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“Yeah.”

Not wanting to have the conversation while her face is upside down, I sit myself up on my haunches and turn to look at her. “Is there a right or wrong answer here?”

“Oh my God, no.” She leans forward and collects my hands in hers. “I just saw you holding Reese today and my mind kind of ran off on this wild tangent, and I...”

Zara lets out a shaky breath, and I’m surprised to see a wave of nervousness wash over her.

“What is it?”

Moving closer, she shifts herself till her legs are underneath her, and holds our hands in the air between us.

“I love you.” She delivers those three words on a relieved exhale, like it’s been painful for her to have to keep them in this long. “And I want forever with you.”

“Forever,” I echo.

“Yes.” She nods with certainty. “Forever. But when I saw you with Reese, I panicked for the first time, thinking our visions of forever could look very different.”

“What does your forever look like?”

With her heart in her eyes, she brings my hands up to her mouth and kisses them.

“It looks like a beautiful, selfless woman with a bleeding heart. It looks like nights wrapped up in your body and days filled with the sound of your laughter. It looks like fighting with your best friend and making up with your lover. It looks like firsts and lasts and everything in between.”

A single tear slides down my face, and Zara’s thumb is quick to catch it.

“It looks like you, Clementine,” she says. “Today and tomorrow and the day after, my forever is all you.”

I rub a hand over my heart, the amount of love almost too big to hold, too much to feel.

“And this forever… Is it with or without kids?” I ask.

We both know this isn’t an easy topic for either of us. We’re two women tethered to birth experiences for very different reasons. There’s trauma and history, and so much of it we don’t want repeated.

“I don’t think I can carry another baby,” she confesses. “And I don’t even know if I could manage my own anxiety if you carried the baby.”

She’s being raw and honest, and her feelings are completely understandable.

“Come here.” I tug us both back down so we’re lying on the bed, curling myself around her.

Her heart beats rapidly underneath my palm, and my own heart cracks that even the mere mention of either of us being pregnant brought on this reaction.

“It’s okay,” I say reassuringly. “I don’t want to get pregnant.”

This has her turning around to look at me. “You don’t?”

I shake my head. “I don’t want biological children. Do you know how many unwanted and unloved children there are in the United States alone? Children like me?

“We both know blood doesn’t make you a family, and I don’t need blood to make my family. I know it’s a lot to ask, but if you do want kids, I want to foster. And if you don’t want that, there are hundreds of ways I can help those kids without bringing them home.”

“What was it that I said?” She kisses me on either cheek. “A beautiful, selfless, bleeding heart. I love you, Clementine.”

“I love you too.”

“I want forever with you,” she repeats. “I wantthatforever with you.”

I want it too. I want more, and I want it with her.

She leans in to kiss me, but I hold a hand between us, stopping her. “Wait, there’s something I have to tell you.”