The Infinity Between Us

by N.S. Perkins

To all my lost girls out there. I see you. Everything’s going to be okay.

It’s easy to not realize how much you miss something when it’s been so long, you don’t even remember how it used to be.

the ocean. Every year I see it, and every year I fall in love all over again.

I love rewatching Gilmore Girls,

“So there’s an infinity of memories within me, and an infinity of memories within you. But the infinity between us? It’s even grander.”

Ever since that night, when there’s a thunderstorm during summer, he comes to my room and sleeps on the ground.

I can’t breathe deeply, but if that’s what dying feels like, I’d let him kill me a thousand times.

“Mean Girls?” He groans, but I know deep down he likes it.

“I’ve been so proud of you, even from a distance.”

“You look at him like he’s your heaven on earth.”

“I know when you look at me, you see everything that went wrong, but when I look at you?” He licks his lips. “Violet, when I look at you, I still see the love of my life.”

Just thought you should know that if you ever find it in you to love this house—or me—again, we’ll be right here.”

The little pocket of feelings in my chest has expanded to take over all of me, body, mind, and soul. He’s my person. There’s no doubt about it.

“I can’t believe it’s a coincidence that out of all the people in their engineering class, your mom and my dad met and connected, and that that connection somehow led me to…” He gulps. “Led me to the most important person in my life.”

No one could understand me like he does. As if we share a soul.

How can I describe what Will is to me in only a few words? How can I say that even though he’s associated with some of the darkest moments of my life, he’s still the person that can make me laugh the most in the whole wide world? That he can make me feel like the most important person in his life? That he can trigger the most intense emotions in me?

Not that I fully ever fell out of love with him. I thought at some point that my feelings had disappeared, but apparently, they were only hibernating. And while our years apart were their winter, Will is their spring, his laughter the fresh flowers and his grins the thawing of the ice.

that love feels stronger than ever. Like he’s tattooed on my skin, on my organs, on my soul, and I couldn’t get him out even if I wanted to.

The way he looks at me is as if I’m the Sistine chapel and the Mona Lisa combined.

If I had a say in it, he’d be stuck to me like glue forever.

But not only that. I want him with winter boots on and a hat on his head. I want to see him at Halloween and at Christmas and at Easter too. I don’t want my Will of summer. I want my Will of forever.

“Your mom’s not the sum of her mistakes. Her mistakes are a part of her, yes, but she was so much more than that.” He tucks a strand of hair behind my ear. “I choose to focus on the rest of her.”

It’s not like it wasn’t always you and him against the world.”

she’s all of my daydreams. Not a moment goes by when I don’t think to myself, “Fuck, do I love her.” She’s in every place I visit, in all the love songs I listen to. She’s in the chocolate-cherry ice cream I eat and the 2000s movies I watch and the Jeep I still drive and the thunderstorms outside my window and the quotes I read about love and pain and beauty and heartache.

I’d rather have her live in my head than move on and forget about her. Not that I ever could. As you already know, she’s unforgettable.

I would’ve taken a lifetime of pain to be able to laugh with her again, if only for a short moment, and my wish was answered.

“And I don’t get an ‘I love you’ back?” He smiles, a supernova in the cosmos. “Oh, baby, I’ll give you a million.”

“I love you.” My nose. “I love you.” My chin. “I love you.” My lips. “I love you.”

He laughs, so bright and pure, the sound of my dreams.