It's three o'clock in the fucking morning, and I'm lying in bed listening to Dawna breathe.
She's asleep beside me, and I'm wide awake, staring into the darkness with a heart so fucking full I don't quite know what to do with it.
I should be sleeping. We had a long day yesterday, and I'm exhausted. But every time I close my eyes, I keep thinking about the day we spent together, and about this extraordinary woman who somehow wandered into my life, captured my heart, and apparently decided that whatever crazy fucking dreams I have are now her dreams, too.
And I don't know what I did to deserve that.
I really fucking don't.
Yesterday was the Sage & Ink Book Festival, and I was there trying to do something I've dreamed about for most of my life. I was sitting behind a table with my books, introducing myself to strangers as an author, hoping somebody might be interested enough in the words I've written to take a little piece of me home with them.
And Dawna was right there beside me.
All fucking day.
But I'm getting ahead of myself.
We woke up yesterday morning, showered, and started loading our vehicles. I had my motorcycle, she had her car, and between the two of us, we had everything we needed for a day of trying to convince the world that maybe, just maybe, this writing thing of mine is worth paying attention to.
And here's something about Dawna that I don't think I'll ever stop appreciating.
She doesn't question my need to ride.
Ever.
She knows that if there's an opportunity to take the bike, I'm probably going to take the fucking bike. Doesn't matter if it's November. Doesn't matter if the morning air is cold enough to make me question every decision I've ever made in my life. If the roads are clear and I can ride, I'm riding.
She loves her car. She loves being warm. She has absolutely no desire to freeze her ass off on a motorcycle just because I apparently have some deeply rooted psychological need to experience the world at seventy miles an hour with the wind trying to remove my fucking face.
And that's fine.
We don't have to do everything the same way to do things together.
So she took her car, and I took my bike.
No discussion. No negotiation. No explanation necessary.
We stopped for coffee before heading down to the festival, and I found myself sitting across from her, just enjoying the morning.
Talking. Laughing. Being goofy.
Being us.
And I remember thinking how fucking wonderful it was that my day was starting this way.
I woke up beside the woman I love. We loaded up for an event supporting my lifelong dream of becoming a writer. And then we sat down and had coffee together before heading out into the world.
That's it.
Nothing spectacular.
Except, to me, it was absolutely fucking spectacular.
Because I've spent so much of my life being fiercely independent, doing things my way, figuring shit out on my own, and not expecting anybody else to come along for the ride.
And now there's this woman who doesn't just come along for the ride.
She helps make the fucking ride possible.
There's another thing she does that I need to explain, because it says an awful lot about who she is.
When we're traveling together in separate vehicles, she watches out for me.
Not in some vague, sentimental, be careful out there, honey sort of way.
I mean she actually fucking watches out for me.
She'll position her car behind me to give me some breathing room from other traffic. If she sees that I need to change lanes, she'll move over when she can and create a little space so I can get across without some impatient asshole trying to occupy the same piece of pavement.
She pays attention to what's happening around me.
And that matters.
Dawna has been around the biker community her entire life. She's been to funerals. She's participated in memorial rides. She knows what happens when a car and a motorcycle try to occupy the same space, and she understands that the person on the motorcycle doesn't generally come out ahead.
And after what happened to me last year, when a car turned in front of me and damn near ended my life, I don't take that kind of care lightly.
She understands motorcycles.
More importantly, she understands me.
She knows why I ride. She knows that the cold, the heat, the occasional discomfort, and the risks are all part of something that makes me feel alive in a way very few other things do.
And she doesn't try to change that.
She just quietly does what she can to help keep me safe.
Jesus fucking Christ, I love that woman.
Anyway, we made our way down to the festival.
Sage & Ink was being held at a place called The Block in Rio Rancho, and I'd never been there before.
Holy fuck, what a cool place.
Imagine a bunch of businesses operating out of shipping containers, arranged around a central courtyard with seating and a stage. Food, drinks, little shops, people milling around, and this wonderfully informal atmosphere that makes you want to hang out for a while.
I'm sold.
I'll be going back.
We found our spot and started setting up the table.
And when I say we, what I really mean is Dawna did a hell of a lot of the work while I tried to look like I knew what the fuck I was doing.
She was arranging things, helping get everything organized, making sure we had what we needed, and generally being the kind of person who sees something that needs doing and just fucking does it.
No fanfare. No expectation of applause.
She just does it.
And once everything was set up, she sat down beside me.
And stayed.
For the entire fucking day.
She took pictures. She posted on Facebook. She promoted the festival and encouraged people to come out. She talked about my books and what I was trying to accomplish.
She believed in me.
Not in that polite way people sometimes say they believe in you because it seems like the supportive thing to say.
She genuinely, wholeheartedly, enthusiastically fucking believed in me.
And every time I caught her doing something to support me, I felt something inside my chest tighten.
Because I don't know that I've ever experienced love quite like this.
Now, there's something you should understand about me.
I'm not particularly good at handling overwhelming emotions.
Oh, I can write about them. Give me a keyboard and a little time, and I can probably find a thousand words to explain exactly what I'm feeling.
But put me in front of the woman I love, let those feelings start bubbling up, and suddenly my mouth becomes a malfunctioning fucking appliance.
I say the dumbest shit.
Things that sounded perfectly reasonable in my head come tumbling out as some incomprehensible combination of affection, profanity, and complete fucking nonsense.
And Dawna?
She laughs.
God, I love hearing her laugh.
She'll smile at me, sometimes shake her head a little, and then she'll reach over and take my hand, or hug me, or kiss me.
As though the stupid shit I just said somehow made perfect sense to her.
And maybe it does.
Maybe she's figured out that when my words start falling apart, it's usually because my heart has gotten ahead of my brain.
I don't know.
But I know I will never get tired of seeing her smile.
Or hearing her laugh.
Or feeling her hand find mine.
And yesterday, sitting there together at that little book festival, I kept finding myself falling in love with her all over again.
Now, let's talk about the weather for a minute.
Because apparently, I'm a fucking idiot.
It's November.
And when I left home on the motorcycle, it was cold. Cold enough that I was wearing my leathers and appreciating every bit of protection they provided against the morning air.
But here's the thing about New Mexico.
The sun doesn't give a flying fuck what month it is.
When that southwestern sun comes out, it gets down to business.
And there I was, sitting outside in black leather, slowly roasting like some kind of poorly planned Thanksgiving turkey.
So I started peeling off layers.
Jacket. Other layers. Whatever I could reasonably remove without turning the book festival into an entirely different sort of public event.
And you would think that after living in the Southwest for twenty-five fucking years, a person who is particularly sensitive to the sun might understand the importance of sunscreen.
You would think.
Nope.
Not me.
I managed to get a fucking sunburn.
In November.
At a book festival.
Because apparently, surviving a catastrophic motorcycle accident doesn't necessarily mean I've developed the common sense to stay out of the fucking sun.
Anyway.
At some point during the day, I looked up and saw a familiar face walking toward our table.
A mutual friend of ours.
He'd driven all the way down from Jemez Springs to Rio Rancho to support me.
And why?
Because Dawna had told him about the festival.
She'd reached out. She'd encouraged him to come. And he actually made the drive.
I was floored.
Here's this woman who believes in me so much that she's not just showing up herself. She's bringing other people into my little world, encouraging them to support what I'm doing, and helping me build something that, until recently, existed mostly as a dream inside my own fucking head.
And I don't think she has any idea how much that means to me.
We ate some really good food, had some drinks, talked with people, and generally enjoyed the day while the Albuquerque sun continued its relentless campaign to turn me into fucking jerky.
And throughout the afternoon, the organizers were doing these little author presentations on stage.
I don't remember what they called them. Writer bits? Author bites? Some clever little name that has completely escaped me.
The idea was simple.
Authors could get up on stage and have fifteen seconds to pitch themselves and their work.
Fifteen seconds.
Are you fucking kidding me?
I can't introduce my motorcycle in fifteen seconds.
Hell, I probably can't tell somebody my name and what I had for breakfast without wandering off into some completely unrelated story about government overreach, the price of coffee, or why everybody else on the road drives like a fucking moron.
And originally, I'd thought maybe this was an opportunity to read something from one of my books.
Then I heard fifteen seconds.
Oh.
Well, fuck that.
Besides, I was nervous.
There. I said it.
I was nervous about getting up on stage and talking about myself
Which is ridiculous, really, considering that I spend an extraordinary amount of time writing about myself and then publishing it for complete strangers to read.
But writing is different.
Writing gives me time to think. To find the words. To decide exactly what I want to say.
Standing on a stage with a microphone and fifteen seconds to convince people that I'm worth listening to?
That's a whole different fucking animal.
So I stayed at the table.
And Dawna kept bringing it up.
Not nagging. Not pushing. Not making me feel bad about being nervous.
Just gently reminding me that the opportunity was there.
And then, as the last round of author pitches approached, she looked at me with those beautiful green eyes and asked, "Are you going up?"
Well, fuck.
How the hell am I supposed to say no to that?
And here's the remarkable thing.
She didn't make me feel like I had to do it.
She made me feel like I could do it.
There's a difference.
A huge fucking difference.
Somehow, this woman can reach into whatever mess of nerves and uncertainty I've got rattling around inside me and manufacture courage out of thin fucking air.
I don't know how she does it.
But she does.
So I got up.
I went on stage.
And I gave my little fifteen-second pitch.
Was it brilliant? Was it polished? Did I suddenly transform into some charismatic literary superstar who had the entire audience hanging on every word?
Fuck if I know.
I did it.
And that was enough.
Dawna recorded the whole thing.
Then she posted it on social media, tagged me, and wrote something that damn near broke me.
"I'm so fucking proud of you."
Six words.
Six little fucking words.
And I swear to God, I could have cried.
Because here's this woman who has seen me at my best and my worst, who knows how much writing means to me, who understands how badly I want to make something of this dream, and who is genuinely proud of me for getting up on a stage and taking fifteen seconds to tell the world who I am.
Not because I sold a thousand books.
Not because I won some prestigious literary award.
Not because I'd accomplished anything particularly remarkable by anybody else's standards.
Because I tried.
Because I stepped outside my comfort zone.
Because I did something that scared me a little.
And she was proud of me.
Jesus fucking Christ.
How did I get so lucky?
Eventually, the festival wound down, and it was time to pack everything up.
And once again, Dawna took charge.
I was talking with a small publisher who had a table at the event, trying to get some information and maybe make a connection that could help me down the road.
And while I was doing that, Dawna was breaking down our display.
Packing things away.
Loading the car.
Getting everything ready to go.
By the time I got back to the table, she'd practically finished the whole fucking job.
And I stood there looking at her, thinking about everything she'd done that day.
She'd helped me prepare. She'd promoted the event. She'd sat beside me all day. She'd encouraged me to get on stage. She'd brought a friend down to support me. She'd taken pictures and shared them. She'd made sure everything was taken care of while I talked to somebody about my writing career.
And she hadn't asked for a fucking thing in return.
She was just there.
For me.
We eventually made our way home, tired and a little sunburned, and went to bed early.
It had been a long day.
A good day.
One of those days that probably wouldn't look particularly extraordinary to anybody watching from the outside.
A couple gets up, has coffee, goes to a book festival, spends the day together, packs up, and goes home.
Big fucking deal.
Except it was.
To me, it was an enormous fucking deal.
Because somewhere along the way, after all the years of figuring out who I was, after all the heartbreak and the mistakes and the times I thought I had everything figured out only to discover I didn't know a goddamned thing, I found someone who loves me.
Not some imaginary version of me.
Not the woman she thinks I might become if she can just fix a few things.
Me.
The motorcycle-riding, foul-mouthed, stubborn, occasionally ridiculous woman who writes too much, thinks too much, gets nervous about fifteen-second speeches, and apparently can't be trusted to remember sunscreen in fucking November.
She loves that woman.
And even more astonishingly, she believes in her.
She believes in my writing. In my dreams. In my ability to build something meaningful out of all these words that keep pouring out of me.
And when I doubt myself, she doesn't lecture me about confidence or tell me to get over it.
She just takes my hand.
She looks at me with those beautiful green eyes.
And somehow, I find the courage to try.
It's three o'clock in the fucking morning now.
Dawna is sleeping beside me, breathing softly, completely unaware that I'm lying here trying to find the words to explain what she means to me.
And the funny thing is, I'm a writer.
Words are supposed to be my thing.
But right now, none of them seem quite big enough.
I could write about gratitude. About companionship. About the incredible comfort of knowing there's someone beside you who genuinely wants to see you succeed.
I could write about how she protects me on the road, how she makes me laugh, how she holds my hand in public without hesitation, and how she somehow makes even an ordinary cup of coffee feel like something worth remembering.
I could write a thousand fucking pages about this woman.
And I still don't think I'd get it quite right.
Because what I'm feeling isn't really about the book festival.
Or the motorcycle ride.
Or the fifteen seconds on stage.
It's about waking up every morning and knowing that I'm not facing the world alone anymore.
Not because I can't.
I've spent most of my life proving that I fucking can.
But because I don't have to.
And there's something so profoundly beautiful about that, it brings me right to the edge of tears.
I don't know what the future holds for my writing career. Maybe I'll sell a lot of books. Maybe I'll find an audience. Maybe one day I'll actually make a living doing this thing I love so fucking much.
Or maybe I'll keep plugging away, writing my stories, sharing my thoughts, and hoping somebody out there finds something worthwhile in them.
I don't know.
But I know something else.
Whatever happens, I've already found something more valuable than any book deal, any bestseller list, or any amount of recognition.
I've found a woman who believes in me.
A woman who protects me when I'm riding, encourages me when I'm nervous, laughs when my mouth starts producing complete fucking nonsense, and stands beside me while I chase a dream that sometimes feels impossibly far away.
And somehow, impossibly, she loves me as much as I love her.
So here I am.
Three o'clock in the fucking morning.
Listening to the woman I love breathe.
Trying not to wake her while I write about how much she means to me.
And realizing that for all the things I've survived, all the things I've accomplished, and all the things I still hope to do, maybe the most extraordinary thing that's ever happened to me is lying right here beside me.
Sound asleep.
Completely unaware that she's the reason my heart is so fucking full tonight.
And tomorrow morning, when she wakes up, I'll probably try to tell her all of this.
And I'll probably say something really fucking stupid.
And she'll laugh.
God, I fucking love that laugh.
