When the Sky Fell on Splendor

by Emily Henry

Wanting things was like needing people. It backfired every time.

It’s like I’m always waiting for things to stabilize, but they don’t.”

I’d felt, right then, like the universe was in perfect order. Like I was a small part of a huge and meaningful design.

The problem with answers was you almost never got the ones you wanted.

It was like those expiration dates they put on milk: a lie for the sake of caution.

After five years, the laws of our private universe had been violated, and now the fabric of us was set to come apart.

“It’s time for you to accept that you’re not in this alone and to stop acting like we’re just some people from your math class who misspell your name when we sign your yearbook.

You’re always afraid we won’t choose you, so you don’t even give us a chance to.

“Now calm down,” he said. “You can trust old Bill.” I disagreed. You couldn’t trust anyone who referred to himself as old Bill.

Sometimes shit just happens. Horrible, cosmic-level shit. “But maybe sometimes things do happen for a reason too. In the gaps between all that. Like maybe the world tries to repair itself, to heal or just, like, adapt.

I had them, and nothing could take them from me, even if it hid them.

Nothing in this universe could ever be deleted, only hidden.