Swear on This Life

by Renee Carlino

But in real life we have a hard time recognizing serendipitous moments because we’re not making the story up as we go along.

Love was such a key ingredient in molding humans, yet it was inaccessible to kids inside of the system.

“You’ll see each other again soon.” I rolled out of bed and patted the top of her blonde mop. “Little optimist, aren’t you?” She smiled back at me. “It’s called faith, Emmy.”

Instead, I said good-bye to Jase that day because he hadn’t come to find me like he said he would. It was the hardest thing I had ever done.

And I was feeling it all again. My heart was growing right alongside the pain, and I didn’t know what to do with myself. It’s impossible to really hate someone if you don’t love them at least a little.

“Well, I know you’re so much more than that.” The look on his face was like the look I remembered from when we were young. Few people in my life were as truly open-hearted as Jase. Though he could be cocky and stubborn, he could also be intensely sincere.

With Jase, it had been the exact opposite. We’d started with friendship and then added layer after layer on top of that.

“We can’t go backward. There are too many regrets. Please just move forward with me?” I took his hand across the table. “I will.”

I was surprised that my father was okay with all the dirty secrets being exposed in Jase’s book, but I realized that my father had learned something in his recovery that I still hadn’t totally grasped: the past would only fester and eat away at us if we tried to hold on to it too tightly.

“God, Buddha, the universe, whatever you want to call it. I’m a forward thinker, missy. I don’t know if it’s that black-and-white. I kinda think it’s like magnets. Put them close enough and they’ll come together, but turn them around and they’ll repel each other. When you feel the pull, you gotta give in to it. These two . . .” She pointed to the cover of the book.

I thought loving someone meant letting go, but by the time I learned that loving someone means fighting for them too, it was too late.

“This could be the best thing for us, after it stops being the worst.”

It was after a strange nightmare I had where I was looking in the mirror examining my old, wrinkled face that I realized it was time to finish the book. I could feel myself crying in the dream, but the old face wasn’t moving. I was so scared that would be me, just paralyzed by the fear, paralyzed in one moment of time while the rest of the world was moving on.

rare moments when we can shape our fate, when we do have the power to make our own happiness, we can’t be too scared to do it.

I don’t know much about fate, but I know something brought me back there. Maybe I fought that force for too long, or maybe everything happened exactly the way it was supposed to. The last words out of Jackson Fisher’s mouth as I held him were, “There once was a boy and a girl . . .” The end. For my Em. Don’t wait this long. Come let me love you.

I pointed to them. “Exactly,” I said triumphantly. “Why wait if you know it’s right?”

“I’m in love, like the real kind. I just don’t want to miss a second of it, that’s why I’m so scared. I’m afraid I won’t get to tell him how I feel and . . . and . . . I’m excited about my life. That’s why.” He nodded. “Makes sense. Chances are he already knows you love him, but it’s always nice to tell someone.”

LATER, AS WE were exiting into the jetway, the man waved good-bye and then turned back and said, “I hope it’s everything you want it to be.” “What?” I asked. “The rest of your life.” I thought it was a nice sentiment, but I couldn’t help but say, “Well, we won’t really know until the very end, will we?” “Touché,” he said.