Second Chance Summer

by Morgan Matson

What was the point of trying to run away if people were going to insist on reminding you of what you were running from?

“Your childhood friends are the ones you should hang on to. They know you in a way that nobody else does.”

“You said you didn’t want to waste your time on people who aren’t going to matter,” I said, and he nodded. “But how do you know they’re not going to matter? Unless you give it a shot?”

A thousand moments that I had just taken for granted—mostly because I had assumed that there would be a thousand more.

And now that I knew that the time we had together was limited, I was holding on to it, trying to stretch it out, all the while wishing I’d appreciated what I’d had earlier.

I was powerless to stop it. And as he deteriorated, each new version of him replaced the other,

“The thing is that people only get hurt—really hurt—when they’re trying to play it safe. That’s when people get injured, when they pull back at the last second because they’re scared. They hurt themselves and other people.”

And so I lay there, just listening, knowing that each breath was another moment he was still here and, simultaneously, that meant that he had just moved a little closer to being gone.

I knew in that moment that things would be forever different—that today was going to be a day that split my life into before and after.

Love isn’t all we need—love is all there is.