The Map That Leads to You

by J.P. Monninger

It is the last great minute before he walks into your life, but you don’t know that, can’t know. Later, though, you will try to imagine where he was in this exact instant, when he had turned and started to travel toward you, you to him, and how the world around both of you took no notice.

I wanted to hear why he had to blow up my world in order to make his better.

“You were my biggest fear,” he said. “You really were. You, Heather Christine Mulgrew.”

I won’t kid you, Jack. I’m falling for you. I know it’s a cliché, but you take my breath away. You do. I don’t know if we would have been perfect, but I was willing to try. I didn’t see getting together with you as the end to anything. I saw it as a beginning. An exciting one.

If I had six lives, I would want to spend them with you. Every last one.”

Whatever else he had meant or been to me, he had unlocked something inside me that had been rusted and clotted with disuse. He had given me hope and taught me to trust that life held surprises if you allowed it to reveal itself. You did not clutter it with camera shots and Facebook postings. You gave yourself to the situation. That was Jack’s great lesson.