The Pairing

by Casey McQuiston

“It was not for me to protect her from my heart. It was only for me to let her see it and decide if she will keep it.”

I lean in and give Theo a solid, deep kiss. They taste of coffee and pistachio and sunscreen, like the love of my life.

One day she was there, and the next she wasn’t, and life as I knew it went with her.

I never told Theo, but I thought about getting a tattoo of those last three words for years. I finally did it a year after our breakup. I still wanted it. It still meant something to me. I’d had the gift of being loved to the center of my soul twice in my life, and even if both of those people were gone, the love had been there. It was still there, in the shape it had made me into.

Rilke wrote, He makes a home in your familiar heart, takes root there and begins himself again.

Sometimes I think the only way to keep something forever is to lose it and let it haunt you.

If I can give my whole heart to love without fearing the cost, I will regret nothing.