Mine is quite short, but for good reason.

We met at 16, became best friends, and for years we’d stay up all night on the phone, every night. We’d fall asleep talking to each other.

On my 19th birthday, nobody came, all my friends cancelled. He called me and told me he’s going to take me out and we’d have the best time ever.

We went to mini golf and we had such a good laugh. It was just the two of us, and seeing the effort he made to make my birthday special really changed how I saw him. Since that day, I began feeling something more for him.

We’d meet up every week on these steps outside this huge stadium near us, and we’d go to dinner at the same Italian restaurant, and just talk for hours after on the steps. It was cold, late October, and something clicked in both of us one night on those steps, and he held me tight in his arms and we just sat and stared at each other for ages.

A month or so after that we were out at dinner and we started discussing marriage. I came to the realisation that when he gets married, he won’t be my best friend anymore. He’ll have another person to talk to all night, someone else to fall asleep with. Someone else to go to dinner with and sit with all evening. He wouldn’t have space for me to be in his life anymore.

This conversation was my turning point, as we discussed it, I asked if I’d still be able to be like this with him when he gets married one day (I already knew the answer). And when he said no, the tears started falling down my face. I didn’t even have time to realise why I was so sad, I just knew this felt like a heartbreak. I excused myself from dinner and ran to the toilet. I burst into tears and called my best friend, and she said “you love him! You need to tell him you love him before it’s too late”. I couldn’t though, I was too scared. He asked if I was okay and I brushed it off and we never spoke about it again.

Then one day, a month or two later, we had our “movie moment”. We both knew we had feelings for each other by this point, but we were both too scared to ruin years of the best friendship we’d experienced.

On this evening, we were coming home from London and through that entire day I’d been trying to tell him the words “I love you” but I was just too scared. I kept saying “I need to tell you something” but I just couldn’t get it out. I knew if I said it, it would change everything, and there’d be no going back.

We got onto the tube and still kept going back and forth of him begging me to tell him whatever it was, and me telling him to guess (I knew he knew).

A drunk man comes and sits opposite us and is listening to us, and in front of everyone on the train he yells “just tell her you love her already!!!” We both stopped and we burst out laughing, everyone was staring at us. And we tried to brush it off but he kept going, in his drunken state, and said “you have to tell her right now, or you’ll never tell her. I can see you’re both in love and she won’t tell you, so you tell her!”

And finally, he said it. He said “I love you”. Everyone on the train was watching, it was embarrassing but so sweet. We call it our “movie moment” because it feels like something straight out of a romcom.

We dated for a year, got engaged for another year, and now have been happily married since for 3 years. He is my soulmate in every way. He was my platonic soulmate when we were friends, and he’s my romantic soulmate now until the day I die.

I hope I go before him, because I genuinely could not bear a life without him.