One True Loves

by Taylor Jenkins Reid

“I love you more than anyone has ever loved anyone in the history of the world. Do you know that? Do you know that Antony didn’t love Cleopatra as much as I love you? Do you know that Romeo didn’t love Juliet as much as I love you?”

Hollow and empty are terrible ways to feel when you’re used to being full of joy. But it’s not so bad when you’re used to feeling full of pain.

When you love someone, it seeps out of everything you do, it bleeds into everything you say, it becomes so ever-present, that eventually it becomes ordinary to hear, no matter how extraordinary it is to feel.

I am, not for the first time, deeply grateful to be loved by him, to be loved the way he loves.

It breaks my heart to be loved like this, to be loved so purely that I’m capable of breaking a heart.

We are two people who are madly in love with our old selves. And that is not the same as being in love.

“You were a wonderful person to love,” I say. “It felt so good to love you, to be loved by you.” “Well, it was the easiest thing I ever did,” he says.

The smile that erupts across my father’s face is so wide and sincere that the teenage version of me would have threatened to barf. But I’m not a teenager anymore and it won’t kill me to give my father everything he’s ever dreamed of. “All right, Dad,” I say. “Your girls are running your store.”