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1. If you wake up in the morning, and he isn’t there, don’t panic. You won’t notice him rolling out of bed, but he inevitably does at impossible hours of the morning. You’ll wake up to the smell of coffee in the kitchen and his scent on the pillow next to you, but very rarely will you be greeted with a kiss or his shallow breathing beside you.
2. On the off chance that you wake before him, try to feign sleep. You’ll feel a hand brush your skin, feel his lips press gently against your temple. He won’t make a sound, except that initial sigh of relief when he sees you tangled in the sheets beside him. No matter how many times you try to convince him that you will never leave him in the night, he won’t believe you. Don’t take it personally. Impermanence is perhaps the only stable thing he’s had in his life.
3. He will never tell you that he hates your coffee. Or your cookies. Or your baked ziti that you spent four hours trying to cook. He’ll just leave a few sips in the bottom of the mug, a few crumbs on his plate, and in the middle of the night, you’ll hear his bare feet on the kitchen floor.
4. He can go days without speaking a single word. Learn to read his body language. While he’s perfected the art of lying, he cannot seem to communicate to his body these false messages. His gazes can speak novels if you take the time to decode them. Isaac is expressive in the most atypical and sporadic ways. Take his silences as opportunities to fill yourself with knowledge.
5. Sometimes, after long battles with creatures in the dark, he’ll watch soap operas at four o’clock in the morning. Or spend thirty minutes leaning out the open window. Or he’ll try to make a pot of spaghetti. If you find him, don’t ask him if he’s okay. Don’t ask him if he needs anything. These are the times that he uses to grapple with the overwhelming humanity of himself. These moments are his own to come back into his independence.
6. The first few times you see him shirtless, it will shock you. Descriptions couldn’t prepare you for what you will see. But don’t look away. Seeing his scars will become useful to you. They are as much a part of him as his smile is. He might tell you that he doesn’t remember where most of them came from, if you ever have the courage to ask. He’s probably lying.
7. Tell him you love him. Often. Say it over coffee and during sex and when he brings you a magazine from the living room. If you say it often enough, sometimes you’ll catch the beautiful serenity on his face on the days that he actually believes you.
8. He will never admit it, but reality television often amuses him.
9. He’ll remember your anniversary and that your favorite color’s blue and that on your third date you wore a green shirt, but sometimes he forgets to tell you that he hasn't slept for two days. Or he’ll forget to call and tell you that he got cornered by a rouge Alpha on the way home from the grocery store. Sometimes he forgets that he’s told you about the disasters of his parents, and he’ll pretend to understand when you fret about not being able to see your mother over the Christmas holidays. Try not to hold these things against him.
10. When he tells you he loves you, grab it and hold it and hide it away for the days that you don’t think he does. Tuck it into your planner, so you can smile at work. Fold it into the laundry so you can remember when you wear your favorite pair of jeans. The times that he says it will be few and far between, but he means them with all his heart.