Marti leaned back against the mirror over the sink. She turned to gaze at the streaks of dirt on her face, the dried blood on her hands, and her hair wildly sticking out in all directions. “I look terrible.”
      Jim smiled. “No, you’re beautiful.” He wet another towel and started to wash the rest of her foot. 
     She tried to brush him away. “Stop. You don’t have to do that.”
     “I want to,” he said, and squeezed warm, soapy water across the top of her foot and between her toes.
    With expert tenderness, he dried her wound and propped her foot on his leg. He studied the array of tape and bandages he’d lined up along the counter. “Let’s see...”
    “Aren’t you going to say ‘I told you so’?”
    He bit off a piece of tape. “Of course not. I l—” He snapped his mouth closed and never looked up.
   “Well, if it makes you feel any better, you were right and I was stupid.”
    He held one end of the tape down with his thumb and tried to close the gash. “You’re not stupid, just stubborn sometimes. And I don’t need to be right. I need you to be okay.”
   Marti’s heart ignited like a sparkler – a slow motion sparkler that caught fire gradually then burned brighter and pulsed faster with each discovery her mind realized. She was overcome with the depth of feelings she had for him and the sudden awareness of how he felt about her. She leaned back and accepted the truth. This man, the one who just washed her dust-covered foot, was quite possibly the best man God ever made.