All Your Perfects

by Colleen Hoover

  I’m straddling his lap now, holding his face in my hands. “That was a really sweet gift,” I whisper. “Thank you.”

  “You’re welcome.”

  “I didn’t get you a gift. I didn’t know I was getting married today so I didn’t have time to shop.”

  Graham slides my hair over my shoulder and presses his lips against the skin of my neck. “I can’t think of a single gift in the world I would push you off my lap for.”

  “What if I bought you a huge flat screen TV? I bet you’d push me off your lap for a flat screen.”

  He laughs against my neck. “Nope.” His hand slides up my stomach until he’s cupping my breast.

  “What about a new car?”

  He slowly drags his lips up my throat. When his mouth reaches mine, he whispers hell no against my lips. He tries to kiss me, but I pull back just enough.

  “What if I bought you one of those fancy calculators that cost like two grand? I bet you’d push me off your lap for math.”

  Graham slides his hands down my back. “Not even for math.” His tongue pushes between my lips and he kisses me with such assurance, my head starts to spin. And for the next half hour, that’s all we do. We make out like teenagers on the outdoor balcony.

  Graham eventually stands up, holding me against him without breaking our kiss. He carries me inside and lays me down on the bed. He turns out the light and pushes the sliding glass door all the way open so we can hear the waves as they crash against the shore.

  When he returns to the bed, he pulls off my clothes, one piece at a time, ripping my shirt in the process. He kisses his way down my neck and down my throat, all the way to my thighs, giving attention to every single part of me.

  When he finally makes it back to my mouth, he tastes like me.

  I roll him onto his back and return the favor until I taste like him.

  When he spreads my legs and connects us, it feels different and new, because it’s the first time we’ve made love as husband and wife.

  He’s still inside me when the first ray of sun begins to peek out from the ocean.

  Chapter Twenty-eight

  * * *

  Now

  Graham does nothing after I open the box. He just stands next to me in silence as I grab the envelope with his name on it. I slide it to him and look back down in the box.

  I lift the envelope with my name on it, assuming it would be the only thing left inside the box since all we put in it before closing it were these two letters. But beneath our two letters, there are a few more letters, all addressed to me with dates on them. He’s been adding letters. I look up at him, silently questioning him.

  “There were things I needed to say that you never really wanted to hear.” He grabs his envelope and walks out the back door, onto Ava and Reid’s back porch. I take the box to the guest bedroom and close the door.

  I sit alone on the bed, holding the only envelope from him that I expected to find in the box. The one from our wedding night. He wrote the date in the top right corner of the envelope. I open the other envelopes and I pile the pages on top of each other in the order they were written. I’m too scared to read any of it. Too scared not to.

  When we locked this box all those years ago, there wasn’t a doubt in my mind that we wouldn’t need to open it before our twenty-fifth wedding anniversary. But that was back before reality set in. Back before we knew that our dream of having kids would never come true. Back before we knew that the more time that passed and the more devastating moments I experienced and the more Graham made love to me, that it would all start to hurt.

  My hands are shaking as I press the pages to the blanket, smoothing them out. I lift the first page and begin to read it.

  I don’t think I’m prepared for this. I don’t think anyone who gets married for the right reasons ever expects this moment to come. I stiffen like I’m bracing myself for impact as I begin to read.

  Dear Quinn,

  I thought I would have more time to prepare this letter. We aren’t supposed to get married yet, so this gift is all very last minute. I’m not even that great of a writer, so I’m not sure I’m even going to be able to convey what I need to say to you in words. I’m better with numbers, but I don’t want to bore you with a bunch of math equations, like Me plus you equals infinity.

  If you think that’s cheesy, you’re lucky you met me later in life, rather than when I was in junior high. When I was in the seventh grade, I concocted a love poem that I was going to write down and give to my first girlfriend. Thank God it was years later before I actually got my first girlfriend. By then, I realized what a bad idea it was to rhyme a love poem with the Periodic Table of Elements.

  However, I’m so comfortable in my masculinity around you, I think this is the perfect time to finally put that Periodic Table of Elements love poem to use. Because yes, I still remember it. Some of it.

  Hey, girl, you’re looking mighty fine

  Feels like I’m breathing Iodine

  Your smile gets all up in my head

  Feel so heavy, like I’m dragging Lead

  Your skin is smooth, it looks so sleek

  It’s like someone dipped you in Zinc

  Kissing you would never get old

  Marry me girl, I’ll flank you in Gold

  That’s right. You’re the lucky girl who gets to marry the author of that poem today.

  Good thing it’ll be twenty-five years before you read it, because as soon as we’re married this afternoon, I’m never letting you out of this marriage. I’m like Hotel California. You can love Graham any time you like, but you can never leave.

  The minister will be here in two hours. You’re upstairs getting ready for our wedding as I write this letter. On our way here yesterday, we stopped at a bridal store and you made me wait in the car while you ran inside to pick out a wedding dress. When you got back to the car with the dress hidden inside of a garment bag, you couldn’t stop laughing. You said the ladies who were helping you thought you were insane, buying a dress just a day before your wedding. You said they gasped when you told them you’re a procrastinator and that you still haven’t picked out a groom.

  I can’t wait to see what you look like walking down that aisle of sand. It’ll just be you in your dress on a beach with no decorations, no guests, no fanfare. And the entire ocean will be our backdrop. But let’s just pray none of your dream from last night comes true.

  This morning when you woke up, I asked what I had missed while you were sleeping. You told me you had a dream that we were getting married on the beach, but right before we said I do, a tsunami came and washed us away. But we didn’t die. We both turned into aquatic killers. You were a shark and I was a whale, and we were still in love, even though you were a fish and I was a mammal. You said the rest of your dream was just us trying to love one another in an ocean full of creatures who didn’t approve of our interspecies relationship.

  That’s probably my favorite dream of yours to date.

  I’m sitting out here on the patio, writing the love letter I thought I had five more months to write. Part of me is a little nervous because, like I said, I’ve never been much of a writer. My imagination isn’t as wild as yours, as evidenced by the things you dream about. But writing a letter to you about how much I love you should come pretty easily, so hopefully this letter and this gift to you will serve its purpose.

  Honestly, Quinn, I don’t even know where to start. I guess the beginning is the most obvious choice, right?

  I could begin by talking about the day we met in the hallway. The day I realized that maybe my life was thrown off course because fate had something even better in store for me.

  But instead, I’m going to talk about the day we didn’t meet. This will probably come as a surprise to you because you don’t remember it. Or maybe you do have a memory of it but you just didn’t realize it was me.

  It was a few months before we met in the hallway. Ethan’s father held a Christmas party for their employees an
d I was Sasha’s date. You were Ethan’s date. And while I will admit I was still wrapped up in all things Sasha at the time, something about you was engraved in my memory after that night.

  We hadn’t been formally introduced, but you were just a few feet away and I knew who you were because Sasha had pointed you and Ethan out a few minutes before. She said Ethan was in line to be her next boss and you were in line to be his wife.

  You were wearing a black dress with black heels. Your hair was up in a tight bun and I overheard you joking with someone about how you looked just like the caterers. They all wore black and the girls had their hair styled the same way as yours. I don’t know if the catering team was shorthanded that night, but I remember seeing someone walk up to you and ask for a refill on his champagne. Rather than correct him, you just walked behind the bar and refilled his champagne. You then took the bottle and started refilling other people’s glasses. When you finally made it over to me and Sasha, Ethan walked up and asked what you were doing. You told him you were refilling drinks like it was no big deal, but he didn’t like it. I could tell by the look on his face that it embarrassed him. He told you to put down the champagne bottle because there was someone he wanted you to meet. He walked off and I’ll never forget what you did next.

  You turned to me and you rolled your eyes with a laugh, then held up the champagne bottle and offered me a refill.

  I smiled at you and held out my glass. You refilled Sasha’s glass and proceeded to offer refills to other guests until the bottle was finally empty.

  I don’t remember much else about that night. It was a mundane party and Sasha was in a bad mood most of the time so we left early. And to be honest, I didn’t think about you much after that.

  Not until the day I saw you again in the hallway. When you stepped off the elevator and walked toward Ethan’s door, I should have been filled with nothing but absolute dread and disgust over what was happening inside Ethan’s apartment. But for a brief moment, I felt myself wanting to smile when I laid eyes on you. Seeing you reminded me of the party and how easy-going you were. I liked how you didn’t care if people thought you were a caterer or the girlfriend of the Ethan Van Kemp. And it wasn’t until the moment you joined me in the hallway—when your presence somehow brought me to the brink of smiling during the worst moment of my life—that I knew everything would be fine. I knew that my inevitable breakup with Sasha wasn’t going to break me.

  I don’t know why I never told you that. Maybe because I liked the idea of us meeting in a hallway under the same circumstances. Or maybe because I was worried you wouldn’t remember that night at the party or refilling my glass of champagne. Because why would you? That moment held no significance.

  Until it did.

  I would write more about our meeting in the hallway, but you know all about it. Or maybe I could write more about the first night we made love, or the fact that once we finally reconnected, we never wanted to spend a single second apart. Or I could write about the day I proposed to you and you so stupidly agreed to spend the rest of your life with a man who couldn’t possibly give you all that you deserve in this world.

  But I don’t really want to talk about any of that. Because you were there for all of it. Besides, I’m almost positive your love letter to me details every minute of us falling in love, so I’d hate to waste my letter on repeating something you more than likely put into words more eloquently than I ever could.

  I guess that means I’m left with talking about the future.

  If all goes as planned, you’ll be reading this letter on our twenty-fifth wedding anniversary. You might cry a few tears and smear the ink a little. Then you’ll lean over and kiss me and we’ll make love.

  But . . . if for some reason, you’re opening this box because our marriage didn’t work out how we thought it would, let me first tell you how sorry I am. Because I know we wouldn’t read these letters early unless we did absolutely everything we could to prevent it.

  I don’t know if you’ll remember this, but we had a conversation once. I think it was only the second night we spent together. You mentioned how all marriages have Category 5 moments, and how you didn’t think your previous relationship would have made it through those moments.

  I think about that sometimes. About what could make one couple survive a Category 5 moment, but a different couple might not. I’ve thought about it enough to come up with a possible reason.

  Hurricanes aren’t a constant threat to coastal towns. There are more days with great weather and perfect beach days than there are hurricanes.

  Marriages are similar, in that there are a lot of great days with no arguments, when both people are filled with so much love for each other.

  But then you have the threatening-weather days. There might only be a few a year, but they can do enough damage that it takes years to repair. Some of the coastal towns will be prepared for the bad-weather days. They’ll save their best resources and most of their energy so that they’ll be stocked up and prepared for the aftermath.

  But some towns won’t be as prepared. They’ll put all their resources into the good weather days in hopes that the severe weather will never come. It’s the lazier choice and the choice with greater consequences.

  I think that’s the difference in the marriages that survive and the marriages that don’t. Some people think the focus in a marriage should be put on all the perfect days. They love as much and as hard as they can when everything is going right. But if a person gives all of themselves in the good times, hoping the bad times never come, there may not be enough resources or energy left to withstand those Category 5 moments.

  I know without a doubt that we’re going to have so many good moments. No matter what life throws at us, we’re going to make great memories together, Quinn. That’s a given. But we’re also going to have bad days and sad days and days that test our resolve.

  Those are the days I want you to feel the absolute weight of my love for you.

  I promise that I will love you more during the storms than I will love you during the perfect days.

  I promise to love you more when you’re hurting than when you’re happy.

  I promise to love you more when we’re poor than when we’re swimming in riches.

  I promise to love you more when you’re crying than when you’re laughing.

  I promise to love you more when you’re sick than when you’re healthy.

  I promise to love you more when you hate me than when you love me.

  And I promise . . . I swear . . . that I love you more as you read this letter than I did when I wrote it.

  I can’t wait to spend the rest of my life with you. I can’t wait to shine light on all your perfects.

  I love you.

  So much.

  Graham

  * * *

  Dear Quinn,

  I’m going to start this letter off with a little apology. I’m sorry I opened the box again. I’m sorry I needed to write another letter. But I feel like you’ll appreciate it more than you’ll be upset about it.

  Okay, now for math. I know you hate math, but I love it and I need to math for you. It’s been exactly one year to the day since we decided to start a family. Which means there have been approximately 365 days between that day and this one.

  Of those 365 days, we have had sex an average of about 200 days. Roughly four nights a week. Of those 200 days, you were ovulating only 25% of the time. About fifty days. But the chances of a woman getting pregnant while they ovulate is only twenty percent. That’s ten days out of fifty. Therefore, by my calculations, out of the total 365 days that have passed between the day we first started trying and today, only ten of those days counted. Ten is nothing.

  It’s almost like we just started trying.

  I’m only writing this down because I can tell you’re starting to get worried. And I know by the time you read this letter on our 25th anniversary, we’ll probably be just a few years away from being grandparents and none of this math w
ill even be relevant. But just as I want you to remember the perfect days, I feel like I should probably talk a little about our not so perfect days, too.

  You’re asleep on the couch right now. Your feet are in my lap and every now and then, your whole body jerks, like you’re jumping in your dream. I keep trying to write you this letter, but your feet keep knocking my arm, making the pen slide off the page. If my handwriting is shit, it’s your fault.

  You never fall asleep on the couch, but it’s been a long night. Your mother had another one of her fancy charity events. This one was actually kind of fun. It was casino themed and they had all kinds of tables set up where you could gamble. Of course, it was for charity, so you can’t really win, but it was better than a lot of the stuffier events where we have to sit at tables with people we don’t like, and listen to speeches from people who do nothing but brag on themselves.

  The night was fine, but I noticed pretty early on that you were getting drained from the questions. It’s just harmless, casual conversation, but sometimes that casual conversation can be really tiresome. Hurtful, even. I listened, over and over, as people would ask you when we were going to have a baby. Sometimes people just naturally assume pregnancy follows a marriage. But people don’t think about the questions they ask others and they don’t realize how many times someone has already been forced to answer their question.

  The first few times you were asked, you just smiled and said we just started trying.

  But by the fifth or sixth time, your smile was becoming more forced. I started answering for you, but even then, I could see in your eyes that the questions were painful. I just wanted to get you out of there.

  Tonight was the first time I could see your sadness. You’re always so hopeful and positive about it, even when you’re worried. But tonight you seemed like you were over it. Like maybe tonight is going to be the last event we’ll ever attend until we actually do have a baby in our arms.