The Thing About Forever by Eileen Olmedo

Chapter One: The Glasses

Here’s the thing no one tells you about falling in love at eighteen and staying in love into your forties: you never stop getting crushes on the same person. Case in point: my husband just got new glasses. Sleek, black frames that somehow manage to make him look both devastatingly intellectual and a little bit like Clark Kent. He’s typing away at our dining table, utterly focused, while I sit on the couch with my coffee, staring at him like we’re in a Netflix rom-com where the audience already knows I’m a goner.

Our daughters are still asleep, the house is still, and it’s one of those mornings when life feels both simple and miraculous. No, we’re not where we thought we’d be. He traded a law practice for teaching, I traded a PhD for a classroom. But somewhere along the way, we discovered that rerouted dreams can be just as rich. Maybe richer. Our life is not glamorous, but it is good. And I am still embarrassingly, head-over-heels in love with him.

Which is funny, because this all started with a locker. And a mustache.

Chapter Two: The Locker Boy

Seventh grade me was… let’s just say spirited. I talked too much, made friends too easily, and considered scrunchies my personal brand. Thanks to a scheduling mix-up, my locker landed in the tenth-grade hallway. His locker was directly above mine.

He was tall, brooding, serious. I chirped up at him, “We need to coordinate locker times, okay? I can’t be late to class.” He gave me exactly one grunt and went about his day. That was it. That was our first year of interaction.

Naturally, I told my friends about him. We mocked his tragic little mustache. We declared him the biggest nerd. Which is hilarious, because I was in my own tragic combo of braces abs glasses acting like I was Cher from Clueless. Spoiler: I was not.

Still, something about him stuck. Maybe it was his complete refusal to engage with my sparkling personality. Or maybe it was just foreshadowing. Either way, the locker boy lived rent-free in my head long before I knew his name.

Chapter Three: The Boy on Stage

Flash forward to college. My best friend invited me to her church. I walked in, and there he was: on stage, playing bass. Same boy. No mustache this time (thank goodness). Still serious, still brooding, but now with a quiet intensity that made it clear he was here for bigger things than locker grunting.

I remembered him instantly. He did not, however, remember me.

Weeks went by before we spoke. He seemed more interested in talking to my dad (a fellow lawyer) than to me. But I noticed him. And my mother noticed him noticing me. “That boy likes you,” she whispered after one service. I denied it immediately. He was clearly focused on worship. (Reader: He was not just focused on worship.)

Then came the Christmas gala. I wore a black-and-white Audrey Hepburn moment of a dress that I wish I kept. He was en route to the restroom when he suddenly detoured and said hello. It was the briefest interaction, but my mom caught it. “He likes you,” she said again. This time, I didn’t argue.

Chapter Four: The Hoodie Heist

The real plot twist came at a youth event that spring. I arrived for rehearsal on time (of course), parking lot empty except for one car: his.

I stayed in mine. Five minutes passed. Then ten. Finally, he got out, walked over, and asked me to roll down my window. We started talking. About punctuality in a chronically late culture. About school. About everything and nothing. By the time anyone else showed up, an hour later, we’d already started something neither of us could name.

That weekend, I wore jeans and a Mickey Mouse hoodie. On Sunday, he appeared with a grin: “You left your hoodie. I have it.”

Here’s the thing, reader: I did not misplace my hoodie. I looked for it. Couldn’t find it. To this day, I swear he stole it just so he’d have an excuse to talk to me again. When I accuse him of this, he just smiles like the cat who got the cream.

Years later, telling the story to friends, he shrugged and said, “Well, I gave you your hoodie. But you gave me your number. And we’ve been talking ever since.”

Touché.

That night he walked me to my car, asked for my number, and called me later. We talked for hours. The next day, he asked me to lunch.

I was a wreck. I, the girl who had always been confident around boys, suddenly had butterflies. I swapped my usual overalls for a skirt and a tank top. My friend raised an eyebrow. “You look cute. Why?”

I played it cool until we saw him walking toward us. My friend smirked. “Ohhh. So that’s who you’re showing off your legs to.”

Reader, it was.

From that day on, we were inseparable. And the rom-com truly began.

Chapter Five: First Date to First Kiss, and Finally… Us

It all started at another church event. I was manning the face-painting booth for kids, the official “brush-wielder of chaos,” as I liked to think of myself, and he appeared like some mysterious extra. He walked up, calm and measured, and asked if I had plans later. I told him I did: a play to review for my theater class, though I was also supposed to pick up a friend from the airport, so my schedule teetered between highly organized and complete chaos. I told him I’d call once I figured out my evening and invited him to join me at the theater if he could make it.

Later that day, I tried to call him. His mom picked up and told me he was out running, so I left a message. I picked up my friend, stayed in her house talking for hours, and by the time I left, it was almost showtime. My car phone, a relic of my Daddy’s “Princess life” era, a time when communication required a cord and a small, blinking box in the passenger seat, had been buzzing like mad. I had missed calls both there and on my actual cell. The joys of early 2000s technology: pre-iPhone, pre-everything-in-one-device, and definitely pre-easy romance.

I started driving when my phone rang: it was my dad. He explained that HE  had called him, asked for all my numbers, and, thanks to my bedroom line being my “private number,” my father had just handed over everything. I called him back. He was stressed; I told him not to worry. I’d be at the theater, we could talk after the play. He promised he’d make it. I doubted it, but I saved him a seat anyway.

Sitting in the theater, I felt like I was part of some absurd, high-stakes game. “Seat taken,” I told everyone, while my gaze fixed on the door, willing him to appear. First call. Nothing. Second call. Still nothing. Third call, the final call, and he came rushing in, signaling just enough panic to make me smile. He saw me, and we settled next to each other. I had never been this nervous. My whole body seemed to know what my heart hadn’t quite admitted yet: this was it. The air between us felt electric.

And then the play started. Oh, the play. The Trojan Women, in what can only be described as the most hilariously terrible rendition ever performed. Women, topless, wailing their hearts out in a display that had me mortified. I looked over, and he was trying not to laugh. The super-serious, almost stoic guy who only really spoke to me, and now he was barely keeping it together. The play ended too soon, and yet not soon enough.

We decided on ice cream. My friend who realized she was third-wheeling said she’s see us in church the next day, but I insisted she join us. She suggested a new gelato place, and off we went. He offered to pay for both of us, which was sweet but mortifying, especially because gelato cones are inherently precarious, dripping disasters. I prefer cups and reliable spoons, no existential crisis for my clothes. Alas, I committed to enjoying it. And then, predictably, the gelato fell straight onto my chest. There’s no subtle way to say it except: it was… ample. My chest became an impromptu gelato tray. In a move that should have been documented for comedy blooper reels everywhere, I just grabbed the gelato off my chest, took a bite, and put it back on the cone. My friend was mildly horrified, I was laughing, and he was laughing with a look that said, “I am completely smitten.” We both realized, in that sticky, ridiculous moment, that we were falling in love.

He did the most gentlemanly thing and escorted me home. He even drove behind my car to make sure I got home safe. I invited him inside, and naturally, my family was having dinner: a Burger King feast spread across the table. He fit right in. My family loved him instantly. When it was finally time for him to leave, he uncharacteristically stumbled on the front steps. I laughed. And here it comes…the debate that would last forever: our first kiss.

In my version, I said, “Aren’t you going to say goodnight?” In his version, I said, “Aren’t you going to kiss me goodnight?” Cultural note: in our world, kisses on the cheek are standard, but nerves have a way of sabotaging protocol. Whatever the line, he walked back up the steps, held my face in his perfect hands, looked me in the eyes, and leaned in for the most earth-shattering kiss.

And then, because apparently, my life insists on being a rom-com, when we parted and he was still holding my face, I said, “Can you please do that again?” And he did. And I still ask for a second kiss after every first one, because the first kiss wasn’t just lips meeting, it was gelato on my chest, the absurdity of The Trojan Women, the shared laughter, the stumble on the stairs, and that fleeting, electric spark condensed into one perfect moment. It was messy, it was hilarious, it was terrifying, and somehow, it was perfect.

After that first kiss, nothing was the same, but somehow, everything felt exactly right. The world didn’t change; the gelato had hardened on my yellow cardigan, the lingering smell of Burger King hung in the kitchen, and my dad was still munching fries like life was a sitcom, but I saw HIM differently. Every glance, every laugh, every accidental brush of his hand felt charged with an energy I couldn’t name yet, but knew was dangerous in the best possible way.

The days that followed were a blur of half-planned calls, busy schedules, and pre-iPhone chaos that somehow made the entire affair feel epic. One afternoon, I found myself staring at my phone, willing it to ring, hoping it was him. My heart did that ridiculous thing where it skips a beat and then doubles down in panic. I’m pretty sure my friend coined the term “comedy-heart failure” after listening to me narrate an hour of nothing and everything.

We started slipping into these little routines, unspoken but undeniable. He would bring me coffee after church events just when I realized I was starving. I would make sure my gelato cup was extra secure the next time we shared dessert (lesson learned: never trust a cone around him). Every joke we shared, every conversation, felt like we were building our own private world, one laugh at a time.

I began to notice things I hadn’t before: the way he tilts his head when he’s curious, the subtle twitch of his lips when he’s amused but pretending not to be, the way he always remembers the smallest details. And I, predictably, started laughing at the wrong moments, tripping over words, and occasionally dropping things in public just to see him smile.

It wasn’t dramatic declarations or grand gestures that made me fall. It was tiny, perfectly timed moments. The quiet support when I was overwhelmed. The shared laughter over something absurd. The way he seemed to exist in perfect contrast to me: measured where I was chaotic, calm where I was loud. And yet somehow, he fit. Like a perfectly crafted puzzle piece you didn’t even know you were missing until it snapped into place.

By the time we reached the next “firsts”…the first accidental touch, the first late-night conversation that went on for hours, the first time I caught myself leaning toward him without realizing it…it was obvious. We were no longer just two people navigating church events, college, plays, and sticky dessert mishaps. We were something else. Something unplanned. Something uncontainable.

And somehow, amidst all of it, I realized that falling for him wasn’t just inevitable; it was hilarious, terrifying, and utterly unavoidable.

For weeks after, we navigated a secret, slow-burning romance. Movies, gelato runs, study dates at the library or my house, and the occasional chaotic theater rehearsal. Always together, yet always under the radar from church people. Only our families and my friend knew. We were inseparable in public silence, a romance blooming quietly, intensely, under everyone’s noses.

We went to movies after walking around my favorite bookstore, we had study sessions in coffee shops surrounded by textbooks and scribbled notes, each stolen glance or casual touch intensifying something neither of us wanted to name. And then came the day I realized I was annoyed. Furious, even, that he hadn’t asked me to be his girlfriend.

I tried to hide it, but I couldn’t. As we walked toward the movie theater, I held his hand, and he squeezed back. I let go, refusing to lean in when he tried to kiss me before the previews. We sat in the theater in an awkward, simmering silence. I was annoyed. He had no idea why.

When the movie ended, he turned to me, practically bewildered. “What’s wrong? Why are you upset?”

I crossed my arms, exhaled, and finally said, “Because we’ve been inseparable for weeks, it’s been exactly four weeks since our first kiss, and you haven’t asked me to be your girlfriend.”

He tilted his head, smiled that infuriatingly perfect smile, and lifted my chin with one hand. “Do you want to be my girlfriend?”

I melted. “Yes.”

And of course, tradition couldn’t be broken. Two kisses followed, exactly like the first: one to seal the promise, the second one to savor it. I still ask for a second kiss after every first one. Always. Because that moment, the hesitation, the tension, the long-awaited affirmation, was the beginning of everything that came after. Messy, hilarious, awkward, brilliant, electric. Perfect.

Chapter Six: Love, Logic, and everything in between

For the next few months, we were inseparable. Every conversation, whether about a play, a book, or some obscure fact that made the other roll their eyes in admiration, deepened what was already becoming obvious: we were meant to be. That summer, under long, golden afternoons and quiet evenings filled with laughter and debate, I realized I was falling truly, deeply, and irrevocably in love. And I knew, with that thrilling certainty that only comes once in a lifetime, that he was either the love of my life, the father of my children, my future husband, or the biggest heartbreak in literary history. Think of Gatsby and Daisy, but with less tragedy and more laughter. Think Elizabeth Bennet and Darcy, but with modern chaos and intellectual duels over which Shakespeare play really mattered most. Think Romeo and Juliet but with better timing, open minds, parental approval and no fatal miscommunication. He knew too. He knew that every argument, every late-night discussion, every shared observation was a thread weaving us together.

He conspired with my dad, who had long ago taken a liking to him, and together, they picked out the perfect engagement ring. When he proposed, it wasn’t just romantic; it was inevitable, the culmination of a summer that had already written itself like a carefully plotted novel. We were married in December 2003, a winter wedding full of warmth, laughter, and the kind of joy that makes your heart ache with happiness.

Life, of course, reminded us that no story is without its challenges. My dad’s death was the first heavy blow. Then came my career pivot: leaving the world of academia I had studied for years to embrace teaching, a calling that demanded my heart and sanity in equal measure.

Then came parenthood, the most unpredictable and rewarding chapters of all. Our first daughter arrived, brilliant and precocious, and watching him with her only made me fall for him all over again. His patience, his curiosity, his humor… they weren’t just qualities I loved in him as a partner; they were the traits that made him the father I had always hoped for.

Our second daughter brought a different energy: just as brilliant, but with my personality baked in: vivacious, mischievous, relentless, and full of life. She didn’t nap. She wanted to be held, rocked, and sung to endlessly. And yet, seeing him cradle her, soothe her, and adore her with quiet consistency only deepened my admiration. The man who had stolen my heart with wit, humor, and charm in college had become someone I trusted completely with our family, our home, and our life.

By the time our second baby turned one, life threw us another curveball, another test of the love that had begun with a shy first kiss, deep conversations, and mutual respect. But through every challenge, what never wavered was our partnership. We are equals, intellectual sparring partners, open-minded, respectful, and endlessly admiring of each other. Falling for him had never been a gamble; it had been an inevitable, rich, and wonderfully complex story and I have been living it ever since.

Chapter 7: The Hard Years

At first, I thought the hardest thing I would ever survive was my father’s death. He passed early in our marriage, long before he could meet our daughters. The absence was enormous, but so was the love he left behind. A love that my husband felt just as deeply. My father had treated him like a son from the beginning, and when I lost my dad, he lost a father-in-law who had never made him feel like “in-law” was part of the title. Grief didn’t just sit with me; it sat with us, reshaping the way we moved through those first years.

Still, love does not ask for perfect timing. It only asks for presence. And my beautiful man was there: steady, unshaken, patient with a pain he couldn’t fix but refused to let me carry by myself. That was the first lesson in what our marriage would really be: not the dizzying sweetness of young love, but the daily, deliberate work of staying.

Life in Puerto Rico gave us both paradise and pressure. There was the salt air, the warmth of the Caribbean sun, the sound of our girls’ laughter echoing through our lively home. And beneath it, there was the strain of constant professional pressure, bills that seemed to multiply, and the invisible heaviness of my husband’s own mind turning against him. Mental health doesn’t shout; it whispers. It slips into late nights and quiet mornings, into small sighs and retreats. I learned to read those silences and to sit with them without demanding answers. He, in turn, learned to let me in, to trust that my love wasn’t conditional on whether the day was easy or unbearably hard.

And then, Hurricane María came.

The hurricane wasn’t just a storm; it was an unmaking, an undoing, and a another chance to focus on the good in the midst of the pain. Our oldest was in elementary school, the youngest in preschool. For one hundred days without power, the island seemed suspended in time. The heat pressed down like a second skin, groceries were rationed, water was scarce, and fuel lines stretched for hours. I did laundry at work because it was the only place with running water. Survival stripped life bare, but we refused to let it strip joy from our daughters.

So, we made it a game. Homework became adventures by flashlight. The same flashlights turned into stage lights as we performed Wicked and Hamilton in our living room, we both laughed while playing along with the girls’ demands, me singing as if Broadway were waiting in the dark. It was absurd and magical, a way of telling our daughters, this may be hard, but you are safe, you are loved, and you are still allowed to laugh.

Eventually, the storm ended, but its aftermath ended something else: the life we had built there. We left Puerto Rico for Miami, packing not just boxes but whole chapters of ourselves. Miami meant reinvention. More job changes, new schools, new streets, new versions of ourselves that didn’t always fit right away. We were tired. We were both so tired. But even in the exhaustion, we leaned on each other. We weren’t just spouses; we were intellectual sparring partners, nerds who debated books and politics and theology while stirring arroz con gandules. Our love was no longer about butterflies; it was the kind of anchor that holds fast when everything else is drifting.

And then, the hardest curveball of all: watching our oldest battle her own darkness. No one tells you parenting is sometimes triage. That you’ll sit on the floor outside a closed bedroom door, praying with every fiber of your being that your child chooses tomorrow. I thought my heart had already broken when my father died, but nothing compared to this particular shattering. The helplessness, the fear, the endless vigilance. Yet, even then, we stood side by side. His hand in mine, my words in his silence, our love braided together as a rope we used to keep ourselves, and her, from slipping too far away.

Looking back now, I don’t see those years as disasters strung together. I see them as proof. Proof that what we built in youth was not fragile, not fleeting. It was a house that bent but did not fall, walls that cracked but never crumbled. Somehow, despite the grief, the storms, the moves, the battles within our own walls, we are here. More stable, more in love, more us than ever before.

No matter what came, or what will come, the truth is simple: we survived. Together.

Chapter 8: When the Grocery Store Plays Our Songs

We are raising artists. It is both glorious and exhausting, like living in a perpetual rehearsal of Rent with fewer love triangles and more Gen Z slang. Our oldest writes, draws, and sings her heart out, filling sketchbooks and journals like a girl who already knows her life will one day be bound and published. The youngest? She has already packed her imaginary bags for Broadway, pausing only to remind us that understudies are for other people. Together, they love each other in a way that deserves its own YA novel: one with whispered secrets, ridiculous laughter, and the occasional dramatic exit that ends with both of them in the kitchen ten minutes later making ramen.

Our lives have evolved too. We once traded trips to the American Girl store (complete with dolls in matching outfits and tea parties that cost as much as actual rent) for trips to Sephora, where palettes of eyeshadow hold the promise of reinvention and contouring tutorials leave us wondering if we’ve been putting on blush wrong our entire lives. Somewhere between then and now, we slipped into our forties. When we say we’re “going to the club,” what we mean is Costco. And instead of bass thumping through the speakers, the grocery store serenades us with the soundtrack of our youth. It is both comforting and devastating to shop for laundry detergent while singing along to the same songs we once listened to in burned CDs on road-trips.

Time leaves its traces, too. His hair is turning gray with shades of silver in his beard, that make him look unfairly distinguished. My own bits and pieces don’t quite look the same in a bikini anymore, but the truth is, neither of us is really focused on perfection. We’re at ease in each other’s presence, we understand each other’s humor, and get to laugh together when the kids have both a crisis and a triumph on the same day.

Like the day our oldest broke up with her first boyfriend. The heartbreak was real, the tears were epic, Les Misérables-level, a three-act tragedy performed entirely in our living room. And just as we were carefully piecing her heart back together, her younger sister came in with wide eyes and blurted out that she’d just been asked on her first date. From tears to fears in sixty seconds. It was like someone had accidentally flipped the channel from Les Mis to a Disney sitcom. We just looked at each other, caught between sympathy and sheer panic, silently agreeing that parenting daughters is not for the faint of heart.

And yet, through it all, we pray. We pray that each of them will find love in people as extraordinary as they are. That one day they will stand where I stand, beside a partner who both steadies and dazzles them. We hope to see them graduate, chase their wildest dreams, and be cherished by men who love them with patience, with humor, with devotion that never wavers.

Because after all the storms, the grocery store singalongs, the mascara-streaked heartbreaks and the Broadway auditions in our living room, we know this: love, when it is real, doesn’t fade. It grows. Wrinkled, gray-haired, Costco-card-carrying, but stronger. Always stronger.

Chapter 10: The Fine Print of Marriage

The thing about forever is that marriage, as it turns out, is less about fireworks and more about the quiet rhythm of life together. It isn’t the big gestures that make it endure. It’s the daily, often invisible acts of care. There are routines in place, a system of divide and conquer. Some days it’s exactly fifty-fifty, but most days it’s simply two people making sure the other feels seen, honored, and supported.

We’ve learned to understand each other deeply: how we think, how we process stress, what makes us laugh, what makes us feel loved, and how we give love in return. There is a sacred patience in listening, in noticing, in quietly showing up without fanfare. It’s a glance across a crowded room that says, I see you. I’m here. It’s an early-morning cup of coffee made just the way I like it. It’s handling a disagreement with calm rather than volume. It’s knowing when to speak, and when simply to sit together in silence.

The real reason we endure is because God has always been at the center of our marriage. Faith isn’t just Sunday morning; it’s the lens through which we understand our roles as partners, as parents, as people trying to do life well. We strive to put Him first, then each other, trusting that love built on that foundation can weather any storm.

There is humor here, too. Life with two daughters who are artists in training means that the unexpected is routine. The living room often becomes a stage, the kitchen a gallery, the car a concert hall. Laughter is essential because it reminds us that even in responsibility, there is joy.

Our marriage is not perfect, but it is steady. It is rooted in shared prayer, mutual respect, and the determination to honor the life we promised each other. It’s knowing that the best moments are often quiet, and the worst moments are survivable, because we face them together. The fine print of our marriage is this: love, daily chosen, nurtured, and surrendered to God, is what endures.

And that is enough.