The Best of Me

by Nicholas Sparks

it had more to do with the sense that somehow she’d lost sight of the person she’d once meant to be, and she wasn’t sure she’d ever have the opportunity to find that person again.

She wasn’t, nor ever had been, under the illusion that marriage was a relationship characterized by endless bliss and romance. Throw any two people together, add the inevitable ups and downs, give the mixture a vigorous stir, and a few stormy arguments were inevitable, no matter how much the couple loved each other. Time, too, brought with it other challenges. Comfort and familiarity were wonderful, but they also dulled passion and excitement. Predictability and habit made surprises almost impossible.

The past can be escaped only by embracing something better,

Their conversations were efficient and purpose-driven, and he seldom asked about her day or her interests. Part of that, she knew, was endemic to any long marriage; there was little new to talk about. But somehow she felt that her connection with Dawson had always been different, and it made her wonder whether life would have taken its toll eventually on their relationship, too. She didn’t want to think so, but how was she to know for sure?

Life was messy. Always had been and always would be and that was just the way it was, so why bother complaining? You either did something about it or you didn’t, and then you lived with the choice you made.

What the younger generation didn’t understand was that the grass was greenest where it’s watered,

Decisions were good or bad, choices were right or wrong, and certain lines were not to be crossed.

“I knew you loved me and that you’d do anything for me. And that was one of the reasons it hurt so much when you ended it, Dawson. Because I knew even then how rare that kind of love is. Only the luckiest people get to experience it at all.”

“I don’t know that I’ve ever felt as happy as I did that day, but then again, it was always like that when we were together.

she could no longer deny the simple truth that for the first time in years, she’d felt like she’d finally come home.

The breeze picked up, whispering to him that his time with her was running out, and he started toward the lobby, drained by the knowledge and wishing with all his heart that things could somehow be different.

It takes a long time to grow an old friend, and trust is built a single moment at a time. Women, she sometimes thought, had a tendency to see what they wanted to see in men, at least in the beginning, and she wondered whether she was making the same mistake.

Marriages, both good and bad, were defined by repetition.

Love, after all, always said more about those who felt it than it did about the ones they loved.

Forever. He’d carved the word into Tuck’s workbench. A teenage promise, nothing more, yet somehow he’d been able to keep it alive. She could feel the strength of that promise now, filling the distance between them as they drifted through the flowers. From somewhere far away, she heard the distant rumble of thunder and she had the strange sense that it was calling to her, urging her to listen.

There were no hidden meanings, no secret attempts to pass judgment; as quickly as their disagreements had flared up, they’d passed.

Without looking away, he gently reached out to smooth back a stray lock of hair that had fallen across her eyes. And then he was gone, leaving her with the certainty that whatever the consequences, her life had already been irrevocably altered in ways she’d never imagined possible.

marriage isn’t what people think it is. People want to believe that every marriage is this perfect balance, but it isn’t. One person always loves more deeply than the other.

“Don’t take my advice. Or anyone’s advice. Trust yourself. For good or for bad, happy or unhappy, it’s your life, and what you do with it has always been entirely up to you.”

“Being together isn’t about a honeymoon. It’s about the real you and me. I want to wake up with you beside me in the mornings, I want to spend my evenings looking at you across the dinner table. I want to share every mundane detail of my day with you and hear every detail of yours. I want to laugh with you and fall asleep with you in my arms. Because you aren’t just someone I loved back then. You were my best friend, my best self, and I can’t imagine giving that up again.”

If you turn away from Dawson now, you’ll live forever with the ghost of what might have been yours. I know that in this life, innocent people inevitably get hurt by the decisions we make.