A Love Letter: Blood Duet
Happy Valentine’s Day…Part 2!
And more love letters ahead - this one from The Blood Duet. GAH. My heart can’t even take this and I’ll be totally honest - I teared up while writing. So if you’re in the mood for a heavy swoon-fest, then keep on reading ♡
Sweetheart,
We were never really supposed to be, were we?
I mean, I guess if you believe in fate, then we were destined from the start. Our families were intertwined, our homes, too.
Sometimes, late at night, I count all the ways we could have met earlier than we did—if you’d stayed out in the Square, just a few more minutes. If I’d gotten to my shift half an hour earlier.
But then I remember what you’ve taught me so many times. No, what you’ve showed me.
Living in the moment is so much better than being stuck in the past. You showed me the light, sweetheart. You cracked open the darkness and gave me something so much more to live for.
Love. Happiness. Hope.
It’s the last one that I never forget because you’ve made me into the sort of man who does that.
Really, I think it’s that I spent so many years on the brink of life itself that now I’ll be damned if I let in anything less than the good you deserve.
So, yeah, I’m the guy who hopes.
For the last twenty-five years, I’ve hoped to see you smile every morning. And when it doesn’t happen—for whatever reason—I make it my mission to put it there.
I’ve hoped (and believed prayed) that you wouldn’t wake up one day and realize that you could do a million times better than me.
I hoped—that very first time—when we brought Samuel home from the hospital that I wouldn’t be the reason he decided he’d rather have any other set of parents but us.
Secretly, I hoped that I wouldn’t drop him. That I wouldn’t turn out to be worse than my old man.
You never left my side.
Not then, when I accidentally aimed Sam the wrong way in the tub and, well—you know what happened next.
Not later, years down the line, when you asked if we could leave everything behind and travel the world.
New Orleans is in my blood, but you are in my soul.
So, we went. And we traveled. And we dragged Sam with us whenever he was on break.
And I learned another meaning of the word Love.
You.
Wherever you are.
Whatever you’re wearing.
However you’ll have me.
Thank you for keeping me by your side for twenty-five years. Thank you for loving me. And if you don’t mind, I’m gonna demand at least another twenty-five more.
You’re mine, Avery Washington Asher, and I’m never letting you go.
—Lincoln’s speech at his and Avery’s twenty-five-year vow renewal