Dear Dan,

010.

"I don't want to do shitty things when we're here, Dan," I tell my husband and turn to meet his confused face. "I mean, I want this to be memorable, I don't want to just see the Eiffel Tower or just eat a delicious baguette."

"I know how we can see everything while we are here, and we don't even have to leave the room," he suggests, winking. I roll my eyes and throw myself onto the bed.

"I know what you want to do, but I'm being serious, Dan. I want to be satisfied when I leave," I tell him.

"Don't worry gorgeous, I'll satisfy you, and you'll never be unsatisfied for another day in your life," he says. And I believe him.

Dan stands and heads to the mini-fridge in the corner of the room and I watch him all the way there, admiring him. I won, big time. I smile at him as he turns to me with two wine glasses. "You know, when you were seventeen, you were pretty stupid," he says, my mouth drops.

"Excuse me? You're in your late twenties and you still are and always have been stupid," I joke, keeping a small smile on my face.

"I'm just saying that you dated a lot of the wrong guys," he says.

"Yeah, because you were too much of a pussy to say a word to me except the occasional, 'Hey Grazia, you forgot your maths homework in study hall,'" I say, laughing.

"Pussy? No, sweetheart, I was never too pussy to say a word to you — you were always just hung up on the dumbest guys," he laughs to himself. "Besides, that just proves my point that you were stupid enough to leave your maths homework in study hall."

I throw a pillow at him and laugh. "Hey, I ended up with you, didn't I? Are you calling yourself a dumb guy?"

He rolls his eyes. "You know what I mean, Grazia."

"You're overdramatic, you know?"

"Yeah, yeah, whatever, how about we get a start on all of those kids you owe me?" he says wiggling his eyebrows suggestively.

I roll my eyes and lower my eyes at him. "Dan you big stud, take me to bed or lose me forever," I recite a line from his favourite movie, and just like that we are kissing each other and making love.

He has brown eyes with long lashes and his hands are gentle sirens, coaxing me into a long fall, I kiss him so hard I bet our ancestors shake their bones and fall to pieces. I have his hair in my fingers and he is beneath me.

We sleep together like two people who have learned each other well enough to know that I hate too much heat but I get cold fast and that he hates cream cheese. We know the small things and the big things and we know everything and that's a good thing.

Kristin Martz once wrote, "We lose ourselves in things we love. We find ourselves there, too," and I've only come to openly understand that when I finished my very first novel, something that had my name and hard work written all over it.

I think this is the tricky part about love, those who write about it, understand the small things, but never the big things, and those who roll their eyes at it never understood it or have the inability to. I think we are all born to love, I think that is the task to accomplish with your time here on this Earth, and those who never seek to find any, are the ones who die with regrets.

I lean over and kiss my husband, he was my task. I smile down at him and he smiles up and me and god, what greater sight could there be? I never wanted to find out. I don't believe that there are greater things than the things we love, and it could be a person, a song, a poem, it could be anything, you are allowed to love anything, and that's why I love Daniel Howell.