Forever

Yesterday we looked at houses.

I think we found it.

Now, before you accuse us of making an emotional decision after walking through one front door, relax. We're trying to be responsible adults. Dawna is looking at two more houses this week while I'm back in New Mexico, because we both agreed we wanted to do our due diligence before writing an offer.

But... I think we both know.

It's funny how quickly your brain shifts. One minute you're evaluating square footage and rooflines, and the next you're wondering where the Christmas tree will go, whether the motorcycles will fit in the garage, and which chair is going to become your favorite place to drink coffee in the morning. At some point it stops feeling like a house and starts feeling like home.

Between house showings my phone buzzed.

One of those friends who only seems to reach out when they're drunk and hurting had sent me a novel. Somewhere along the way they'd decided that a couple of my recent blogs were about them. They weren't. Honestly, they weren't really about any of my friends. They were more about certain family members, but I try to leave enough details out that I'm not publicly dragging real people through the mud.

Apparently I left enough room for someone to insert themselves into the story.

The part that really made me cringe wasn't even about me. They started criticizing Dawna for not being there during my recovery after my cardiac arrests.

Now, there are about a thousand things wrong with that accusation, but I'm not interested in turning this into a courtroom drama. My cardiac arrests happened in Jacksonville, Florida. I was in a fentanyl-induced coma. I wasn't exactly making phone calls updating everyone on my condition. And Dawna? She was trying to survive the daily physical and emotional abuse of the man she happened to be married to at the time.

When I finally got back to Santa Fe, one of the very first calls I made was to her. My brain was still scrambled, my memory was still missing pieces, but I knew I needed to tell her what had happened.

She came.

Immediately.

This was four years ago. Long before we started dating. Long before she introduced me to people as her wife. Long before I started thinking of her that way myself.

People say stupid shit when they're hurting. I get that. We all have a tendency to build entire stories from a handful of facts and convince ourselves we've got the whole picture. Most of the time we don't. Most of the time we're missing chapters we didn't even know existed.

Ironically, the person sending me these messages was the one who introduced Dawna and me years ago. Before the pandemic he'd been trying to date her. They'd gone out a few times, I think. I wasn't there, so I'm not going to pretend I know how any of that went.

What I do know is the night he brought her over to my house.

It was winter in Los Alamos, so the three of us ended up squeezed into that little smoking closet off the back porch because freezing your ass off was apparently preferable to quitting cigarettes.

The conversation started with three people.

Then something happened.

Her and I just... clicked.

Not in a romantic way. Not yet. We were simply fascinated with each other. The conversation naturally narrowed until it was mostly the two of us talking. I remember noticing he was uncomfortable, but I didn't really understand why.

A few weeks later he was accusing us of sleeping together.

No.

If I'm being honest, he wasn't accusing us of sleeping together. He was accusing us of fucking.

We weren't.

Although if he'd understood what years of estrogen actually do to the human body, he might have reconsidered his choice of words. Then again, maybe if he'd spent more time getting to know the women he wanted to date instead of trying to sleep with them, he'd have learned something.

I ended up handing Dawna my phone, not because I wanted to stir the pot, but because I genuinely couldn't make sense of what I was reading. The accusations were so detached from reality that I wondered if I was missing something.

She read the messages.

She took my phone.

She finished the conversation.

She even signed her name.

Good. We're a thing now.

She'll be my wife, and I'll be hers. If you're going to throw accusations at her, or about her, you should choose your words carefully. Because if she doesn't finish the conversation, I will.

And I promise you, I have a very different style.

This morning she's asleep while I'm sitting in another hotel breakfast room eating mediocre eggs and writing. Friday night I was stranded beside the road because Nyx decided she'd had enough. Yesterday we walked through what might become our forever home. This week she'll look at a couple more houses while I'm back in New Mexico doing what I need to do before I point the bike north and head home.

As I sit here this morning, I realize the house isn't really what has me smiling. It's her.

After everything we've both survived, after all the wrong turns and broken roads, it feels like we've finally found the path we're supposed to be on. Whether that first house ends up being the house or not almost doesn't matter anymore.

I already found home.

My heart feels full.

Full of love. Full of hope. Full of the quiet certainty that the rest of our life is finally beginning.