We all have that special person in our lives who makes our hearts flutter and make us giggle, but more importantly, we know it's a little more special than just those moments when we're happy. When we're sad, we can remember the reasons why our babe-friend is totally the one we want in our lives. These are the reasons, albeit, only a few, that keep me sane when he drives me crazy. These are the nine reasons he's the one.
1. He shows up to your band gig with only meeting you briefly in person once.
Long story short, he always cared. He dumps a girl he's been seeing the same night to stand in the middle of a crowd to watch a mediocre gig in a dingy basement of a dining hall. He leaves after your set finishes and asks for your number. He texts you after to tell you how well you played and if you want to jam with him some time. This guy, little does he know, is getting it.
2. The night before his 22nd birthday, he takes you out as a surprise.
Maybe a week after your band gig, you meet for coffee between lab breaks and homework. It makes you nervous to see him and you get butterflies like you had in high school. While you're there, he invites you to an astronomy observatory at the college. He runs the old observatory and asks you to tag along with a bunch of eager astronomy students who want to look at the moon and stuff. He tells you he'll pick you up in front of the life sciences building at 9 p.m. Hell, yeah -- you say yes, but you're anticipating him focusing his attention on helping the other students and leaving you just to "observe."
When you get there, you see him sitting on the front steps with no one else around. Turns out, he cancelled his night teaching astronomy to take you to the observatory and to let you take control of the telescopes and laser pointers. Needless to say, this is your first date. You get into a car with a stranger, yet you feel safe. He plays "Archie, Marry Me" by Alvvays, and you can't help but think this scene, this interaction, this man is out of a movie. You know it's the night before his birthday, and he hasn't finished an astrophysics lab report due the next day, but he's spending time with you and teaching you what a chromatic aberration is and how to focus correctly on the moon. You can't help but think he could be the sun in your sky some day.
3. You meet his parents and hit it off as if you had known each other for decades.
His parents are the best kind. Italian. You hit it off with old school South Philly Italian jokes and accents and tell them about the history of your family. It's like you've known them forever. They invite you in, make the best damn gravy and meatballs you've ever had (next to your mother's, of course) and you look through gorgeous photo albums of his family, of the beautiful women in black and white with noticeably red lips and frosted hair, and family shots congregating around tables of food.
Next, his father takes you aside and tells you he has loved you since the second he's met you and never wants you to leave his son (shoutout to Mr. Camooch, my homie). They take you in like a daughter. Of course, that's what Italians do, so you always thank them with an expensive bottle of wine and love, but it gives you a sense of security when you're in with the family.
4. He knows you don't finish anything you eat or drink, but makes you your morning coffee the way you like it every morning when you're with him.
Your father warns him the first time meeting him that his daughter won't finish a damn thing put in front of her, especially drinks. Your father tells him you're a handful but he replies, "But she's worth it." Next thing you know, this boy is making you coffee the way you like it every morning when you come over, even though 99 percent of the time, you ain't finishing it.
5. Speaking of fathers, this is the first one he's ever liked.
You've gone through a few guys, and your dad is a relentless, hardworking, protective, and loving Italian man who wants the best for you. He's always made offhand comments about the other guys in your life, usually making jabs at their appearances or habits, but he genuinely likes this guy and tells your mother in private that he might be "the one."
6. You absolutely, under any circumstances, never call him "bae" or other equally repulsive and nauseating pet names.
But you use them sarcastically just to piss each other off, or make each other laugh. Or, you do it to embarrass him in front of his friends or randos walking around on campus. Most of the time, he just throws it back at you. And most of the time, it's sarcastically vulgar, but you love it. You're always making each other laugh, or quoting scenes from movies, almost always to make other people around you uncomfortable.
7. You look at each other like you look at an all-you-can-eat buffet.
Now, I don't mean what you're probably thinking (or do I?), but you would much rather go to a grocery store to pick up items to make with him than go out to a restaurant to eat. All your life, your mother has let you chop the garlic or assist in the kitchen when you weren't busy, but in college, you fend for yourself.
It's the first time you're cooking linguini with clams, so you call your mother and his father on the phone to get the best tips. You then go to the store together to pick up the items, and you start cooking together, and it's beyond romantic. You get dressed up for the occasion to impress and you're playing Andrea Bocelli's, "Mille lune, mille onde," like from the Barilla commercials 'cause you're a friggin' pasta goddess! You both are taking glimpses at each other out of the corner of your eyes, smirking as you make your angel hair al dente. You tell him to chop the garlic like how your mother used to, almost in a pissed off way, and he tells you he loves how you stand there with one hand on your hip and the other hand stirring the gravy.
You have Italian in your blood, so cooking is natural, and the second your man takes a bite of his food, he tears up. He tells you that it tastes just like his father's, and that it was the first time in college he's felt like it was home. Score. Ho un debole per te. And don't forget the "Locadell!"
8. His sister is one of your best friends.
She's beautiful and gets you. You can talk to her about anything. She's quirky and cool, and you love her passions in life because she's so different from you. You sometimes ask to hangout with her alone rather than hanging out with your boy. But that's totally OK and totally cool. You have inside jokes and laugh about anything and everything. You can't really imagine not having her there as a friend sometimes. And other times, the three of you can hangout and go shopping, and it's completely normal and an amazing relationship.
I'm on the left and Gabrielle is on the right of me. We hold hands.
9. You have countless adventures.
The first time you told him you loved him can be most described as "magical." When he brought you home to his house when you were meeting his extended family for the first time, he takes you away for a bit, and sits you down in a room his grandmother used to live in, surrounded with books he used to read as a child. He picks one out and tells you his dreams, desires, and goals -- the same ones he's had as a child, and you tell him you love him right there. You have meant to tell him all along but needed the perfect time. He replies with, "I love you so much." The next few hours consist of you squeezing his hand under the dinner table while engaging with his family. A perfect night and one of many.
You both are so similar, and emotional, and caring. You both see the world through an open lens, waiting to gain more knowledge about yourselves and everything around you. You both study sciences to understand the deeper meaning of it, but you explore each other every, single day through spontaneity and adventure -- as much as time can allow in a day.
Your greatest moments include hobbling from cafe to cafe, sipping coffees and working in the comfort of each other, taking the same book out from the library after hours of finding the perfect one to read at the same time to discuss, or having someone to hold when you're an emotional wreck. He's the only person who sees you as you really are, without all the bullshit and facades you show everyone else who don't know you well, and he loves you no less. And I love him.
