Months after getting kicked out of college my senior year, I made a split decision and moved in with my best friend and his roommate, Nix. I never thought I'd try the whole 'friends with benefits' thing with Phoenix, but he didn't seem to mind when I offered up the idea. We promised no feelings would get involved. We lied to each other, to ourselves. In his eyes, I wasn't just the deaf girl or the family burden. I was beautiful and smart and a bit crazy with some anger issues which he overlooked because to him, I was normal. We were never supposed to be more, but you can't fight that pull when the stars align. We are fire and water. Stars and the moon. Phoenix and Luna. This is the story of how a man who loves everything showed a girl how to love herself.

I loved love. Some might even say I was obsessed with it. I was the girl who had a fake wedding when I was six and subscribed to bridal magazines by sixteen. My happily ever was all I thought about. So the fact that I had a crush on my brother’s best friend—a guy who notoriously doesn’t do relationships—was heartbreak in the making. I was forced to do the only thing I could—ignore my feelings and move on. Years later, after countless failed relationships, my shy heart had slowly stepped away from its fanciful ideas of love. It was going smoothly until the guy who didn’t do relationships suddenly wanted to try having one…with me. It didn’t take long before I gave in. He was exactly how I imagined, and everything I'd dreamed about: goofy, smart, good with animals, and kind. Still, my past break-ups were never far from my mind. I'd always crushed hard and fell fast, and no one ever caught me. But the more time we spent together, the more I started to see a future with him. And what’s shocking was that he saw the same thing as me. He’s my forever. I’m his. This is our love story.