Big Rock Candy Mountain' as he began rummaging through the freezer, presumably planning on ice-cream and frozen waffles for breakfast.

I liked him best like this, perhaps because I was the only one who saw this side of him. Everything about him was so comfortable and endearing, and he'd never made me feel unsafe or like I had to earn his love, though it still made me sad whenever I dwelled on how much that stood out to me. Still, I did feel honored and somehow very privileged that he obviously was very comfortable with me too, as he tended to be more guarded with most people, even though this was mostly cultural, rather than out of shyness. It wasn’t that he completed me or filled a void, but rather that he made me realize there was nothing in me lacking to begin with.

The older I get and the more I see, the more I realize everything they tell you about love is backwards. My true love hadn't started with fireworks and butterflies, or with someone whispering every beautiful lie that I wanted to hear in my ear, or feeding me stories to make me feel sorry for him, but instead it began with feeling safe and comfortable with a friend who didn't need me to boost his ego, prop him up, or to polish his homework or scholarship essays. He also didn't hang out with me to borrow bits and pieces from my biography to weave into his own, and he didn't need me to try and make himself look good or interesting. Instead, when we talked, I felt like he really wanted to listen to me. He also never told me stories about himself or his family that made me feel crazy whenever I realized that they didn't match up.

You could never love a liar, because you never really knew who they were, but the giant didn't lie to me. I had once been the magic mirror for a monster, but now, I had a real, unexpected love that only saw me as an equal. Ironically, instead of lies and a cheap infatuation that would fade with time, I found myself falling more in love with him everyday, and had more butterflies now over little things than I did the day he put a ring on my finger. Real love doesn't fade, it only grows deeper. No explosions or whirlwinds, just the quiet confidence that we loved eachother and would always have the other person's back.

I still can't wrap my head around how odd life is, especially mine. I had brushed paths with some of the most horrible, twisted people who never really seemed to go away, and yet, God had given me such a nice one to spend my life with. When I look backwards at my prayers over the last decade, I have no doubt the giant is the answer to many of them, despite being an outcome I never would have predicted. It didn't make any of the bad stuff any better, but it proved that even in the midst of chaos and Evil, God still works all things for the good of those that love Him, and even of it was terrifying having to trust Him at times, it reinforced my belief that good things could come out of tragedy.

If my life was a fairytale, then the authors were some odd combination between the brothers Grimm and Afanasev. It wasn't clean or beautiful, or a story I would read to my little one, but it still had a happy ending. My prince didn't need to save me from anything, but he'd stand alongside me to fight any beasts we crossed paths with. We never went looking for fights, but we'd slay any monsters that stepped over our threshold, should the past continue to try inserting itself back into our future.

A coffee cup clicked against the side table as the giant placed a refill of next to me. "I washed that too."

I laughed as the giant bent down to kiss me. Then he stood, made a rude gesture to the cat, and made his way back to the kitchen to enjoy his waffles.