That first love. And the first one who breaks your heart. For me, they just happen to be the same person.
You’re not the kind of person who smiles for nothing, Colie. I have to earn every one.
I don’t think anyone would think that an ellipsis represents doubt or anything. I think it’s more, you know, hinting at the future. What lies ahead.
You didn’t fail. You just opted out. There’s a difference.
Get back on that bike.
You asked me to go out with you. I know you probably changed your mind. But you should know, the answer was yes. It’s always been yes when it comes to you.
I mean, it’s impossible to fake anything if you’ve already seen the other person in a way they’d never choose for you to. You can’t go back from that.
I felt like I’d been swimming so hard, and the water growing warmer and warmer the closer I got to the top. I wasn’t there yet, but now I could see the surface, rippling just beyond my fingers.
Here was a boy who liked flaws, who saw them not as failings but as strengths. Who knew such a person could exist, or what would have happened if we’d found each other under different circumstances? Maybe in a perfect world. But not in this one.
She was just a shell of her former self, functioning and talking but hardly alive.
But anyone can begin. It was the part with all the promise, the potential, the things I loved. More and more, though, I was finding myself wanting to find out what happened in the end...
It was like when you ripped a piece of paper into two: no matter how you tried, the seams never fit exactly right again.
Because it is so hard, in any life, to believe in what you can’t fully understand.
Some people, they can’t just move on, you know, mourn and cry and be done with it. Or at least seem to be. But for me... I don’t know. I didn’t want to fix it, to forget. It wasn’t something that was broken. It’s just... something that happened. And like that hole, I’m just finding ways, every day, of working around it. Respecting and remembering and getting on at the same time.
She knew I could tell with one glance, one look, one simple instant. It was her eyes. Despite the thick makeup, they were still dark-rimmed., haunted, and sad. Most of all though, they were familiar. The fact that we were in front of hundreds of strangers changed nothing at all. I’d spent a summer with those same eyes-scared, lost, confused-staring back at me. I would have known them anywhere.
You only really fall apart in front of the people you know can piece you back together.
The future was one thing that could never be broken, because it had not yet had the chance to be anything.
I’d still thought that everything I thought about that night-the shame, the fear-would fade in time. But that hadn’t happened. Instead, the things that I remembered, these little details, seemed to grow stronger, to the point where I could feel their weight in my chest. Nothing, however stuck with me more than the memory of stepping into that dark room and what I found there, and how the light then took that nightmare and made it real.
One week, one strong. One scared, one bold. I was beginning to understand though, that there were no such things as absolutes, not in life, or in people. Like Owen said, it was day by day, if not moment by moment. All you could do was take on as much weight as you can bear. And if you’re lucky, there’s someone close enough to shoulder the rest.
I was used to being invisible. People rarely saw me, and if they did, they never looked close. I wasn’t shiny and charming like my brother, stunning and graceful like my mother, or smart and dynamic like my friends. That’s the thing, though. You always think you want to be noticed. Until you are.