Expiration Dates

by Rebecca Serle

“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.” I straighten up. “Well, that is a catch-22,” I say. Irina nods. She plucks a crumbled dish towel off the counter and begins to fold it. “Life is a catch-22,” Irina says. “That’s why God invented female friendship.”

It’s a cliché to say you are scared of getting hurt. But what if the papers weren’t just doling my life out in increments of time but also protecting me? From the pain of being blindsided. From never again having to say I didn’t see it coming.

want to take you home right now. I want to not let you sleep a single fucking wink tonight. I want to hold you and touch you and make up for five years of not doing either. And then I want to wake up with you and take you to breakfast, and I want to talk about where we should live and how we’re going to fit all your shit there—Yeah, Daph, I want that. I want you. For as long as it lasts. Fifty years or five or fifteen fucking minutes.”

“I wanted you to know what it felt like.” “To what?” Hugo shakes his head. “To not have a limit.”

if you want to be with him it’s your decision. Not fate’s. Not some piece of paper’s. Yours. No one stood a chance, Daph. Not if you couldn’t really choose. And now someone does.”

“I wanted it to be you,” I say. Softly, so softly I hope that maybe he cannot even hear me. “I wanted more time.” Hugo’s face doesn’t change. He keeps his eyes locked on me. “But you got it,” he says. He smiles. I see the lines of water down his face like the trails of fingertips. “I’m still here.”

“But the thing is, Daphne. No one’s time is promised. Not yours. Not Mom’s. Not mine. Not Jake’s. It’s just the way it is. 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?”

“And, honey,” he says. “All I wish for you, for any of us, is to do the living one. To do it to the fullest. For as long as it lasts.”

But 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.

“So, no, he cannot give you forty more years, but, baby, love is the most powerful force we’ve got. If you think protection isn’t in its jurisdiction, you’re wrong.”

All my life I had been waiting for the note that would tell me it was finally time to stand still. That the long, broken road was over. That he was finally here. But when it came, all I felt was fear. Fear that he wouldn’t be who I’d imagined. Fear that I wasn’t ready. Fear that I wouldn’t feel the way I was supposed to. Fear that I’d fuck up even this, this thing I was meant for. But what I was most afraid of, maybe, was that it was over. It’s hard to be single, but it’s also something you can get good at. And I was good at it.