Emmy & Oliver

by Robin Benway

We stayed and looked and waited for him to come back, as if our love was a beacon that he could use to light his way home, to crawl up the sides of the earth and back through his front door, his tag still sticking up in the back.

That’s when I first learned about true frustration, that wrenching ache when the thing that matters most to you barely makes a ripple in other people’s lives.

“That’s what friends do. They hope. They have faith in each other.”

“Sometimes love isn’t something you say, it’s something you do,”

But knowing something and feeling something are two totally different things.

“You guys want us to look natural and there’s nothing natural about looking natural.”

Sometimes, the things people don’t say are louder than the words that come out of their mouths.

But sometimes happiness means different things to different people.

He put his arm around me, like a hug, like a wing, like a home.

“You don’t always have to know. And things aren’t always fair. You just have to keep moving forward. A step in one direction.”

I guess the more you start to love someone, the more you ache when they’re gone, and maybe it’s that middle ground that hurts the most, when you can see them and still not feel like you’re near enough. So close and yet so far.

Sometimes there just aren’t enough words to fill the cracks in your heart.

It was funny, I never cared about those things with Oliver. I didn’t worry about how I looked. All that mattered was how I felt.

That’s what kids do. They want to spend all this time with you. You take them to school and they cling to your legs and they don’t want to go in the door.” She took a shaky breath. “But the funny thing is, you blink and the next thing you know, they’re trying to leave and you’re the one clinging to them.”

“Not goodbye. Just see you later.”