We are inseparable.

Adam just seems to move seamlessly into my life. I feel myself falling for him every day, every time I hear his voice, and every time he smiles – and he’s always smiling. Secret knowing smiles and shy naked smiles and small half-smiles that show he’s just as surprised as I am over how instantly we connect; that it’s almost amusing in its intensity.

Our first date is the next day; we just walk around the neighborhood talking. He holds my hand like it’s the most natural thing in the world. The whole time I find myself thinking, should we feel so together already? And when we kiss, I never want him to stop.

He has a slow, soft kiss, and although he never does bite me the way I sometimes want him to, most times it doesn't matter. It just feels good. Instead, his tongue gently toys with mine… and we can do that for hours, his hands roaming over my body in a delicate, guarded way.

“I’m trying to behave,” he says, drawing away and glancing at the street around me. I smile, and he gives me another long kiss.

Just the thought of him makes my palms sweat.

“What did you put in that cannoli Adam?” I accuse, on our third date. We’re ice-skating at the GAU rink. He skates backwards, coming to a stop.

“Hmmm…” His eyes sparkle mysteriously. “Why?” he teases, taking my free hand and linking his gloved-fingers through them.

There’s music plying softly through the speakers, and we have the whole place to ourselves. I don’t even know how he swung it.

“I’m just so happy,” I admit.

“And what’s wrong with that?” he asks softly. I put my hand up to his heart, and he touches my face.

“Happiness is fleeting.”

“This isn’t,” he says. He presses his lips to mine quickly, then moves back and swings me around under his arm, and our laughter fills the floor.

As we leave, he introduces me to the manager of the rink; a friend of Rhys’s older brother.

“Adam man, this is your girlfriend?!” Jermaine asks incredulously.

Adam rolls his eyes. “Oh man here we go.”

“What are you doing with this guy?” Jermaine teases. “He’s the most annoying dude.”

“I know,” I intone. Adam tickles my waist playfully, and I squirm away. Jermaine laughs, and Adam picks me up suddenly, throwing me over his shoulder like I don’t weigh anything.

“Y’all aren’t about to bond and become homies or something, okay?” he says.

“Nah man, we already friends,” Jermaine shouts. “That’s my cousin right there.”

And maybe it’s because I listen to them a lot now, but I start to think of Adam and I the way 5 Seconds of Summer’s put it in their song Valentine; while we aren’t in love just yet, we love us.

A couple of weeks in, I make Adam find it online and play it while we Facetime, following the lyrics together.

“I’m saving you as ‘Valentine’ in my contacts,” he says. “After this white-boy song.”

“Oh… Don’t you act as a drummer for…” I pause for a dramatically, tapping a finger against my chin like I’m deep in thought. “Fool the World was it?”

He laughs. “Touché,” he mulls, with an impressed nod.

We ring off and he sends me a text as I’m going to bed.

‘Got nothing but love for you, fall more in love every day.’

Adam meets Anya and Nyla, and to both mine and my sister’s surprise, even makes Nyla laugh within the first twenty minutes of meeting her.

“Watch this,” he murmurs, scooping her gently from my arms.

She doesn’t cry or anything. She just stares at him, her hands absently tugging the trunk of her elephant plushie.

Anya throws me an impressed look, her eyebrows disappearing into her bangs.

“How are you so confident?” I complain. “You’re so confident even Nyla’s doesn’t doubt you.”

Nyla looks at me, and then, as if to prove her loyalty, calmly reaches for me.

I take her greedily, and Adam laughs.

It’s like I’m living in this surreal life where everything is just so perfect… and easy. I had forgotten it could be this easy. We don’t have to hide anything and no one feels alone.

I listen to Valentine again after a couple of weeks and as Luke sings, “Full plate, don’t wait, have your cake and eat it too,” a cold chill suddenly goes up my spine.

You can’t have your cake and eat it too.

Everyone knows that.

I think of what I said to Adam at the rink about happiness being fleeting, and I start feeling like I should be looking over my shoulder.