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I love him in a way I cannot define, as if my love were an organ within my body that I could not live without yet could not pick out of an anatomy book.
“Just because I think something different from you doesn’t make me weird.”
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.
“Autumn,” she says. I start in my seat and stop breathing. She still stares straight ahead. “Try to marry your first love. For the rest of your life, no one will ever treat you as well.”
Just because something seems impossible doesn’t mean that you shouldn’t try.
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.
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.
This is my life, I realize. And I haven’t made any tragic mistakes yet. I’ve made a choice, yes, but no one suffers for it but me, and in the end, all will be well.
And I know that winter is supposed to end, but things are not always the way they are supposed to be.
This is friendship, and it is love, but I already know what they have not learned yet; how dangerous friendship is, how damaging love can be.
Perhaps he would ask me what books mean to me. I would tell him that it means living another life;
“But if I have the chance to be with you—God, Autumn, you’re the ideal I’ve judged every other girl by my whole life,” Finny says. “You’re funny and smart and weird. I never know what’s gonna come out of your mouth or what you’re gonna do. I love that. You. I love you.”
Death happens to him more suddenly than I can describe to you or even care to imagine.
Just because something seems impossible doesn’t mean that you shouldn’t try.
