My mom and stepfather absolutely loved Amanda from the moment they met her.
Amanda helped my mom cook dinner, and within a short time, they were talking and joking around like they were old friends. I couldn't help but smile as I thought about how domestic it all seemed. My overactive imagination jumped ahead to thoughts of the future, about what it would be like to live with Amanda.
Dinner was great, and Amanda offered to help clean up after. My mom insisted that Amanda was a guest and didn't have to, but Amanda was already collecting plates and insisted even harder that she would help. As my mom followed Amanda into the kitchen carrying the rest of the dishes, she whispered, "She's a keeper."
We moved to the living room, and I couldn't help but smile as my mom started telling Amanda another embarrassing story of my childhood. Amanda held my hand the entire time. Ever since my father passed away, things had never seemed the same. Even though she didn't remarry until I was nearly eighteen, it still had been hard for me to get used to her being with someone else. She may have been able to find a new husband, but I was never going to be able to get my dad back. Amanda could tell whenever I felt myself slipping into a dark mood, and with a squeeze of my hand and a smile, I would start to feel better.
My mom asked if we would like a drink.
"We aren't twenty-one," I said.
"Come on. You are going to be spending the night here. Are you sure you won't have one drink?"
I looked to Amanda to check if she wanted one. I wasn't much of a drinker and didn't want to drink if she wasn't going to have one.
"I will take one," she said.
"Ok, me too."
"Great!" My mom said happily and disappeared into the kitchen. While we said we would only have one drink, we had never specified how big of a drink it would be, and my mom took advantage of that loophole. She came back, holding a giant Margaretta in each hand.
After setting down the drinks, my mom disappeared and returned with a stack of board games and a deck of cards. By the time I had half of my strawberry margarita, it was already getting hard for me to focus on what we were playing. I spent the rest of the round more focused on my drink than the game. I lost badly. I felt pleasantly warm all over, and I could feel the big stupid grin on my face.
Amanda finished her drink during the next round we played. We both lost that one. As Amanda leaned heavily against me and her already bubbly personality shined even brighter, I started to think that she was even more of a lightweight than I was. My mom excused herself, and when she came back, she held a blender in her hands and topped off both of our glasses without asking. We played games into the night. The matches became more about not doing better than your opponents but ensuring you didn't do worse than them.
My stepdad excused himself first. He had work in the morning and had to go to sleep. It was close to midnight when my mom said that she was tired and went to sleep. Amanda and I lay on the couch for a time. We were tired but too tired to get up and go to the guest bedroom prepared for us. I was sitting on the deep couch, and Amanda was lying with her head in my lap. I twirled a finger through her golden silken hair.
"I love you," she said thoughtfully.
"I love you too," I said. I saw a tear well up in her eyes, making them glisten as the first tears started to fall. "Hey, what's wrong? Why are you crying?"
"Things have been going so perfectly, and I want us to last forever, but I am scared it won't."
"Why do you think that?" I asked her.
"It's just all too good to be true. I had a crush on the one boy who was nice to me. The hope of one day running into you again already seemed like a crazy one, and then the hope of us somehow being together seemed like an even crazier dream. Still, they were ones that I was happy to have because as long as you were a fantasy, there was no way that I could lose hope. And then it finally happens. We reconnect, start dating, and fall in love. Everything is so much better than what I ever could have imagined. It is great but also makes the fear of losing you much greater."
"I've thought the same thing," I confessed.
"You have?"
"Yeah, I was alone for so long. I never really thought that there was someone out there for me. It wasn't even something that made me sad anymore. I had just accepted it, and then you appeared in my life. I find myself overwhelmed by how much I love you. There are so many times when I see you smile, hear your laugh, or when we are making love that I think how incredibly lucky I was to find you," I said.
"So we both think we were lucky to find each other?" Amanda summarized.