“Among other things,” she said, gesturing to her breasts.
He smiled widely. “I’ll happily do that again. And if memory serves, you wanted to give me a tattoo right here,” he said, tapping his fingers to his chest.
“I did, and I still do. And if you open the other one too you’ll find out what it would say if I inked you.”
He snapped open the second cookie, letting the next fortune fall out. “Your fondest dreams will come true this year,” he said, reading out loud. He set down the cookies on the coffee table, and she wrapped her arms around his firm waist and tipped her chin up to look at him.
“Remember how you thought our fortunes were mixed up? You had the fortune ‘now is the time to try something new,’ but you said it was mine?”
“I remember.”
“But I don’t actually think they were mixed up after all. I think the right fortune went to the right person. You did learn something new. You learned to trust again. With me,” she said, and a flurry of pride and joy spread through her chest that she had been the one who could show him that love and commitment didn’t have to turn sour.
He brushed the back of his fingertips against her cheek. “I did learn that. You showed me that.”
“And my fortune was that my fondest dream will come true,” she said, leaning into his hand, to the tenderness of his touch.
“So I guess that wasn’t for me? It was for you?” he asked quietly. “Why?”
“Because my dream was to have a love like this,” she said, her heart bursting with joy. Though she’d told him countless times how she felt, she still believed that moments like this, that words and gestures and actions, were the foundation of any great love. And that’s what he was to her. He’d shown her that she didn’t have to change for any man, that the right man would love her for who she was.
“Did it come true?” he asked softly as she ran her fingertip across his chest, as if she were imprinting him with those words. Tattooing him as she nodded, and wrote on his skin. Your fondest dream will come true. She had marked him in her own way.
A quiet tear slid down her cheek. He pressed his lips gently to her skin, kissing it away.
“Do you have any idea what it’s like to fall in love with your best friend?” she asked.
“As a matter of fact I do. I know exactly what that’s like.”
“What’s it like?”
“It’s like the big love.”