After You (Me Before You, #2)

by Jojo Moyes

How could these strangers possibly understand what Will and I had been to each other during that time? How could I explain the way we had so swiftly understood each other, the shorthand jokes, the blunt truths and raw secrets? How could I convey the way those short months had changed the way I felt about everything? The way he had skewed my world so totally that it made no sense without him in it? And when it came down to it, what was the point in reexamining your sadness all the time anyway? It was like picking away at a wound and refusing to let it heal. I knew what I had been part of. I knew what my role was. What was the point in going over and over it?

I felt suddenly crushingly sad for him, and had to look away before I made myself sad too. Sometimes I felt as if we were all wading around in grief, reluctant to admit to others how far we were waving or drowning.

He studied his hands. I studied him. “You think I’m mad getting involved.” “No, I don’t. Too many people follow their own happiness without a thought for the damage they leave in their wake. You wouldn’t believe the kids I pick up at the weekends, drunk, drugged, off their heads, whatever. The parents are wrapped up in their own stuff, or have disappeared completely, so they exist in a vacuum, and they make bad choices.”