he said it

The L word, he said it. I couldn't believe it. We were just laying around in bed all day (among other things), and he had something at 2pm, so around 1:50, he finally said he had to get out of bed, get ready, and go. But it's always so hard for us to tear ourselves apart from each other, and get out of bed (I know I'm making you gag, I know ...), so we kept hugging and kissing each other, and when we pulled back after one of the kisses to just look at each other, he blurted out "i love you."

It took me a couple of seconds to even realized what had happened; it was so unexpected. He then said "Oh my gosh, I don't know where that came from; it just came out." I kinda just stared at him with wide eyes of disbelief, and I didn't say anything back but gave him a big hug instead. I was so torn as to whether or not to say it back, but once you say something like that, you can't take it back, and I honestly didn't feel like I was ready to tell him I loved him. By the time a minute or two had gone by, it was too late for me to say anything.

He said "Wow, I can't believe I just said that; I have no idea where it came from. And I generally don't say that." I asked him, "Did you mean it?" To which he replied, "Yeah, I think so. I felt it, which is why I think I said it without really thinking." I told him that he could take it back if he wanted to, if he wasn't sure. He adamantly replied, "no no no, I don't want to take it back." And then he left to go to his thing at 2pm.

Along those lines, he's mentioned several times that he feels so differently about me, with me, than he has with any other girlfriends he's had. He told me last night that one example of that is that he's never wanted to introduce any of his girlfriends to his parents. The ones whom they've met have always just been circumstantial, never planned nor intentional. But he really wants his parents to meet me, to talk to me. He said in this really cute voice, "I want to talk to them beforehand, especially my mom, and tell her to ask you girl questions when she sees you. And my dad, I'll just tell him to ask you general questions, to get to know you."

How do I feel about all of this? I haven't thought about it all enough to know how I feel. Right now, I think he feels a lot more strongly about me than I do for him. I don't know what to do with the L word. Should I bring it up to talk about? But I don't want to have to tell him that even though I feel like we're going in that direction, I'm not quite ready to say it.