The Light We Lost

by Jill Santopolo

As if the only way to stay safe was to keep my lips on yours.

There’s something about death that makes people want to live. We wanted to live that day, and I don’t blame us for it. Not anymore.

But what was true then, and has been true as long as I’ve known you, is that you find beauty everywhere. You notice things other people don’t. It’s something I’ve always admired about you.

“Well, thank you for filling a dark day with light.”

I looked at you. Gorgeous, fragile, wanting me. My birthday present from the universe, perhaps.

You stroked my hair. “It’s one of the many, many things I love about you.” I sat up so I was looking at you again. “I love you, Luce,” you said. It was the first time you said that to me. The first time any man had. “I love you too,” I answered. I hope you remember that day. It’s something I’ll never forget.

Sometimes we make decisions that seem right at the time, but later, looking back, were clearly a mistake. Some decisions are right even in hindsight.

“It’s like you’re my star, Lucy, my sun. Your light, your gravitational pull . . . I don’t even know how to say what you mean to me.”

“There’s definitely cab karma in this city, but that’s not quite what I’m talking about. It’s not Hindu karma either. I guess it’s not really karma at all. It’s more like . . . do you think we get to love each other like this—so much, so strongly—because my dad was an asshole? Is it my reward for living through that? Getting this?” You gestured at both of our naked bodies. “Or does having this now mean that I’ll suffer later to make up for it? Do we all get a finite amount of goodness in this world?”

“But you know what I’d like to think?” I continued, to fill the silence. “I’d like to think that it is karma. Hindu karma. That maybe in a past life I did something wonderful for someone and my reward is you in this life. I like that kind of karma better than your idea of a finite amount of goodness.”

Love does that. It makes you feel infinite and invincible, like the whole world is open to you, anything is achievable, and each day will be filled with wonder.

As much as I hated you just then, I still wanted to walk across the studio and slide in next to you on the couch, to feel the solidity of your body next to mine. You were my comfort and my pain all at once.

Because we only reveal our true selves to the people we care about most.

You were everywhere.

Then I couldn’t understand how you could ignore me. How one minute you could spin me and kiss me and tell me I made you feel invincible, and then all of a sudden you could disappear.

It would be a lie to say I didn’t think about you at all. In fact, I thought about you a lot.

“He said not only would he not break you, that he’d help put you back together.”

“You’re there, you’re talking to me. When those guys were on top of me, all I kept thinking was: What if I never hear Lucy’s voice again? And I’m okay, and I’m hearing your voice. So it’s good. The universe is good.”

There are people we come across during our lives who, after they drift out of our worlds, drift out for good. Even if we see them again, it’s a quick, meaningless hi and how are you? There are other people, though, with whom things pick up right where the relationship left off, whenever we run into them. The level of comfort—it feels like no time has passed.

“She said that she thinks of every romance she’s in as if it’s a type of fire. That some relationships feel like a wildfire—they’re powerful and compelling and majestic and dangerous and have the capability to burn you before you even realize you’ve been consumed. And that some relationships feel like a hearth fire—they’re solid and stable and cozy and nourishing. She had other examples—a bonfire relationship, a sparkler—that one was for a one-night stand, I think—but the wildfire and the hearth fire are the two that I remember most.”

Ordinary days sometimes turn into extraordinary days when you least expect them to.

A woman filled with light makes everything she touches brighter.

You stood up with that ridiculous crown still on your head. This is what life would be like if things had gone another way, I thought.

“I love you both,” I told them, “to the stars and back.”

The way people interpret a situation often says more about them than it does about the situation.

We see everything through the filter of our own desires and regrets, hopes and fears.

“I don’t know what it is about you and that man, how he keeps pulling you back into his orbit.