We put the key in the door of our first home and crossed the threshold hand in hand. We had just come from the closing and the house was officially ours, ALL 2,200 square feet of mid-century Ranch amortized at 6.34% for the next 30 years of it. For a couple of dykes, buying a house together is the closest sort of commitment you can get to getting married. Sabrina was feeling sentimental, going through each room and dreaming out loud of what our lives were going to be like; the Virgo in me was feeling overwhelmed and anxious at the amount of unpacking we had to do just to get to our toothbrushes, towels, and dishes.
I have to confess, when I was watching her unpack, with her red and white scarf tied around her head and her favorite t-shirt with a big ole rainbow on it, I had to marvel at her beauty, both inside and out. She was so calm, so grounding for me. She'd made coming out to my family not easy, but tolerable. She made all the gross and offensive comments from men who thought they could "change me with their super dicks" bearable. She just fits me perfectly in every way. We've been together for four years. That's equivalent to 16 heterosexual years for a lesbian couple and we've been together longer than all of our gay friends, both male and female, have ever been in a relationship combined.
I'd just about finished getting the bed frame up when I heard our doorbell ring for the first time. I ran downstairs to see who it could be and I saw Sabrina paying a delivery guy for some takeout food. She'd set up a makeshift table in the living room by taking one of our moving boxes and putting a sheet over it and she decorated it with flowers from our garden in a jar from the garage and some candles she got from who knows where. "Come and get it," she said, as we sat down on the floor to dine on some Chinese food on the first night of the rest of our lives together.
I was overwhelmed with the feelings of love I had for this woman. "You know, I adore you, right?"