The Upside of Falling

by Alex Light

It was like, if love couldn’t exist in reality, at least it was alive in fiction.

I wanted the kind of love my parents had—real love—but I wasn’t in any rush to find it.

I only then noticed how long Brett’s eyelashes were. They grazed his cheeks every time he blinked, long enough to cause a windstorm of their own.

All those times he put in the effort to support you—that’s what matters, not the one time he failed.”

I sat there for a while thinking about how I had lucked out on choosing a pretty great fake girlfriend.

A few seconds later he mumbled, “I can’t believe I have a crush on a girl with such horrible ice cream taste.”

“Then let me show you that I can be the one who stays.”

That was the thing with blood; it stained. Whether it was there for a second or a minute, you couldn’t get rid of it. It soaked itself into the fabric so deeply that it became a part of it.

I wanted to tell him how sorry I was, but I knew all too well that my sympathy wouldn’t take away a fraction of the pain. They were empty words, like trying to use a single Band-Aid to hold an entire shattered heart together.

Life didn’t have to fit into a four-sided box that was neat and tidy. It was okay if the box had three sides or the fourth one was hanging on with duct tape. It was okay if the corners were dented and if there was a big red FRAGILE sticker on top.

“You’re falling in love?” he asked. “I am,” I said, wiping a tear off my cheek, “and it’s greater than any book I ever read.”

“Becca?” My name felt so familiar on his lips. I nodded, wiping the hair off his forehead. “I think I’m in love with you,” he whispered, closing his eyes. My heart seemed to leap out of my chest then. I was sure that if I looked up, I’d see it sailing past the stars, the moon. And when he kissed me, I searched for metaphors, for similes. For the “like” and the “as,” but I couldn’t think of a single thing but how it felt to have him so close to me. I searched for the words to put this feeling into thoughts and I came up empty. Or maybe I was just too full, full of whatever this feeling was.

“I love you too,” I said. Brett smiled. The stars fell from the sky and landed on his face. It was the brightest smile of them all. “You do?” he asked. “I do,” I said, laughing. “I don’t think I even realized it until just now. But I do love you, Brett, because you make me feel safe. You make me feel hopeful. I never thought I’d love anyone. And with all the downsides of love, you managed to show me the upside,” I whispered, holding his cheek in my palm, his heart in my hand.

How, on a planet with billions of people whose lives would never cross, I managed to capture the heart of the most beautiful one.

“Look, an image is there in front of you. Right? You stare at it but then you can look away and it’s gone,” she said. “Words aren’t like that. They build an entire world around you. It’s not something you look at, it’s something you’re inside. That makes it scarier.”

“Because you go somewhere else when you read. I want to go there with you.”