Expiration Dates

by Rebecca Serle

Here’s the truth: I do want love. In some ways, I’ve been looking for it forever. Real love, the kind that makes you want to grow old together, makes you not just unafraid of all that time with one person but electrified by it.

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.

We live in an age of romance where you can pick from thousands of strangers on the internet. Pretty much everyone fears buyer’s remorse.

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.

Being single is like playing the lottery.

Why is he early? Everyone knows you’re supposed to show up on time to a restaurant and late to someone’s house.

“To meet the right person, to be with someone I want to see in the morning and naked. To not be afraid to have a bad day around them. To be happy, I guess.”

I loved discovering the details. Every single thing I learned about Hugo felt worthy of notation and study—there was no filler.

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.

The truth is hard. It’s complicated. It does not always follow a simple structure. It is not always convenient. That’s why sometimes we do our best to leave it out of the story for as long as possible. We choose to let it linger in the corners, we don’t spotlight it. But eventually, it catches up to us. Of course it does.

I have a deal with the universe. I take my time in increments, and I get to stay here. For the time written, I get to keep my heart.

Here’s the thing no one tells you in any of these fucking movies we make: love is not enough.”

“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.”

About once a year I cry about the fact that I’ll never know what he looked like as a puppy.

The obvious: he’s the longest relationship I’ve ever been in.

And to you. I was single for a very long time. When I sat down to write this book, I told my editor: “I want to write about the search for love, and I think if I write it honest, he’ll be there at the end of it.” When I finished it, I wrote her: “You know how I write a note at the end of all my books to my readers? This time the note is the novel.” Everything I’d like to say about that incredibly winding journey is in these pages. All of Daphne’s chapters matter, just like all of mine did, just like all of yours do. Incidentally, he was there at the end of it, but that’s a story for another time…