He was always there.

He'd been there when she started telling the world of her last year as a kid, right before she turned 13.

He tried telling that it's not so bad if she'd only let it sink in once, and he was right. Like always. The only way she knew to thank him was to look up and smile even when it was the last thing she wanted to do. But she knew that seeing her smile made him happy.

And somewhere between fifteen to seventeen years of age, she decided that making him happy was what she wanted to do for the rest of her life.

So she smiled every time she saw him, every time they were together, every time their friends for liking someone younger, and every time he tried to do something smart and failed miserably.

She really, really liked him.

As did a lot of other girls, so she decided she'd keep it to herself when she hit the last of her teenage years.

That was the hardest thing she'd ever done. 

After barely making it through what could be the (one of many) worst day of her life, and feeling like she just needed to take a nice, long break away from the people she knew, she ended up coming back to him.

He was her break from the world.

So many years of being together taught him to know that this moment only called