"I should have told you this before. I meant to. I know this is kind of a weird time to say it." He paused. My eyes widened, my pulse quickened, my entire body tensed, I felt kind of panicked. We sat there, on the floor of a stranger's house. He leaned against the wall, I sat with my legs straight out in front of me, back rigid, eyes fixated emptily on where the wall met the ceiling. There was blood splattered down the left arm of my lime green coat, I wasn't sure who it belonged to, but I remember thinking it looked like an abstract painting. "I love you", he said. I turned towards him, his hand clutching the side of his face as blood trickled slowly down, pooling on the floor beside him, and said "I love you".

Minutes earlier, maybe longer, I was laying face down on the sidewalk unconscious thanks to a blow delivered to the back of my head. While I was away from the waking world, he was struck in he face with a bat, doctors told him later that his entire orbital bone was crushed to dust, he just remembered it hurting like hell. Moments before, we were walking back from dinner, merely a block or two away from his apartment. My arm wrapped securely around his waist, he stopped to kiss me. I was wearing new sandals, it was the first spring night warm enough to expose your toes. I was happy.