Expiration Dates

by Rebecca Serle

We convey too many important things in too few words these days.

“Too many activities value early risers,” Jake says. “Jobs, gyms, farmers markets. Even hikers in LA judge you if you get there past nine.”

“There should be an evening farmers market for people like us where the latest arrivals get the best things.”

What can I say? I wanted a love story that sung.

“To your future,” I say. “And to yours. Looking bright.” I think about Jake. About the kiss on the cheek. “Bright or radioactive?” Hugo considers this. “A lifetime with you could only be one thing.”

Something always happened to me once I got the paper—I became resigned. I knew what was coming. I felt, sometimes, like I’d hacked the system. Wasn’t the hardest part of heartbreak the unpredictability? How you could feel the most connected to a person in one moment—like being in a teardrop together, the world a watercolor outside—and like strangers in the next? Friends were always talking about how they did not see it coming. But I did. There was no need to dive in headfirst only to realize the proverbial pool was empty. I knew when to invest, and for how long. And when the end came it was sometimes painful, often disappointing. But I could never say I was blindsided. I could never say I didn’t know.

If you never stop long enough to sink into something, then it can’t destroy you. It’s easier to climb out of a pool than a well, is the thing.

I do miss the thing I don’t have. It’s strange to feel that, to want something that you’ve never even known before. But that’s love, isn’t it? The belief in something you cannot see or touch or even explain. Like the heart itself, we just know it’s there.

the film was on a tight budget (films are always on tight budgets, even when those budgets are two hundred million dollars)

“Get a man to do it. That way, they can be good for something.”

Everyone knows you’re supposed to show up on time to a restaurant and late to someone’s house.

“Seattle,” he says. “I’ve never been,” I tell him. “All I know is what I saw in Fifty Shades of Grey.” He looks at me dead-on. “The most accurate representation of our city I can think of. Great work.”

It’s hard to be real, sure. It’s harder to let someone else be.

“I’m sorry if that’s heavy.” “Life is heavy.”

In Los Angeles things disperse, simmer, yawn. In New York they connect, spark, crash.

I felt all at once like a Christmas tree on December twenty-sixth.

“I bet that’s something you never considered. You know it’s him, but he doesn’t know it’s you!”

I read in a magazine one time that every woman should spend five minutes a day staring at her naked body. I’d rather hurl myself off a balcony.

This house just constantly looks like it’s trying to get into your pants. I love it here.

It’s hard to hold on to people the older we get. Life looks different for everyone, and you have to keep choosing one another. You have to make a conscious effort to say, over and over again, “You.” Not everyone makes that choice. Not everyone can.

kind spirit, limp dick.”

I wanted him. I wanted to wake up with him and go to sleep with him. I wanted to stand behind him in the bathroom mirror in the morning, my face pressed against his wet back, as he got ready for work. I wanted his feet to find mine in the middle of the night. I wanted to be his first phone call, the place he rested from the chaos of the rest of the world, the constant friction of the pace of his life. I wanted to be it for him.

“I don’t believe in Britas,” I tell him. “I think they are a scam.”

I do not believe sex is a marker of anything but what you assign to it. It does not measure the seriousness of a relationship, is not a barometer for the amount of feeling, and has little to do with love, at least in causation.

“We’re not twelve.” “We’re not?” He clears his throat. “Well, that explains the sex.”

“Love is not only one thing, you know. Love is just the thing you need.

“You mean more to me than I know how to express right now,”

There is nothing more terrifying than lying in a hospital bed and knowing your mom can’t fix it.

“Trust me. It’s better to not know it’s coming.” Hugo smiled at me, but it was sad, worn. “Spoken like someone who has never experienced the alternative.”

If you’re looking for an excuse to run, you won’t find it here. I’m not going to give you that.”

“The problem with love is that it’s not enough,” she says. And then she looks up at me. Her eyes are still soft. “But it’s also nearly impossible to let go of once you’ve found it.”

“Life is a catch-22,” Irina says. “That’s why God invented female friendship.”

We were normal. And normal felt better than good. Normal felt like heaven.

acknowledging a desire means acknowledging the what-if of that want. I wanted it, and that meant I was terrified—of never having it. Of never getting there.

always make choices based on what you want, not what you think you can or can’t have.”

I often wonder what our responsibility is to other people, how much we owe them. Whose job is it to look out for our own happiness. Us, or the people who love us? It’s both, of course. We owe ourselves and each other. But in what order?

We have to be cracked open sometimes. We have to be cracked open sometimes to let anything good in.

learning to be broken is learning to be whole.

even if I can’t make the day longer, I can make the morning earlier,”

We are all dying. Every day. And at some point it becomes a choice. Which one are you going to do today? Are you living or are you dying?”

It hurts and it’s painful, but it’s not bad. Pain and bad are not the same thing.

being surprised by life isn’t losing, it’s living. It’s messy and uncomfortable and complicated and beautiful. It’s life, all of it. The only way to get it wrong is to refuse to play.

We are powerful because we affect each other’s stories, all of us. We are here to impact each other, to knock into each other, to throw each other off-balance, sometimes even off track.

The key to love is this, baby: Can you move together?”