All We Left Unsaid

by Natalie K. Martin

‘I think you were her big, unfinished thing. The one that got away.’ I frown at his choice of words. ‘You know that’s usually for the big, tragic loves in life, right?’ ‘Yeah.’ He nods. ‘I know.’

‘The feeling I’ve had from the moment I got here was that if Ivy were alive, she’d have been happy to see me. At the wake, it felt like I was able to bury all that had happened between us. Like being there had somehow made things okay.’ I shake my head and swallow against the reality behind my words. ‘But I know that’s not true. The way we split from each other was not good. Imagining that things somehow magically fixed themselves is just deluded.’

‘One of my teachers told me something once that really shifted the way I think about things. He said that nobody ever does anything because of you. You can trigger a reaction – anger, jealousy, whatever it might be. But the way they act on that emotion is always down to them and never down to you.’