My insides ache. I don’t want him to leave.

He puts on his shoes. I sleepily rise and wrap my arms around him, press my face into his neck.

He leaves and locks the door behind him. I turn and walk to my bedroom and lay down in my bed and listen to the quiet city. Feel the cool ocean air against my face. I close my eyes.

I want to be with him all of the time, but I also want this time alone. This is the exquisite delicacy of a relationship: the together and the apart.

***

Sun blazes in a blue spring sky.

We inflate our paddleboards beside his apartment and carry them to the beach. A short three minute walk.

I launch into the ocean, carefully stepping onto my board and barely wetting my ankles. The freedom of floating on the water, of dipping my paddle into the navy blue water. Gulls barking overhead. A bald eagle perched atop a Douglas fir in the park.

Seals surface intermittently, their huge eyes curiously appraising us. Schools of tiny fish flashing silver around the blade of my paddle.

Each night we do this, paddle out in a direction that makes sense with the wind. Freckles emerge across my nose and cheeks from the sun. Blonde highlights emerge in my medium-brown hair. The skin on my feet softens and peels away in layers, the calluses from climbing shoes vanishing as the weeks without climbing accumulate.

At sunset, we raft together and share a beer. Rising and falling with the rolling waves. The freighters anchored and silhouetted by the setting sun.

My body is tired and happy from being on the ocean.

***

One morning, we read and drink coffee in bed. Time passes, and I am running out of time before my morning telecon. I still need to commute home.

I put down my book and reach over to touch his skin, to breathe him in before leaving. He responds and tugs off my underwear and I push away the thoughts of being late to my telecon, because this is more important.

“My god,” he says, “you are so sexy. I can’t believe that you are in my bed.”

We have been doing this for a year, save two weeks, and we have done this often, more than one hundred and fifty times, and yet he still wants me. A gentle touch, a focusing of attention, and we fall into reckless enjoyment of each other.

I cycle home in the cool morning air, my cheeks rosy and my hair falling in salty waves down my back. I sing aloud to the music playing on my headphones.

I will not stop doing this. I will not stop loving and opening and trusting. Dancing in the middle of the road. Singing at the top of my lungs.

I cry for no reason and laugh at the wrong time and fall off my board into the ocean and burn the supper and make spelling mistakes and forget someone’s name and fail to reply to texts.

I do all of these things and still he wants to be with me.