What Being in Love Actually Is

It's not the grand gestures. It's not the airport sprint, the boom box on the lawn, the speech in the rain that fixes everything. It's the Tuesday. It's the way you learn how someone takes their coffee and then never ask again. It's knowing which drawer has the Advil and which side of the bed they need and how they breathe when they're pretending to already be asleep. It's the argument that doesn't end with slamming doors but with two people sitting on the kitchen floor at midnight, both too stubborn to leave and too tired to be right, until one of them laughs and the other one hates them for making it impossible to stay angry. It's the grocery store. You're choosing avocados and you look over at this person squeezing bread— why are they always squeezing bread?— and something in your chest does a thing that has no name. Not butterflies. Not fireworks. Something quieter. Something like the moment a house stops being a house and starts being the place where your life is. That. That's what it is.