I Meant It

His humour matched mine.

Subtle, dark but not morbid.

Sharp at times, definitely dry, and just right of centre.

The kind most people miss or interpret as something dull or vaguely offensive.

For once, I didn’t have to sand myself down or smooth the edges of my jokes.

Messages turned into hours. 

Hours turned into plans. 

And then he appeared one morning on the Ducati, random parts of a picnic stuffed into his backpack, like he’d decided this ten minutes earlier and committed fully anyway.

My phone buzzed.

Lucien: You okay?

I put my phone away.

I was meant to be attending an event with him that weekend.

I didn’t reply.

We stopped by the Murray River, wandered to a grassy spot under a tall shady tree.

He laid out the blanket. Champagne. Strawberries. Pineapple.

Sunlight moved across the water in bright, lovely patterns. The breeze kept catching my hair, pulling me slightly out of myself and then back again.

We talked for hours.

About what, I couldn’t tell you.

It didn’t feel like conversation. It felt like weightlessness.

Time loosened around him. Lost its edges.

As the light shifted towards late afternoon, he sat up and looked at me.

Shy. Open. Almost unsure of himself.

“Would you be my girlfriend?”

Just like that.

No lead-in. No context. No weight.

Then he kissed me.

Soft.

Careful.

Warm.

My body responded before my brain had a chance to ask any useful questions.

For once, I wasn’t anticipating, planning, managing.

I just… stopped.

Later that night, I drew him.

The crooked grin. The messy hair. That look that sat somewhere between boyish and knowing.

I didn’t overthink it. I didn’t need to.

The lines came easily.

The next day, I cancelled the event with Lucien.

Last minute.

Clean cut.

In my mind, that was the right thing to do.

I’d said yes to Dion.

And when I say yes, I mean it.

He hadn’t asked anything else.

No plans. No next step. No shift in pace.

Just the question.

And I had built the rest.

I felt it was trust.

That he’d offered something simple and genuine, and I was meeting him there with the same.

That this was what it looked like when something just worked.

I was in.