"I gave up ballet, you know?"

Her naked body is tangled with mine, and her breathing is still ragged. We haven't said a single word since we got up to my room, and even though I haven't been precisely counting them, the fact that the party has officially died downstairs lets me know it was a few hours ago.

I look down at her and she's not looking at me. Instead, she is utterly focused on tracing the outlines of the butterfly on my stomach with her fingers. And for a few moments I think that, either I heard her wrong, or she thinks that she didn't say those words out loud.

"What do you mean? Why? What happened?" I ask, suddenly worried, and she tilts her head up to meet my eyes. "Did you get hurt again?"

She smiles at me crookedly, shaking her head and then putting a soft kiss on my collarbone.

"No. But a year is like a decade in ballet." She says with a half smile I could spend my life trying to kiss it into a full one. "And I just couldn't keep up."

"Are you okay?" I ask, and it sounds more like I'm telling her that she will be. "I must have been a hard decision to make."

She sighs and nods her head, snuggling closer to me and reaching up to kiss me. I kiss her back, and I find myself trying to swallow down the knot that just took shape in my throat thinking that I couldn't be by her side when she had to make that choice.

"I've made harder ones, and quite badly." She laughs, hiding her face on the crook of my neck. "But I know this one is the right one. I'm still dancing, though. And that's what really matters."

We talk about her for a while; she tells me, with surprisingly funny details, about the torture those ballet classes were for her, and how out of place she felt.

She tells me about her new classes and how, once the sadness of giving up her first love and dream subsided, and the pressure became significantly lower, she started to remember how much fun and liberating dancing actually is.

All I have to do is look into her eyes and, although there's still a trace of melancholy that I'm sure will never be erased from them, I believe her when she says she's accepted it. I believe her when she she says she's even happy.

"What about you?" She suddenly changes the subject, sliding her arm across my waist, under the sheets. "I gather your album is ready to see the light. How you feel about it?"

I take in a deep breath, brushing my hair away in a gesture that apparently will never go away, no matter how long it's been since the length of it was actually a nuisance.

"I feel good, actually." I respond, feeling a bit coy all of a sudden, so I decide to focus my attention on the Pink Floyd poster poorly taped to the door. "It's really... honest, I guess. Maybe a little bit too much, if I think about it. It wasn't exactly comfortable having my mum listening to it, that's for sure."

I chuckle at the thought, knowing that most of the euphemisms I used in the lyrics would probably fly over her head, but when I look at Lea again, her face is serious and almost blank.

"I suppose it's a good thing no one really knew who I was, then." She says, trying and failing to sound chill about it. "They'd be asking for my head otherwise."

I look at her and chew my bottom lip, considering whether or not I should say the next words.

"Do you want to listen to it?" I ask her, and my heart begins to pick up the pace.

"I don't know... you tell me." And her voice is a strange mixture of curiosity and dread. "Do I? Maybe I had enough with what a heard tonight."

Knowing that I might regret suggesting this in the first place, I roll to grab my phone from the nightstand, and after plugging the earphones, I carefully put one in her ear and the other in mine.

"You can have the deluxe version, with commentary." I joke, hoping that it will put her mind at ease, and in the process, do the same with mine.

I want her to listen to the songs, I want her to know what it has been like to habit this skin since the moment I laid eyes on her; the good parts and the bad and ones. Without any reproaches, without passing judgements; just the truth.

"How lucky am I?" She retorts, bumping her shoulder against mine when I cozy myself next to her.

"Very, actually. You'll be the only one who knows what the songs are really about." I assure her, scrolling down the tracks while I pick the perfect order in which I think she should hear them. "For you, I'll leave nothing open to interpretation."

I tap play and there goes my voice in a thinly whispering tone, along with my heart.

Two, three, four...

*****

The notes of the final song fade away, and she's just staring blindly at the wall, while I just stare a this lonely tear sliding down her cheek before it dies at the corner of her tightly closed lips.

As soon as it does, probably because of the salty taste of it, it's like she realizes she's crying, and snaps out of it to wipe any trace of it from her face.

"It's... I don't..." I am literally holding my breath as she stumbles her words into a sentence, but there's something in her body language that, even though I can't fully read, makes me feel safe. "I don't think I've ever heard something... quite like this before. Not lately, at least."

"So, you liked it?" I ask her, rather dubious of her ambiguous comment.

"Liked it? Harry, please!" She finally looks at me, a little bit outraged that I even asked that question. "As if you didn't know already you have a bloody masterpiece in your hands. I mean, I don't want to sound that surprised, because I've always known how talented you are... but still, this is something else entirely. This is a already a classic."

I study her expression for a moment, lingering on how her eyes still glimmer with unshed tears, and I bite my lip.

And in that moment I realize that, even though I always knew that her opinion was more than important to me, it is the only one that truly matters.

"Really? You don't think it's too... personal?"

She laughs shortly but loudly, and her eyebrows lift in an amused expression.

"Personal? You might as well have slashed your chest open and ripped your heart right out of it." She states, and I can't help but to shiver at little.

This is getting too real. The notion that everyone who listens to this album will get such a clear glimpse of what lurks inside my mind.

"And are you... okay with that?" I hesitate, as if I was asking for her permission rather than her opinion. "I mean, it is mostly about you after all."

Her smile suddenly turns into a frown. A very pensive, reflective frown, and I'm suddenly wondering what I would do if she actually says she's not okay with it.

"It's not about me, though." She shrugs sheepishly. "It's about you. The things you went through, the way you felt. Was it because of me? Yes. But those were your experiences and feelings to draw from. That's what you should do, right? That's what you're entitled to. Besides... we never really talked about those things and I guess that's what you just did when when you made me listen."

Every single second, since the very moment she appeared before me, as this cute girl with hair like flames and a freckled nose who carried flowers, to this exact same instant, flashes through my mind like a movie, putting a name to each feeling I experienced.

First, it was curiosity. Something about the way she moved, like she was floating instead of walking. Something about the way she spoke, as if there was a secret about myself that only she knew about but she could share it with me if I would ask nicely.

Then came attraction; physical and emotional. That need to be near her, to touch her, to hold and kiss her, to unveil everything there was to know about her.

And then, once I did, once I discovered who she was and got a glimpse of who I could be by her side, came the love. Irreversible and endless.

This is my home; right where I am now.

And I'm not talking about this house, this room or this bed. I am talking about her arms wrapped around me, her beating heart against mine, and her legs twisted around me.

I'm talking about her and the way her voice always cradles me into a blissful slumber I would gladly step into if I wasn't so damn scared I could find her gone by the time I would open my eyes again.

This is where I want to be, now and forever. And waiting another year for that forever to finally start, if up until a few hours ago seemed like a hard thing to do, now it's just indisputably impossible.