A Novel Love Story

by Ashley Poston

To the author of my favorite book, I wish I could’ve met you, but I hope my books find your books on the shelves, and I hope they’re friends

There once was a town, and I was so certain that it would feel like home if I ever made it there.

I needed to get drunk on cheap wine and cry over happily ever afters,

I needed to get lost in a book.

“Love is neither late nor early,

Because love stories were enough. They were safe. They would never fail me.

“Well,” I said to myself, “this is certainly how all horror movies start.”

I wondered if there was a way back to before, when happily ever afters felt real.

your favorite book could be one you haven’t read yet.”

There was only one road in, and one road out of Eloraton, New York, and most people never took it,’”

SOMETIMES, A BOOK CAN change your life.

What do they put in this stuff? It’s so good.” “Butter, flour, and love, or so the sign says,”

A laugh bubbled up from somewhere so deep in me, I didn’t think I could sound that bright.

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.

I knew happy endings were destined, ever afters fated, and no matter what trials and tribulations and, well, surprise fuckups happened, things would end up okay.

I just needed a story—or maybe a few hundred stories of happily ever after—to escape mine.

I wanted to get lost—and stay there.

“Sleep is for the weak. And lucky.

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.

“You’re cute,” he went on, “when you’re pretending to be angry with me.”

“How on earth has this thing been running?” “Duct tape and prayers,”

Romance writers made happily ever afters all the time. How hard could it be?

If I could just live in her glow, bask in it forever, I thought that would be enough.

I always went there to just … be beige for a while. A part of the scenery.”

“Time changes you. Stories change you. The people you meet change you. I’m simply not the same man that I was before.”

how you can walk with someone down a road for a little while and then pick a different path. It didn’t make the time less worthy, but it did make it sad.

It was refreshing, and nice, and sweet—to be given something so I didn’t have to want it in the first place.

Because he was right: sometimes people came into your life for brief moments, and changed you forever. I think he was my person.

the heartache was worth the adventure.

“But you keep surprising me.” “Like a plot twist,”

So much of the real world was built on half-finished stories and bitter endings,

I could just be another secondary character, a blurred figure in the background of someone else’s story.

“Yes,” Ruby deadpanned. The look in her eyes was almost like she was reliving wartimes.

It wasn’t the end that mattered, but every word leading up to it.

“Come on, Eileen.”

There was only one road in and one road out of Eloraton, New York, and most people never took it.

And he tasted like black tea and new beginnings.

He muttered affirmations into my hair as he kissed me, and taught me things about myself that I had yet to know, and I taught him things, too, and that was love.

The author of my favorite book is gone, but her words echo on in my rib cage, and stand the test of time on my shelf, and keep me company, even though I’ve never met her, and she never knew I existed.

Like a tattoo on the heart, the story stays.