I Still Believe...

I let my fingers slide down the silk spine of the photo album still on the shelf, adjusting my grip on the others that I was already holding. I carefully grabbed the photo album, pulling it off the shelf and letting my eyes drift across the pale pink rose that had been pressed to go on the cover. I could already feel a smile creep across my face as I thought about what photos were in each of these albums.

I walked over to our bed and put the albums down on the bottom of it before climbing on myself and lying down on my stomach. I grabbed the CD player remote and pressed play, letting quiet music echo throughout our bedroom as I pulled one of the albums towards me. My fingers drifted across the black cover, feeling the purple velour flowers bumping against my skin. I gingerly opened the album and bit my lip to stop me from grinning as I looked at the picture of Zacky and me around the first time we met.

We met through friends.

My roommate in college, Lyndsey, was dating one of Zacky’s friends, Brian, and they became serious pretty quickly and also became one of those couples that insisted that everyone around them should be happy and in love too. It did bug me to begin with...but then they set me up with Zacky and I have been in debt with them pretty much ever since.

I was smitten the moment I set eyes on Zacky and it only got worse the better I got to know him. He was sweet, funny, smart and so kind to me. Zacky was everything I had ever wanted in a guy and so much more too. Even now, I didn’t understand how I managed to get him.

I carried on looking through the album, laughing quietly to myself as various memories were provoked by the photos and sighing a little as others were. I moved on to the next album, which began in our second year at college, and flicked through the pages. By this point, Zacky and I had been together for about four months and I could honestly say that up till that point, I’d never been happier.

The third album was full of photos from our first anniversary onwards and I couldn’t help but smile at the first photo. It was one of my fondest memories from back then.

It was a candid one of Zacky and I from a night out at a club we’d gone to in order to celebrate our one year anniversary. His arms were around my waist and mine were loose around his neck as we danced slowly, our foreheads touching as we stared at each other, warm smiles on both of our lips. That was the night that Zacky first told me that he was in love with me.

It still amused all our friends that it had taken Zacky and I so long to tell each other how we felt but it had been right for us.

I can remember exactly how I had felt when those three words fell from his lips. My heart felt like it had tripled in size and a grin bigger than my face could even hold spread quickly across my lips. It didn’t take me long to answer him, the words slipping from my lips hastily so I could kiss him like my mind was screaming at me to.

Though that had been the night that we had told each other we loved one another, it wasn’t the night that I had realised that I loved him. That had come a couple of weeks earlier. Zacky hadn’t done anything important or even romantic but I just looked at him and realised that I was completely and utterly head over heels with him. I knew exactly when I had fallen in love but I couldn’t for the life of me remember when I’d begun to fall in love with him.

I frowned a little as I tried to remember this moment and pulled the silk covered album towards me. This album was our wedding album, the whole thing covered in white silk with one of the roses from my bouquet pressed to sit in the centre of it with our names and our wedding date printed in silver just above it.

I could feel tears begin to prick at my eyes as I thought about our wedding day. It was the happiest day of my life, as cliché as that sounds, but it hadn’t been a smooth wedding. Regardless of how much I had planned and how hard I’d worked to try and achieve a flawless day, I hadn’t taken into account the friends we shared. Not that I would ever change them, but they do tend to...not ruin...or bring chaos...they just...they make things interesting.

It’s very hard to bring order to them, especially the guys. They are laws unto themselves. But if they weren’t...they wouldn’t be who they were and I wouldn’t love them the way I do.

I chuckled as I saw a picture of the boys all in a pile on the floor, having knocked over a table that had a load of plates and food on it. They were wrestling for my garter that Zacky had just thrown and had somehow managed to wrestle themselves across the dance floor. It had ended with Jimmy jumping to his feet with the garter in his hand and Johnny having to get stitches in a cut on his forehead.

I looked to our bedroom door as I heard footsteps and I smiled as Zacky appeared, a warm smile on his lips as he saw me.

“Hey baby,” he greeted me as he walked over.

“Hey ducky,” I smiled, leaning up and pressing my lips to his once he was close enough.

I felt him smile against my lips until he pulled away, pressing one last kiss against my forehead before looking down at the photo albums.

“What you doing?” He asked, sitting on the edge of the bed and pulling our wedding album over so he could flick through it.

“Looking through some photos.”

“How come?”

I shrugged and moved so I was sitting upright, my legs curled beneath me. I leant forward and wrapped my arms around Zacky’s shoulders as I propped my chin against one, looking down at our album as he turned the page and revealed a picture of Zacky and I kissing.

“Just felt like it,” I murmured. “Had some time to kill and I haven’t looked at these in a while, so I thought I would.”

Zacky nodded and brought a hand up, his fingers lacing through mine, as he turned to look at me.

“You looked a little confused when I walked in,” he mentioned. “Did you realise how many photos we have that you can’t remember? ‘Cause that’s what happens to me when I look through these. There are so many that I don’t remember being taken...hell, there are loads that I don’t even remember going out to the places.”

I chuckled and shook my head. “I remember the photos and I remember the places. We don’t all have to get completely shitfaced when we go out.”

Zacky playfully narrowed his eyes at me, poking me in the side as he pressed his lips to mine gently.

“So why the confusion?”

I shrugged once again and propped my chin back on his shoulder as I looked down at the photo of Zacky and I dancing.

“I was trying to remember when I started to fall in love with you.”

“What do you mean?”

Zacky closed the wedding album and turned a little so I sat up more so he could, feeling him gently squeeze my hand that he was still holding.

“I can remember being in love with you,” I explained with a fond smile. “I can remember it just hitting me that I was completely head over heels. You weren’t doing anything special. You were just being you.”

“Really? When was it?”

“It was just after we had moved in together,” I replied, thinking back to the few months we lived together before our first anniversary. “And there were boxes everywhere still and I had tripped over one of them?”

Zacky chuckled, his thumb stroking the top of my hand as he listened to me.

“I hit the floor like a sack of shit,” I laughed. “And I heard you shout out my name in a panic but I was just giggling on the floor. You skidded to a halt where I was and you just looked down at me and shook your head, laughing quietly yourself once you realised I wasn’t hurt. It was just a normal thing but as you helped me to my feet, it just hit me.”

Zacky nodded and moved on to the bed more so he was mirroring how I was sitting.

“I fell in love with you the moment I saw you,” he smiled.

I rolled my eyes with a quiet scoff, biting down on my lip as Zacky hushed me.

“Seriously Sarah, I did. I saw you and you just blew me away and that was even before you said anything.”

“Did I get ruined for you when I finally spoke?” I asked teasingly.

“You just got better,” he answered without missing a beat.

I could feel my cheeks begin to burn a little as I looked down at our joined hands, feeling tears prick at my eyes a little bit and I laughed as I thought about the night we met.

“Lyndsey and Brian tried so hard to make it seem like they hadn’t set us up,” I smiled, sniffing a little bit and raising a hand to brush away one of my tears. “But it was so obvious.”

Zacky grinned and nodded, raising a hand himself and rubbing my cheek gently.

“The fact that they locked us in their pool house didn’t make it seem suspicious at all,” he chuckled.

“Lyndsey tried so hard to play it off that the door was jammed,” I shook my head with a smile. “I was so angry with her because she’d tried to set me up so many times. But I owe her big.”

Zacky smiled and leant forward pressing his lips to mine gently.

“Wasn’t that the night that Johnny had his accident?”

I snorted out a laugh and nodded, putting a hand over my mouth as I did so.

“God, I felt so sorry for him,” I whispered a bit, taking my hand away from my mouth and grinning at my husband.

Zacky wrinkled his nose a little. “It was fucking foul.”

“Boys will be boys,” I dismissed with a giggle.

“Okay so yeah, boys will be boys,” he agreed. “But you have to know the difference between thinking your gonna fart and shitting yourself.”

“Jimmy was so cruel to him,” I recalled, thinking about how Jimmy bounced around Johnny pointing and shouting out ‘you sharted! You sharted’.

“Johnny’s a big boy. He could look after himself.”

I looked at Zacky in disbelief. “Not against you guys. He was completely defenceless.”

“So you jumped in to defend him,” Zacky grinned.

I covered my face in my hands and groaned quietly.

“And got a little heated,” he chuckled and tried to pry my fingers away from my face. “And so you got sent to the pool house to cool off.”

I nodded and looked at him over my hands. “And then Brian sent you in to make sure I was okay because apparently I’d been ‘too’ quiet.”

“And then they locked us in.”

I took my hands away from my face as Zacky massaged the side of my neck gently.

“I wanted to kill them,” I admitted. “I was so angry that they’d do that to us but...”

“But?”

“I guess it worked out well in the end.”

“You guess?” Zacky asked in mock disbelief.

I shrugged and nodded. “Could’ve been worse.”

Zacky rolled his eyes before launching himself at me gently, making me giggle as he pushed me on to my back. I squirmed beneath him and tried to push him off but soon admitted defeat. I heard quiet thumps and looked to the end of the bed to see our photo albums had been knocked to the floor in our tussle.

“Those better not be marked in any form.”

Zacky looked over his shoulders and shook his head as he looked at me again.

“They’re fine,” he promised and flicked his gaze around my face. “I love you Mrs Baker.”

I grinned and wrapped my arms around his neck. “After three years, I still love hearing you call me that.”

He pouted a little in return. “You don’t love me?”

I chuckled and rubbed my nose against his, brushing my lips to his for a second.

“I love you,” I muttered, running my fingers through his hair and feeling my skin spike as he moved a hand down to my stomach.

“I can’t wait to meet this one,” he told me, his gaze fixing on my slightly swollen stomach. “And I can’t wait to start on the next ones.”

“You just enjoy making them,” I chuckled.

“It’s a plus, I’m not going to lie,” he smiled fondly and pressed his lips to mine.

I melted under his touch and kissed back, letting him move my legs so he could fit between them perfectly.

Zacky was my other half, the love of my life, my soul mate and my every thing. It didn’t really matter if I couldn’t remember falling in love with him, all that mattered was I did love him and he loved me and this wasn’t going to ever change.