The Things We Leave Unfinished

by Rebecca Yarros

Trouble. For the first time in her life, she didn’t want to avoid it.

Too much, too soon, too fast…it was all of that and then some, but she couldn’t bring herself to slow it down.

Maybe the right words weren’t words.

“I didn’t know how much I loved you until I had to wake up, day after day, knowing there was no chance I’d see you smile or hear you laugh, or hell, hear you shout at me.”

I’m wilting here without you. Keeping busy, of course, but you’re never far from my mind.

“Did you know that our brains are biologically programmed to remember painful memories better?”

“It’s never the same. There are a million variations of any situation. No two people are alike. The tiniest change to any encounter could leave us with very different results. I like to think of the possibilities as a tree. Maybe you start with the one path—” He tapped the nearest trunk. “But fate throws all the branches out and what seems like a tiny choice, left or right, becomes another and another, until the possibilities of what could have been are endless.”

I see the way he looks at her, like she’s the reason the seasons change and the sun rises until they’re a hundred and one years old.”

Somehow, she’d found a miracle in the middle of the maelstrom, and it may have taken her a moment to realize what she had, but now that she did, she would fight with everything she had to keep it—to keep him.

You were my choice before I even knew there was one to make.

Until then, we’ll be waiting here for you. Always waiting. Always yours.

It wasn’t that I was living for him, but that he simply made me want to live. To fight. To prove my point. To take a stand when I’d usually defer to someone else’s emotions and take the path of least resistance.

“I’ve never had a problem reaching for things I want,” I replied softly. “It’s the falling that gets me into trouble.”

If I keep waiting for life to give me the most opportune circumstances to live it, I never will.

“I love you in whatever role you play. Whatever uniform you want to wear. Whoever you want to be. I will love you.”

“I’m not sorry about anything that’s led me to you.”

“You know, I used to think the term falling in love was an oxymoron. It should be rising, right? Love is supposed to make you feel like you’re on top of the world. But maybe that phrase is so popular because actually making it work is rare. Everyone else just crashes at the end of it.”

We’ll figure this out. We have to.

Some lessons we simply have to learn for ourselves.

We’re all entitled to our mistakes. When you recognize them for what they are, don’t live there. Life is too short to miss the lightning strike and too long to live it alone.