I would do pretty much anything for you, and I have done. Here is a very small list, selected at random from an enormous backlog.

• walked from me to you and back again enough to make 500 miles
• scraped back sweaty tendrils of hair and changed underwear
• told pretty white lies
• half-drowned you at the pool recounting how you once said you wanted nothing more than to ride an elephant with your waist-long hair covering breasts (you never let your hair grow long enough)…
• … and dragged you to the side when your open laughing mouth filled with water.
• dictated your essays down the phone to you
• smuggled black olives from your plate in an operation save-face. After you’d assured my father you love black olives.
• the spinach also.
• squeezed your back spots. I know. Gross.
• listened to the little stories left over after everyone else has lost patience. You think I perfected the art of the mindless mmhhhhmmmm for anyone else?

However. Breaking the almost-half-a-lifetime habit of doing everything for you, which attached itself limpet-like to me when I first saw you - breakably small, blue-lipped, wielding a hockey stick in the snow with a scowl at Miss Dale’s call of Pipsqueak! -

I point blank refuse to feign sleep next time you have sex in the same room as me. Yes. There is a limit to my love.

(I don’t care how dark it was.)

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Love and forehead kisses,
Me x

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P.S. This does not mean I shall join in.