“I know it did, but you helped shape what it is now,” I tell him while touching his face, fingertips tracing his cheekbones and his lips, the elegant bridge of nose. “I would have been great, but you made me even better.”

“Oh, terribly romantic.” As he speaks, I pop open the top few buttons of his shirt so I can press my palms to his hairy chest, then up to the sides of his neck and then back down. “Serenade you, ha? Is that what you’d like.”