It Starts with Us by Colleen Hoover

but I had to get out of your bedroom before I said something or did
something to embarrass myself. I didn’t trust the feeling that was
buzzing beneath my skin. It was creating this burning need to look at
you and say, I love you, Lily! It’s funny how, as soon as you feel love
for the first time, you suddenly have this huge desire to profess it. The
words felt like they were forming right in the center of my chest, and
even though I was weaker than I’d probably ever been, I had never
lifted your window and crawled out of it that fast before.
I shut it and flattened my back against the cold wall of your house,
and I exhaled. My breath turned to fog, and I closed my eyes, and after
the absolute worst eight hours of my life, I somehow cracked a smile.
I thought about love the rest of the morning. Even after you’d come
back to get me once your parents were gone and I spent several more
hours being sick at your house, I was thinking about love. When your
Surprise Lily fingernails would flash across my line of sight every time
you checked my temperature, I’d think about love. Every time you’d
walk into your room and adjust the covers, tucking them under my chin,
I’d think about love.
And then when I finally started to feel a little better around
lunchtime, I stood in the shower, weak and dehydrated from being sick,
yet I somehow felt like I was standing taller than I ever had before.
That whole morning and into the rest of the day, I knew something
significant had happened. For the first time, I had felt a flicker of what
I knew life could be. Before that moment, I never gave much thought to
falling in love, or having a family someday, or even the idea of
cultivating a successful career. Life to me had always felt like a burden
I had to bear. Something heavy and murky that made waking up
difficult and falling asleep a little bit scary. But that’s because I had
gone eighteen years not knowing what it felt like to care about someone
so much, you want them to be the first thing you see when you open
your eyes. I even felt a desire to make something of myself because you
were the first person I ever wanted to become something better for.
That was the day we laid on your couch together and you told me
you wanted me to watch your favorite cartoon with you. It was the first
time you had ever snuggled up to me, your back to my chest as we lay
under the blanket with my arm wrapped over you. It was hard to focus
on the television because the words I love you were still tickling their