I always tried to imagine what it would be like to open your door to find something you had given up on. maybe it had seen places you never had, been rerouted and passed through so many strange hands, but still somehow found its way back to you, all before the day even began.
Everything, in the end, comes down to timing. One second, one minute, one hour, could make all the difference. So much hanging on just these things, tiny increments that together build a life. Like words build a story, and what had Ted said? One word can change the entire world.
I remembered Owen telling me how music had saved him in Phoenix, that it drowned everything out, and it was the same for me now. As long as I had something to listen to, I could blur the things I didn’t want to think about, if not block them out completely.
Everyone has their weak spot. The one thing that despite your best efforts, will always bring you to your knees, regardless of how strong you are otherwise. For some people, it’s love. Others, money or alcohol. Mine was even worse: calculus.
Fine just fine.
Everyone had a forever, but given a choice, this would be mine. The one that began in this moment, with Wes, in a kiss that took my breath away, then gave it back – leaving me astounded, amazed, and most of all, alive.
As Isabel acted out her date, both of them laughing, I stayed in the kitchen, out of sight, and pretended she was telling me, too. And that, for once, I was part of this hidden language of laughter and silliness and girls that was, somehow, friendship.
Don’t I know it.
Being self-confident doesn’t necessarily start inside. It starts with the rest of the world and leads back to you.
Needing was so easy: it came naturally, like breathing. Being needed by someone else, though, that was the hard part. But as with giving help and accepting it, we had to do both to be made complete-like links overlapping to form a chain, or a lock finding the right key.
I’d only met him once, at the mall. He was tall, with a big floppy shock of blond hair he was always getting out of his face by jerking his head suddenly to the side, whiplash-style. Rina found this incredibly sexy. It made me nervous. – Caitlin about Jeff.
This true difference in me now: I had these experiances, these tales, more of this life. So maybe it wasn’t the fairy tale. But those stories weren’t real anyway. Mine were.
Time wasn’t a thing you could divide easily; there was no defined middle or beginning or end. I could pretend to leave the past behind, but it would not leave me.
It was like when you ripped a piece of paper into two: no matter how you tried, the seams never fit exactly right again. It was what you couldn’t see, those tiniest of pieces, that were lost in the severing, and their absence kept everything from being complete.
Funny how a beautiful song could tell such an ugly story.
I am not breaking my rules,′ I snapped, hating that I’d ended up on the advice-recieving end of things, jumping from Dear Remy to Confused in Cincinnati all in one summer.
See for me, it’s immediate. Silence is so freaking loud.′ This seemed either deep or deeply oxymoronic. I wasn’t sure which.
Being nice wasn’t as easy as it seemed especially when the rest of the world could be so mean.
But there was only one truth about forever that really mattered, and that was this: it was happening. Right then, and every moment afterwards. Look, there. Now. Now. Now.
Okay,” he said. He took a breath. “What would you do, if you could do anything?” I took a step toward him, closing the space between us. “This.” I said. And then I kissed him.