You Give Me What I've Never Had

There's this little thing that we all strive to have, to find. After a hard day's work, after tough times. And after pain.

This little thing is called happiness and in all my years of existence I had only known it once for a few hours. In the arms of my father in the California sea. Warmed in the sun and surrounded by the ocean I felt transcendent, like I wasn't even real.

I closed my eyes for a second it seemed and it was gone. The water was there and the sun was there. But I wasn't and the feeling wasn't. I tried to find that feeling again. I snorted and shot up and swallowed all sorts of fucked up shit to find it again. Vicodins and Perc 30s, coke. You name it, I used it. It didn't matter how much crazy fucking shit I pumped through my veins. I could never find that feeling.

But I'm lying. Because I felt it when I looked at you. I loved you for ten years and never told you. A decade changed you from that cute little girl to this beautiful woman I could never have.

I watched you every day. In the morning and after class. During lunch break. The way your sky blue eyes caught the light of the sun, how you bit your raspberry lips from time to time. The way your clothes clung to your creamy white skin. How your shirts were never quite long enough. How you often didn't wear a bra.

All I ever thought about when I jacked off in the morning was your breasts under your blouse, pert and small. What I would do to hold them, to feel them against my mouth.

You'd smile and all I could think was how good it would feel to be inside you. To feel you writhe underneath me while I kissed you. To feel your hips rock into mine as I moved in you.

I knew you'd never choose me. Out of all the guys at O.C. High, the attractive, athletic, and outgoing. Why would you ever like the shy, awkward boy who dressed like a scary Manson wannabe?

But then I was wrong about that too, because you did choose me.

And even though my dad died that summer and everything I had worked for came crashing down I still had you. You held my hand, pressed gentle kisses against my lips, wrapped you arms around me and lay your head over my heart-beat. You touched my face and wiped away my tears.

And eventually you let me show you how much I loved you. I had never felt so purely happy, and peaceful, and perfect as when I was inside you. My body hummed at the touch of yours, my viens were on fire with the heat of you. The feeling of floating, the heaviness of my eyelids, the ache inside me that could be only cured by touching you.

I had never felt as alive as when my hips rocked into yours, deep, slow strokes in you until my head spun and my body sang in brilliant orgasm.

I was finally happy.

It didn't matter how many times I relapsed. You were always there to say you loved me, to touch me, to kiss me and make love, to run your hands over my face. Your fingers would move over my closed eyes, tracing the seam where my skin met my eyelashes.

And even then I still didn't know what it meant to be purely and completely happy. Not until after we got married. Not until I felt our baby kicking against my palm through your skin.

I didn't even know what the word happy meant until I got the chance to be the father my dad never was.

In the beginning I had only known what it meant to be happy for a few hours, but because of you now I have an entire lifetime.

You saved me, Alyssa.

Thank you.

I love you.

Alyssa wiped the tears off her cheeks, clinging the letter to her heart, her eyes turned up to the sky, silently thanking whatever God existed . There had never been anything, anyone she had wanted to help more than Sam. And now she knew she finally had. She stood up from her porch swing. Her eyes settling on him sitting on the grass of their front yard, their baby boy on his lap giggling as he feathered kisses on the little boy's nearly bald head. Their three year old daughter sitting beside him and giggling as well.

She called out to him. "Sam!"

He planted one more kiss on his son's head and then he looked up, gorgeous blue eyes meeting hers. "What?"

But she couldn't find the words to say. She didn't want to. The moment was too perfect. Instead she shook her head. "Nothing."

He gazed at her lovingly for a moment.

Then he resumed playing with their boy.

She walked over to him and he looked up at her, more handsome than ever. It had been ten years, but he still looked all of sixteen. She lay her head on his shoulder. He took her hand in his, threading his fingers through hers.

Her voice was soft.

"I love you too."