A Novel Love Story

by Ashley Poston

There once was a town, and I was so certain that it would feel like home if I ever made it there. There once was a town, and it didn’t exist.

What did it feel like to love someone so much you ached? I thought I’d known once.

I didn’t need love. I didn’t need to fall into it. I didn’t need to find it at all. Not again. Never again. Because love stories were enough. They were safe. They would never fail me.

Sometimes, a book can change your life. It’s hard to explain that to someone who doesn’t read, or who has never felt their heart bend so strongly toward a story that it might just snap in two. Some books are a comfort, some a reprieve, others a vacation, a lesson, a heartbreak. I’d met countless stories by the time I read a book that changed my life.

Sometimes, that’s how it happens. Sometimes your favorite book just hits you out of the blue like a bolt of lightning.

I couldn’t remember the last time someone had kissed me that passionately—savored me, like I was the last sentence in his favorite book.

“But you reminded me that things didn’t always have to be good, over and over and over, but they could be great, some days. Perfect even. I spent so long trying to blend into the background, I forgot what this feels like.”

Because even after the people were gone, there were still stories. There were always stories. Other people took the heart of her books, and kept them close, and nurtured them and grew into something new, because nothing could ever stay in stasis. Nothing ever stopped. Nothing was permanent. Art lived and breathed, like love, like friendship. Life—like works of art—was transformative. It persisted. And through them, so did we.

Love was a bunch of small things that added up to bigger things. Love was feeling valued. And accepted. Just the way you were. It was never feeling too much, or not enough, even though often you were both, because Love loved you anyway. Not in spite of it, but because of it.