A cloud of white slowly rises to my right. I trace it down to your delicate mouth, wide open, letting the smoke escape from your lungs. Your eyes are closed, head back, soft hair falling like water over the back of the chair. As the smoke continues to billow, I consider saying, “My, what big lungs you have,” but we already know this, and so do the neighbors.

You push out the last of the breath as you open your eyes and catch me looking at you. Your eyes glisten and you smile, and then I smile, and then you stick your tongue out of the side of your mouth in that familiar, playful way that always makes me grin.

I think about telling you that I wasn’t staring, honest. That your impressive display of lung capacity had simply caught my attention. But I wouldn’t have been able to offer a better excuse. In fact, I was admiring you, captivated as I always am. Not just in some superficial sense, but with the way you do things. You’re different in your actions, right down to the way you sometimes cock your head to one side when you smile at me, or the way you always flick your wrist when you ash your cigarettes.

Hell, you’re just different. In a good way, I mean. And there I go again, mumbling and stumbling over my words as I try less to impress you and more to not embarrass myself. “Too late,” I think, until you lean over and kiss me.

“You think too much, you know,” you tell me. “I can see your mind working through those tired eyes.” I start to protest, but you’re right, as always. “Just be here. With me,” you say, and I try, but I can’t stop thinking how lucky I am and wondering what I’ve done to deserve this and when it’s all going to go away, like it always does.

And then I stop, because you put your arm around my neck and lay your head on my shoulder, and all I can do is breathe. In that moment, I’m just there. With you. Like you asked me to be. So I breathe out and watch the warm moisture from my mouth take shape in the calm air of this particularly still winter night.

I lean my head against yours and put my arm around your back to make sure the blanket is still wrapped around you. We sit in silence, watching all the taxis and people below us, taking great joy in the knowledge that they’re unaware they’re being watched.

Not too long ago, we were just like them, drunkenly trying to catch any cab that would get us out of the cold and take us home. It was rainy the night we met, and I’d been desperately searching for a cab with its light on when I saw your heel catch in a crack in the sidewalk over on Second Ave.

I passed up a perfectly good taxi that would have taken me to my warm bed just to cross the street and stand in the rain to make sure you were all right. You had a broken heel and a bruised ego, but had survived the ordeal otherwise unscathed.

You looked up at me through damp, matted hair and blushed as you took my hand and I helped you to your feet. We locked eyes and you smiled, then I smiled, and then I caught you with a hand on your hip when you tried to put pressure on the broken heel, forgetting it wasn’t there. I called it a hunch.

Of course, it wasn’t until a week later that you admitted you had done it on purpose to see how I’d catch you. I guess you had a hunch, too.

But back to that night, standing in the rain in front of the old movie theater with its glowing bulbs around the marquee. I didn’t fall in love with you that night, I wasn’t ready, but it was the night I realized my heart wasn’t going to be broken forever. Sometimes, when you hear me whisper, “Thank you,” and you’re not sure what you’ve done, that’s what I’m thinking about.

I feel your lips on my cheek, the same lips that then whisper sweetly, “Let’s go to bed.” I hadn’t even realized I’d drifted off, but I open my eyes, and there you are, standing in front of me, hand extended, blanket draped off of one goose-bumped shoulder. I smile, rub my eyes, and take your hand as you lead me inside, not to your warm apartment, or my warm bed, but to our warm apartment and our warm bed.

As we lie there, wrapped up in blankets and covers, you tell me you love me, and I say I love you, too, and then we say goodnight. We’re both lying on our sides, and you grab my arm and wrap it around your waist. I kiss your neck as I nuzzle my head right next to yours. As I hear your breathing get slow, and even, and deep, I make sure the last thing I do before I close my eyes and drift off to sleep is whisper, softly, “Thank you.”