A Novel Love Story

by Ashley Poston

It was a year I’d rather not remember. Mom said that everyone had them, when your entire world is upended and you can’t seem to get your footing again. Except, I never found my footing again, and I’d been stumbling ever since.

Liam Henry Black became my entire life, like how a bold wallpaper overtakes a room and all you want to do is find pieces to complement it.

made him shrink away. Shake his head. “I met someone else,”

Apparently, he had wanted to get married. He just hadn’t wanted to marry me.

So who could blame me for sinking into books, where I knew the people weren’t real, but they also never disappointed me? I knew everything would work out in the end. I knew happy endings were destined, ever afters fated, and no matter what trials and

“You haven’t dated since he left you—three years ago! It’s like you just put yourself on ice and you don’t even want to try anymore.”

knew I never wanted to feel like I had the day I found out Liam was engaged not even a year after we’d split. I still had my wedding dress in my closet. The guest list was still saved on my phone. I never wanted to fall asleep crying on my couch, wondering why he didn’t want that life with me. What was so wrong with me? I knew I never wanted to feel so foolish, so—so embarrassed—ever again.

Years ago, when I first met Liam, I believed in things like that, too. Stars crossing, and fated mates, and couples who were meant to be. Stories better suited for books, where the plots were predictable and the endings were always happy.

Even a book boyfriend didn’t want me.

“But I haven’t really enjoyed any books since…well, it just doesn’t feel the same.” He shook his head. “Time changes you. Stories change you. The people you meet change you. I’m simply not the same man that I was before.”

“He doesn’t matter. He let you go.”

And the more I thought about it, the more I became convinced that eventually, as I tried to keep being the girl who had kissed him at midnight, I lost myself in the process.

We hiked together, and when I fell behind, he kept marching on. I used to think it was because he knew I’d catch up eventually, so he wasn’t worried, but maybe it was because he didn’t want to be bothered to slow down and take in the scenery together.

It was the first sign, or maybe the fifth, but I hadn’t seen any of them.

part of me that was the kind of broken that couldn’t be fixed with a cup of coffee or a few pretty words.

Year after year after year, books that ferried me through heartbreak and hope and those terrible nights after Liam left. They were words that tucked me into bed at night when I was alone, they were words that played the soundtrack of my heartbreak, the what-ifs, the second-guesses, the nights I sat alone and wondered, Why not me? Those books were like arms I fell into, armor that protected me from the world when life got too hard.

Because even when I felt broken, Rachel Flowers was always there to show me that there were still happy endings to be found…even if they weren’t mine.”

And he would never stop missing her, because that was what loss was in the end—breaking of a piece off yourself that you’d never get back. There were people who tried to fill that hole with work, and there were people like me who tried to fill it with stories; people filled it with whatever could fit.

What if Anders saw some flaw that I hadn’t seen and, like Liam, knew he could do better?

No, love wasn’t a trap, something you had to crawl out of later. If you loved something—someone—sometimes you had to let them go. And if they loved you, too, they’d come back. Love—true love—always came back.