If He Had Been with Me

by Laura Nowlin

cannot hear her, but I see Sylvie tell them the cause of the argument, and I know, I know, I know, I know. If he had been with me, everything would have been different.

the idea that love could be so impermanent scares me.

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’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.

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.

“But I’m not depressed,” I say. “You think you deserve to be sad,” he says. There is a moment of silence as we look at each other. “You think it is okay for you to be sad every day. But it is not okay. And you do not deserve it.” I look down at the floor, even though I know he has already seen the tears stinging my eyes. “It is not shameful,” he says. “It is okay.”

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.