Toothbrush

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Oh, um, hey! You guys might remember me as the girl who used to update her stories in a semi-timely manner. Or, er, at all. Apologies…updates are in the works! Updates for Night Moves and Beautifully should be posted soon. This is just one of those stories that comes to me and I have to write it immediately so that it will leave me alone…and then I post it immediately at 2 AM instead of sleeping on it and end up with lots of typos. :)

This is a one-shot. Season 5. Mondler. Yep, the good stuff. :) Reviews, as always, greatly appreciated!

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She keeps a toothbrush at my place; as if I have the extra space

-City Love, John Mayer

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Her toothbrush is in the medicine cabinet in my bathroom, between mine and Joey's. It's the first thing she left over here, shortly after everyone found out about us. Which, really, seems a bit ridiculous, since we live about five feet from one another, and it takes all of an extra fifteen seconds to walk across the hall to brush her teeth. And if that's not ridiculous enough…I countered with my toothbrush at her place. And it has snowballed into half of one of my dresser drawers filled with her clothes, and her laundry mixed in with my laundry and mine in with hers, and, at this particular moment, her favorite coffee cup in my kitchen sink.

This kind of thing has always freaked me out: the gradual melding of belongings when a relationship gets serious. Random toiletries left in my bathroom? Nope, get out, don't even try it. I mean, it's just a toothbrush. But it's…more than that. It's the first step to "getting serious" which I've never really had an interest in doing before her. Well, okay, it's been a fleeting thought, and a bit more than that, I guess, with Janice, but that was scary and didn't feel quite…right. Well, then there was Kathy. That really wasn't that long ago, though. So, apparently, hell has frozen over and I've recently become a full-fledged adult. I thought they were supposed to throw you parties, or at least make you put on a cap and gown, to celebrate these kinds of milestones so you know they're coming.

Seriously, though, it scares me how much this doesn't feel scary. It feels right. Because it's Monica. It feels all cliché to say, because you always hear that when it's the right person, it will feel right, which I always just brushed off as a silly cliché, but…. Yeah, no, it does have some merit. Right now, though, it's kind of freaking me out how little I'm freaking out. But…I knew what this was going into it. I mean, London may have just kind of happened in the way that all of the best moments in life tend to just happen (as do the worst moments in life, but I digress), but the second we got back, and I made the decision to walk back in her front door and still be on London Time…I knew it right then. And I walked through her door, anyway.

Best decision I've made in my entire life.

To be brutally honest, the times I have freaked out about us…are usually because of my own damn insecurities. Because I knew what this was going to be—you don't just have a fling with one of your best friends—and yet I did it anyway. I'm just so scared of screwing this up and losing her, and that kind of comes out wrong sometimes. Because if I were to lose her, I wouldn't just be losing my girlfriend…I'd be losing Monica. She was one of my best friends before anything happened between us, maybe even my best friend at a certain point in time—we were definitely closer as friends before Joey moved in—and I would be lying if I said the thought of us had never crossed my mind before London. But I never pushed the boundaries between us to see where, exactly, they lie because…I didn't want to know.

I was too afraid to find out.

I always had a feeling that any kind of feelings I had for her were reciprocated, but…it was always too risky. Flirting is one thing, or a few kisses even (mostly a few drunken kisses when we were younger…and one sober kiss that I never even told Joey about), or joking around about offering to be her boyfriend, but actually…pressing the issue? No, too much at stake.

I think we both just needed to get to this point in time for this to work out. We needed to have the important relationships we had with other people and grow up and get over ourselves enough to be able to do this properly. At the risk of two clichés in under ten minutes, I would even go so far as to say that, you know, maybe everything does kind of, sort of happen for a reason. Kind of, sort of. Okay, I only added the "kind of, sort of" at the risk of the world finding out that I'm nothing short of a hopeless romantic underneath all of my relationship/commitment crap. I am. I really am. It's completely pathetic; Monica thinks it's sweet. The latter seems to be what's most important to me lately….

I love her. So, so much.

Which is why I'm okay with (more than okay with) her toothbrush in my bathroom. And her clothes in my dresser. And her coffee cup in my sink. And maybe, someday, we'll buy some place for both of our toothbrushes. And maybe even a couple of little toothbrushes, too.

Have I belabored the metaphor? Yeah? Too far?

Point being, I should have taken actual bets when everyone else said I would be the last one out of all of us to get married. Because—ladies and gentlemen, drum roll, please— I'm definitely going to marry that girl.