Just Last Night

by Mhairi McFarlane

This is what I never knew about loss—it’s also about what you gain. You carry a weight that you never had before. It’s never behind you. It’s alongside you.

I notice, once again, that company that’s not the right fit for you is so much lonelier than being happily alone.

The things we do to avoid difficult things are often worse than the difficult thing.

Beauty isn’t an arrangement of features, even features as perfect as Finlay Hart’s, it’s a feeling. This is how it feels in the split second you suddenly become aware that you’re falling in love with someone. The click of a jigsaw’s last piece, the rainfall of coins in a jackpot slot machine, the right song striking up and your being swept away by its opening bars. That conviction of making complete sense of the universe, in one moment. Of course. You’re where I should be. You’re here.

“It’s like my whole life was about traveling back to you.”

“I think the rain’s stopped,” he says. I twist around to face him. “So do I.”