We sat at dinner. It was absolutely delicious which was a major consolation for the frigid wind that had struck my face numb and consequently caused my speech to slur. We talked easily and we joked; we discovered things and we dreamed. It sounds silly to admit, but I felt witty, desirable, even flirtatious. After four years of knowing each other and nearly three years of dating, those things lose their priority. It’s hard to keep them up and it becomes less important.
At one point, to my utter surprise, he revealed that he doesn’t think he’s good enough for me. “Really?! But I thought that you thought you were the sh*t!” I joked, almost embarrassed. “Yeah! Why do you think I’m trying to lock it down so quickly?” he quipped. I was laughing but I wanted to squeeze him. I felt I was witnessing something unique, almost foreign. “How, after all of the awful things you’ve seen in me, can you think that?” “Because I’m worse.” That wasn’t a horrifying confession nor was it false modesty. It was humility and honest vulnerability, far more attractive than any confidence he displays. And he is quite confident, or I should say, he doesn’t let the opinions of others get him down. I admire that but I always wanted to know he was one of the humans.