I didn't love it at first.  I just always thought when I finally bought a house of my own, I'd be a part of the decision making, but it's amazing how fast your feelings can change when you realize that someone loves you enough to want to buy you a house as a surprise.  It wasn't flowers, it wasn't jewelry, it wasn't dinner at my favorite restaurant...it was a house.   

I didn't love it at first.  The screen door bounced backward when we walked in, hitting me on the ass, the red shag carpet was horrible, and the crazy clown painting was creepy and apparently bolted to the wall. There didn't seem like much to love...

But there was this moment as we walked back towards the entrance and passed the small room that used to be his bedroom...when I started to think...imagine...understand...

What would it be like?...A little boy with messy brown hair stumbling out of bed in footed pajamas, his eyes still shut as he rubbed the sleep out of them, eager to find his presents on Christmas morning...in my mind's eye I saw him. Maybe he was ours...Maybe he was Jim...

I don't know. Maybe it was just a product of my newly inspired ‘artist' brain imagining things unrealized. Fantasizing a little too much about something that was very real.

I felt Jim take my hand, leading me outside just as my fantasy and reality came crashing together in a completely overwhelming tidal wave of shock.  I think it would have paralyzed me if he hadn't been propelling me forward out into the sunlight. Whatever this feeling was...I'd never felt anything like it.

I knew in that instant that no one had ever wanted me to be so incredibly close to them before.

Stepping into that garage, turned art studio was better than sex.  I'm not kidding.

This man.  This lover. Wanted me in a way that I'd never been wanted.  They say the thing that every human being secretly desires more than anything else, is to be known...completely.  And here I was being given the opportunity to know him in a way that no one ever had.  Live where he lived. Make memories in a place that already held the most sacred of his.

I didn't love it at first.  It didn't have a terrace. And in my fantasies, it almost always had a terrace.  The thing was, once upon a time I'd been willing to give up the terrace in exchange for far, far less. 

I didn't love it at first.  But Jim...Jim would put the porch on the roof and the oven in the bathroom if he thought that was what I wanted.  There were sketches I hadn't seen in months hanging in that garage - that studio...

Yeah. He bought me a house...