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Stars would glow brightly on the other side of the glass, beckoning me to make a wish. I always did. They never listened.
Love at first sight isn’t a real thing—I know that. But there is certainly a something at first sight. A jolt, a magnetic draw, a heartbeat that skips and a world that narrows down, focusing on nothing but the space between you and that other person. It’s a moment when intuition overpowers reason and butterflies burst to life inside of you, their delicate wings tickling your heart.
“The stars won’t let you fall.” Gabe leans over to press a gentle kiss to my hairline. His lips linger as his thumbs dance across my skin, and then he says, “I won’t let you fall.”
I’m certain one can find dignity in most things, but there is no dignity in unrequited love. It’s fucking painful. There’s no harmony, no beauty, no triumph in it.
But I’m a patient soldier, and I’ll wait. I’ll wait until she’s ready to see me for who I am, instead of as the man who is replacing her long-lost love.
The thing is, hope can be a savior, or it can be an executioner. There’s no way to know which way the cards will fall. Only time will tell, and time is just as unpredictable as hope.
“The heart is a complicated beast. Sometimes it wants, and sometimes it hurts to want.”
“What if…” Panic rains down on me. It settles in my throat and feels like a noose. It bites at my chest, causing my next words to tinge with acid on my tongue. “What if I lose you?” The smallest smile strains Tabitha’s mouth. “I’m already lost,” she says, glancing down at the bud pressed between her thumb and finger. A sprig of new life, waiting to bloom. “I need to go there to come back.”
Sparing the mirror a final glance, I flick my fingers through my long tresses, noting that my hair never seems to hold a curl anymore. It doesn’t hold its curl in the same way my smile doesn’t hold its sparkle.
It was a lifetime ago, but it was still my life. My trauma isn’t my life. It’s nothing but an awful piece wedged between a million beautiful pieces.
Life is too short to waste precious time on people who don’t appreciate and value you—family or not.
“The heart has a grave tendency of overriding logic.”
“Time spent loving another is never time wasted. In fact, I’m apt to believe it’s the only time that truly matters in this life.”
“You don’t have to wait for me, you know. I’m not sure when I’ll…” A tear slips. “I’m not sure if I’ll ever—” “Hey, listen.” I force her focus back on me, my smile still intact. “If you think for a second that I don’t have all the time in the world for you, then you’ve got me all wrong.”
It wasn’t an act or a ruse. She was happy. She’d left her demons at home that night, allowing herself a few hours of true peace, and she’d found that peace with me.
“I’m t-trying to fly, but…” “I’ll be your wings,” he says, smoothing back my hair, his chin pressed to the top of my head. “You don’t have to save yourself this time. You’re not alone anymore.”
I was so selfish, clinging to him, holding him, touching him in ways I shouldn’t. Giving him hope when I am only made of hopelessness. I’m just a lost soul, wandering and wilting. I have nothing to offer him. And still, I take.
Sometimes you meet your match and those walls come tumbling down, brick by brick. You no longer want to run from potential heartbreak anymore, because heartbreak feels like a welcome risk when it means you have a fighting chance at love.
She set me on fire, leaving me nothing but a pile of ashes come sunrise. And I guess that’s the trouble with fire. It only knows how to burn.
Tabitha is a raven around my heart. Soft feathers and sharp claws. She soothes me while shredding me to pieces at the same time. And yet I’ll take every claw mark, every painful laceration, just for the chance to fly with her one day. If waiting is all I need to do, it’s a damn small price to pay.
Love. It’s the one thing in this world that can be both a killer and a healer.
I care about him…a lot. Maybe a buried part of me even loves him. But my love is the killing kind, and he doesn’t deserve to go like that.
The downside is, soft hearts are susceptible to leaks. Just the smallest puncture can have it bleeding out. They’re prone to breaches, too, which makes it so easy for a knife to slide through. For the bad stuff to sneak inside. Pain, betrayal, regret. The dull ache of one-sided love.
It has my own smile fading, but not because I’m not happy—it’s because I’m sucker-punched with the notion that her laughter is so rare, so unanticipated, that I don’t even know what to do with it.
Gabriel. I’ve never heard him called by his full name before. The name makes me think of the biblical Gabriel, a messenger, the bearer of good news and hopeful visions. An angel. Angels have wings. Perhaps that’s the reason he makes me feel like I can fly.
“You look at her with love,” she says gently. “And she looks at you like she doesn’t know what to do with that love.”
He makes my soul seem salvageable.
“I’d give up all my basic needs for one single moment free from these chains. I’d sacrifice them in exchange for wrapping my arms around you and holding you tight.”
“Time is relative. Action is what matters. People don’t remember how long it takes for you to do the thing; they just remember if you do it, or if you don’t.”
He has no idea that I said my true safe-word; I’ve said it thousands of times. One syllable of solace. Four letters of sweet relief. A safe place to land when my wings get tired. Gabe. His name is my safe-word. He’s my solid ground.
“Am I hurting you?” he asks. “No,” I murmur. “You’re healing me.”
“You think I’ll be forced against my will to hold you, to love you, to kiss away your tears while you break apart in my arms? Jesus, Tabitha, I would do that every minute of every day if it helped bring you one step closer to healing.”
“I love you. But not with my whole heart, because my heart is no longer whole. I love you with the chewed-up, tattered pieces of it. The shredded remains that have somehow kept me alive for this long. And you don’t deserve that, Gabe. You don’t deserve to be loved with scraps, with the bloody leftovers. That’s not fair.”
“I’ll take your leftover pieces. I’ll cherish those pieces. And I’ll spend my whole damn life doing everything in my power to make your heart whole again.”
I suppose that as long as he haunts me, it means he’s still here. And I’ll take any part of him I can get. Even his ghost.
Living. Truly living. That’s what love is. It’s finding that perfectly imperfect person that complements your heart, that brightens your shadows, that sees your broken, mismatched parts and wants to spend the rest of their life piecing them into place. And even if those pieces never fully fit, they love you anyway. They love you more. And I think we forget sometimes, the whole point of it all. We forget the beauty of living while we’re still alive. And there is no better way to live than to love.
“I love you, baby. So much. I’ll get you a real ring, a better ring, I promise. I just needed to know, right this fucking minute, that you’re never going away. You’re here, you’re mine. I need you by my side, in my arms, until I take my last breath.”
“Life is a curious thing. Only a fraction of it lies within what it throws at us, while the greater part is determined by our responses to those things. It’s in how we react, cope, and ultimately, how we rise above.”
“I would have waited forever for you,” I say, pressing a kiss to her temple. “Even if you never loved me back, I would have waited, and I never would have regretted a single second of it.”
