Valerie’s POV

I love airports so it’s weird for me I’m holding back my tears in an airport. Harry and I walk holding hands and Sandra follows us chatting to Eleanor. She has come with me to say goodbye but mostly for me to not be alone when Harry is gone.

It’s half past seven already which means they should be boarding. Harry is the last one to do the check in and while he is with the paper shit I start to say goodbye to our friends. I’m all smiles because I know I’ll see them again and, as much as you love a friend, is not really that hard to say See you soon. I hug all of my friends, taking longer to hug Eleanor and, lately, Louis. Louis hugs me too tight making me laugh and he thanks me again for the pyjama I bought him.

I ordered it online as it is personalized. The pyjama pants are a collection of Louis’ best pictures I took of him at set like the famous Eating watermelon as a boss and some funny rest faces when he was the background of pictures. The t-shirt is a white cotton t-shirt which has a picture of the two of us being creepy weirdo and it has written Valerie Veneel is my best friend at the upper chest and FOREVER at his back. He laughed hard when he saw it and I chuckle along. He has given me a blanket full of pictures of the two of us having fun and being weird as well.

Then there’s Harry. He wears a white t-shirt, jeans and a bandana on his curly hair. I smile as I get closer to him and wrap my arms around him in a suffocating hug. He caresses my back and my hair and we stay hugging each other for a couple of minutes. Then we pull out and we don’t say a word but kiss each other’s lips lovingly.

-I love you. – Harry says looking at me.

I smile at him and turn around to take his present which I lend to him.

-What is this? – He smiles.

-Well, I thought of giving you some of my clothing but you know you would look weird so... It is just a stupid cheesy thing I made for you.

He smiles and kisses my lips again and Sandra coughs since he has to go.

-You have to go. I love you, Harry.

-I love you too. – He kisses me again until he pulls out. – Alright, I need to go.

We both chuckle and he leaves turning his head back a few times making me laugh. It’s not that hard. It is just going to be a few weeks although he doesn’t know. I love surprises!

Harry’s POV

It has been an hour of flight and I still haven’t opened Valerie’s present. I want the lads to fall asleep since I want this to be something just ours. When Eleanor falls asleep on Louis’ shoulder, who has been asleep since he was done talking about Valerie, I decide I’ll open my love’s present.

I LOVE YOU is what you can read and the front page of the notebook. It’s Valerie’s handwriting and it is on capital letters and black ink. “As simple as that” is written with a smaller sized of letter underneath her declaration. She has drawn a lot of things with her black pen around her writing and after admiring her work, I open the notebook.

Because.... is all you can read right in the middle of the first page of the notebook and then the rest of the pages have nice and beautiful pictures of the two of us and reasons why she loves me. My heart skips a beat when I see them.

The first one was from before we even kissed. We are in my pool just playing along. I remember perfectly how I felt back then and have to smile. In the picture Valerie is slashing water at me with a frown and I’m foolishly smiling trying to dodge the water. She has written on the paper: “You’ve got a smile that could light up every corner of London”.

There is another where Valerie is on the middle of the photo, sitting with legs folded on the beach next to the fire. She is looking at me smirking slightly, absolutely beautiful while I stand up besides the fire looking somewhere else. “You have no idea how fast my heart races when I see you”.

The next picture is of the two of us kissing at the entrance of an ice cream shop where Valerie bought a strawberry ice cream which ends up on my shirt. I am wearing the woodcutter shirt she took from my suitcase and I like to think she chose that one because of that. “I am sure the clocks stop all around the world the first time you kissed me”.

There is another picture of the two of us asleep on Liam’s couch hugging each other. “Your arms around me feel like home” “I’m feeling homesick” I chuckle when I see the second sentence written in a smaller size at the bottom of the page.

Then there is an astonishing Valerie on her bikini smiling foolishly on her hammock and looking at me. I was at the pool playing with baby Lux with the ball. “Before I met you I never knew what it was like to look at someone and smile for no reason”.

A picture of the two of us playing at the shore at Rodeo Beach. “I choose you. And I will choose you over and over and over again. Without pause, without a doubt, in a heartbeat; I’ll keep on choosing you.”

A picture of the two of us sleeping on the back seat of Liam’s car. So the photographer is Sophia. I have to thank her. “I’ll go with you to the end of the world”.

I have to laugh when I get to a page full of pictures of me sleeping and Valerie being weird with funny faces next to me. She has done that more than once. What a kid. “Forever might be a long, long time, but I wouldn’t mind spending it with you. Tell me that every day I’ll get to wake up to that smile and I wouldn’t mind at all.”

Valerie laughing hard as beautiful as ever over the counter while I juggle with some oranges. “You never fail to amaze me. Every day there is something new that makes me love you even more than the day before.”

More pictures with more lovely sentences on her handwriting. “I love that feeling that I get when I see you smiling.” “Even when I spend the whole day with you, I will miss you the second you leave” “You give the kind of kisses when you have to stop because you can’t help but smile”

The last page is a picture of the two of us in a stare contest where we are both hiding our smiles because the first to laugh loses. “I know I tell you I love you a lot but when I tell you I love you I do not say it out of habit. I tell you I love you because I do and because I want to remind you that you are the best thing that ever happened to me.”

I smile having a look at the pictures again and when I’m about to close the notebook I realize there is some sort of letter at the end.

"A few days ago, a survey was launched on the Internet where people could vote for the three pictures they thought were the most important of all times. The first one was the photography of the bomb which fell over Nagasaki at the end of the Second World War. The second one was the man who walks over the moon for the first time. Yet my favourite one was the third. It was that famous picture of a soldier kissing a nurse when the First World War was done. The rest of the world keeps going around but they were there, kissing each other’s mouth.

And I like knowing people think one of the three most important photos of all times is a picture of two lovers, frozen in an endless kiss, refugees against the oblivion. Maybe that’s what we feel when we see old pictures. Time doesn’t pass for them, like those mosquitoes which stay preserved into amber stones for millions of years. The world might keep going round, but they stay there with no changes, like the pictures that I’ve stuck in this notebook for you because it doesn’t matter what happens next; I’ve spent the best month of my life with you telling stories about Pakistani butterflies and falling in love as an idiot.

And why do I choose this weird way of telling you I love you? Well, I’m weird as you know but the reason is even weirdest. I read that Lewis Hein was asked once why he chose becoming a war photographer. He answered if he could tell with words everything he saw, he wouldn’t need to be carrying a camera around all day long but that certain moments of beauty, desolation, horror or love are beyond words. And I think that too.

There are things we can’t explain with words such as being alive or feelings like hugging the one you love when you haven’t seen them in a while. Maybe that’s why our life is built upon pictures, moments frozen in time forever and decisions which change inevitably the way things are.

And that’s why I have chosen to do an album with pictures of us. Because I can’t explain myself with words when it’s about you even though I tell you I love you all the time. Because there is no way I can’t explain something that is way better than words. Because I love you way more anyone could ever understand. And because if everyone should have a bunch of pictures which you could look at to know how their life was, I want this to be my bunch of pictures. Well, this notebook and fifty notebooks as this one. Because we have just started and I don’t think I can love you any harder so I’ll just keep on loving you this hard forever.
Really, I just chose to fill a notebook with pictures of the two of us because I want you to look at it whenever you doubt of a long distance relationship because I want you to know I need you. Because you remind me every single second how wonderful life can be.

Notes

So this is the end you guys!!

.... Or is it?