If He Had Been with Me

by Laura Nowlin

It was the sort of happiness that fools you into thinking that there is still so much more, maybe even enough to laugh forever.

Sometimes I am disappointed with love. I thought that when you were in love, it would always be right there, staring you in the face, reminding you every moment that you love this person. It seems that it isn’t always like that.

“Two houses,” I said. “And four people.” “It’s our houses,” he said. “And our family.”

I tell myself relationships are hard work. No one is perfect. There’s no such thing as happily ever after.

This is the saddest part of any day, when too much time has passed to create happiness while it is still light out.

I am a virgin, and I cannot drive.

okay clueless

“That was a dream,” I say. “I have to accept reality.”

Accept when things are as good as they’re ever going to get,

“No, because sometimes sad things are beautiful,”

I can feel the printed words seeping through my skin and into my veins, rushing to my heart and marking it forever. I want to savor this wonder, this happening of loving a book and reading it for the first time, because the first time is always the best, and I will never read this book for the first time ever again.

“Try to marry your first love. For the rest of your life, no one will ever treat you as well.”

I’ll wait until I remember that Aunt Angelina is happy with her life and that I will marry my first love. It will only be the first time once.

I’ve loved him my whole life, and somewhere along the way, that love didn’t change but grew. It grew to fill the parts of me that I did not have when I was a child. It grew with every new longing in my body and desire in my heart until there was not a piece of me that did not love him. And when I look at him, there is no other feeling in me.

I was less enthusiastic about the fallen leaves; they meant that my enemy, winter, was drawing near.

she gets it

My love for Finny is buried like a stillborn child; it is just as cherished and just as real, but nothing will ever come of it. I imagine it wrapped up in lace, tucked away in a quiet corner of my heart. It will stay there for the rest of my life, and when I die, it will die with me.

I used to say to myself that I just have to get through winter, that I just have to wait. That things would get better then. And I know that winter is supposed to end, but things are not always the way they are supposed to be.

Everything is fine. When it’s warm again, I’ll feel better. That’s the only thing that’s wrong.”

As long as I want to live, then I must be fine.

Everything is fine already. It’s always fine. Everything is fine, fine, fine.

My head feels heavy and light at the same time. I’m happy. I love my friends.

Perhaps he would ask me what books mean to me. I would tell him that it means living another life;

Finny, my Finny, kissed me.

“Don’t forget what you promised me, okay?”

Someday I’ll be happy like that, I tell myself.

A few green shoots begin to appear in the beginning of April. It’s still cold out, but things are getting a little better. But only a little.

I try to feel as if I have accomplished something, but all I feel is that I lived through a few years of my life; getting through high school was just what I did on the side.

“A couple of weeks? You want to throw away what we’ve had for four years after a couple of weeks? That’s stupid.”

His voice makes me want to close my eyes.

Brown on the edges and bright in other colors, they open and unfold, their petals drooping downward, dying just as their lives have begun.

Just because something seems impossible doesn’t mean that you shouldn’t try.