That L Word Again

"You kissed my fingers and you made me love you."
- The Tragically Hip, Last Night I Dreamed You Didn't Love Me

I love Wrecking Ball. I told him so on Wednesday afternoon. He didn't say it back, but I didn't expect him to. I didn't want him to. Even though it reminded me of Cowboy, I just wanted him to know that that's how I feel, and because he didn't say it back, I am more likely to believe him if he ever does say it. Because if he had said it back, I would worry endlessly that he only said it because I did.

There is a river that runs through our city. On Monday, Wrecking Ball and I were spending the day together and we went down to the water's edge to play with the ice. Eventually, we were pushing a large sheet of ice with long sticks, trying to get the ice caught in the current. We got it going, but the ice started to spin and part of it got caught on another sheet of ice farther down the shore. We ran over and climbed back down the rocks, pushing the ice to free it. Just as we succeeded, the rock my foot was on decided it wasn't sturdy after all, and I fell in the river. No, that's an exaggeration. But my leg was in icy water deeper than my knee. I climbed out and ran to a flat patch of cement and took my shoe off. I started walking in circles to get the water off of my sock. He picked my shoe up and started swinging it, which made the water slosh out with every rotation (thanks, we figured out, to the same principle that keeps water in a bucket when you swing it). After a few minutes, he passed me the shoe so he could check his bag for a plastic bag that I could use to prevent having to put my foot directly into the squishy, damp shoe. I held my shoe in the same place he had, but I barely wanted to touch it because it was moist and dirty. I swung it around a bit, but my arm grew tired almost right away. He came and took it back and kept swinging. I wondered if anyone else I knew would do that for me. Then I was hit suddenly with a memory of a few nights before, when he told me that when I'm sleeping, if I roll away, he'll follow me because he knows I like to wake up still in his arms if that's how I fall asleep.

Some combination of those two thoughts just aligned everything for me, and I knew I love him. I barely stopped smiling for the rest of the day, even while I was at work. But I was afraid to tell him. I thought about it all day Tuesday and much of Wednesday before I made up my mind to tell him. What made me decide to tell him how I feel was the thought that he deserves to know that I feel that strongly towards him, and that I thought he might like to know I care about him that much.

That, and I couldn't blog about the afternoon and its revelation if I didn't tell him first. :)