“Maggie, look at me,” I said softly as she continued to cry into my chest.

I sat up and held her away from me, even though all I wanted was to hold her. But I needed her to look at me when I said what I had to say.

“Maggie, damn it, look at me,” I said harshly, feeling a little out of control with this whole situation. The fact that she could even for one second think that was too much. I couldn’t stomach the thought of her feeling pain over something so completely ridiculous.

Maggie finally looked at me, her eyes red and puffy. I kissed her mouth, her eyes, her cheeks. I rubbed my nose with hers and clasped my hands around the back of her neck.

“Mags, I’m in this forever. You are my future, my always. How could you ever think that? Everything I’m doing here is to make a life with you. Sure I’m learning to live for myself too, but there’s nothing without you. It’s what gets me out of bed in the morning. You are what keeps me going through the day and your face is what I see when I go to sleep at night. If there is one thing in this messed up universe you can count on, it’s my love for you. It’s constant. It’s endless. And it’s never going anywhere,” I swear.

Maggie is crying even harder now and this is not how I wanted our time together to be. I didn’t want us sitting in a hotel room while Maggie cried.

“You’ve just been so distant since I went to school. Being away from you is so hard, Clay. I start to imagine things and think things that drive me nuts.” I laughed and Maggie glared at me.

I hold up my hands. “Sorry, I’m not laughing at you. It’s just, I’ve been trying not to be an over the top jealous boyfriend. The first time I saw those guys in your room I wanted to fly up there and beat the shit out of them. Every time I think of you living your life without me, I start to think that maybe you’ll leave me. That you’ll realize that what we have is too hard. Too complicated. Not being able to hold you every day is the worst kind of torture. It’s all I can do not to lose it some days.” Maggie starts to look panicked again but I silence her with a kiss.

“But then I remember why I’m fighting so hard to begin with. For you. For me. For what we are building together. And then I can get through the day.” Maggie had finally stopped crying and she was smiling. Just a tiny grin but it was there all the same. I placed her palm over my heart.

“I told you once that this was yours. There’s no giving it back. Even if you decided you didn’t want it anymore, it would still only ever belong to you,” I said. I knew with a certainty, soul deep, that our love was more than a moment.

It was a lifetime.

9

“Wake up, Mags. It’s Christmas,” Clay whispered in my ear, nuzzling my neck with his lips. I burrowed down into the covers and grumbled. I was not a morning person and I was even less a morning person when I had only been asleep for what felt like a few hours.

Even if the reason for my lack of sleep was kissing the skin below my ear, sending pulsating waves of warmth throughout my body.

After my crazy cry-fest last night, we had decided to get out of the hotel for a while. We went and saw a showing of Ernest Saves Christmas at the dollar theater a few blocks away. We had eaten our weight in junk food and laughed like little kids the whole time.

Afterwards, Clay decided he wanted to go to the Sea World Christmas Celebration. I had wrinkled my nose at the idea but he was persistent. So we ended up paying for overpriced tickets and sitting through cheesy Christmas carols and fake snow falling into the stands.

It was completely over the top and so not my thing, but Clay seemed to be having a great time so I set aside my sarcasm and enjoyed it for what it was.

By the time the show was finished it was getting dark, so we went to get some dinner and then drove around looking at Christmas lights. We stopped to get some hot chocolate, which was a little unnecessary given that it was still eighty degrees at ten o’clock at night, but Clay was insistent.

He was boyishly embracing all things Christmas and I couldn’t remember a time I had seen him so excited and exuberant. By the time we got back to the room, we were exhausted.

Though not so exhausted that we were willing to waste the time we had together. We were frenzied and almost frantic as we removed each other’s clothing. We were a blur of tongues and teeth. Nails scraping, hands grasping.

Clay had laid me down on the bed and braced himself over me as he pressed his hips against mine. After the desperation we had experienced in getting ourselves to that point, it was with heart shattering tenderness that Clay pushed inside me, filling me completely.

We had made love with an aching gentleness that brought tears to both of our eyes. We stayed up most of the night, talking, touching, loving until we had fallen asleep exhausted yet deliriously happy.

“Please, Maggie. Wake up,” Clay nipped at my ear, tracing his tongue down the side of my neck, making me shiver. I rolled onto my back and looked up at my boyfriend, who was wearing a contagious grin.

He settled himself over top of me and softly kissed my temple, nuzzling my hair with his nose. “Merry Christmas, baby,” he said, his breath causing gooseflesh to break out over my skin.

“Merry Christmas,” I replied, wrapping my legs around his waist, very aware of the fact that we hadn’t bothered to get dressed before passing out.

Without preamble, Clay sank inside me slowly and deliberately. I arched my back, groaning deep and low. As we started to move our bodies together, Clay whispered, “Best Christmas ever.”