The way your voice sounds, after a good cry

He told her "You're wonderful," three times this week.

"Three times!" she exclaimed to me, voice wavering.

"That's good, right?"

She paused and looked away. She started blushing again.

"It just doesn't make sense. Why? Why am I wonderful?"

Because you get freckles when you go swimming. Because you pronounce your r's funny. Because you know exactly what he's thinking before he's thinking it. Because you're willing to admit your feet smell bad.

But he doesn't say those things and all she wants is to hear them.

"Why am I wonderful? I don't understand."

She doesn't want an ego boost. She wants a reason.

Life so often doesn't make sense. I knew someone once. He would call me every night before bed. He would check in on me when I had to work overtime. He would send me those emails that made me laugh so hard I would cry. The kind of emails no one else understood. He would ask me my opinion. And I never understood why.

I always wished I had asked.