"You have to use your cape to take him down!" Nate screams to me while jumping up and down on the couch.

I've been beating the bad guys with my boyfriend lately.

Boyfriend.

It's a word I haven't used in years, two to be exact. It's a word that means a lot more to me than a few week relationship. It's a word that means commitment. It's a word that means partner. It's a word that means "team."

Which is exactly what we are when we play Nintendo... Super Mario World to be exact. You have to know it, right? Mario and Luigi are brothers trying to battle the evil dinosaur/reptile thing through cute levels of moving mushrooms and flying turtles. It's a game we both admitted we adored while kids and have been playing it devotedly together for a month now.

"Ok! You're gonna jump that pit there and then kill that flapping turtle-looking thing and then you have to get that star." I say biting my nails at his next attempt at the level.

We've totally developed a language while playing Nintendo and while dating. See, it goes like this: I met Nate this past winter and quite literally fell in love with him the instant he quoted a Saved By the Bell line (without knowing I liked Save by the Bell) and when we got ice cream and margaritas on the same night (agreeing that mint Oreo ice cream might be the ultimate flavor). " He's like my dream guy!" I tell my friend Megan in the car after taking her son to the doctors, " I mean, is this what it's supposed to feel like? It all makes sense!" After weeks and then months, Nate and I understand each other. Literally, we can speak with toothpaste in our mouths and know what we're saying. It's funny, too. I wasn't looking for him and he wasn't looking for anyone. It just quite literally came out of nowhere.

"Jump!! See that troopa thingy pop out of nowhere!" I yelp at Nate while trying to beat a level on Super Mario that's been beating us for the last half our. Nate screams as one of the flying google-eyed fish takes his life.

We had our our initial struggles as we were both at very different places in our lives in the beginning of dating. He was quite literally here (imagine my index finger pointing really far left) and I was here (imagine my other index finger pointing really far right). And there was one point where I thought it was going to fall to the waste-side as many of my previous attempts at dating had. Except we jumped over the pits in our situation together and we killed the flying turtles in our situation together and we ran to the finish line, collected our coins, gathered our points and proceeded to the next level in our game together. The next level: Boyfriends.

That's the thing about getting older and living through experiences. We think we only have one life and one chance, but just like 1-ups in video games, we get other chances. And just like how we learn after "dying" in the same places or getting lost in tube mazes, we take that next chance with new knowledge to really go in the right direction.

"Babe! You did it!" Nate screams at our fiftieth attempt at wrangling a crazy bad guy on the video game and progressing to the new level. "We are totally going to win this game!" Nate screams as we high-five and kiss... yes, high-five and kiss.

See, I've never really been friends with someone I was in love with. Never. I feel bad for saying that so bluntly. To be honest, I always thought that it never existed. Like Mario and Luigi and the bad guys of the video game, I thought maybe that it was a place that some people were good at mastering while others struggled to make it level after level. In my past relationship, I gave in thinking that I was going to be one of those people who was just not that good at playing the game. I wasn't in it to win it.

"I love playing this game with you!" Nate says to me while going to the freezer to get ice cream for us both(Seriously, how amazing is he?).

I can't help but wonder if he's talking about Mario or if he's talking about us.