Reminders of Him

by Colleen Hoover

I want to learn how to talk to people without wishing I could retract every word I said. I want to be good at feeling things when a guy touches my waist. I want to be good at life. I want to make it look effortless, but up until this point, I’ve made every aspect of life appear entirely too difficult to navigate.

moments like these remind me that happiness isn’t some permanent thing we’re all trying to achieve in life, it’s merely a thing that shows up every now and then, sometimes in tiny doses that are just substantial enough to keep us going.

She’s gone and I don’t know her name and I don’t know her story and I don’t know that I’ll ever see her again, so here I am, rushing around the bar, through the bar, toward the front door she just slipped out of.

People say you fall in love, but fall is such a sad word when you think about it. Falls are never good. You fall on the ground, you fall behind, you fall to your death.

Whoever was the first person to say they fell in love must have already fallen out of it. Otherwise, they’d have called it something much better.

I don’t understand attraction. What is it that draws people to each other? How can dozens of women walk through the doors to this bar every week and I don’t feel the urge to give any of them a second glance? But then this girl waltzes in, and I can’t take my fucking eyes off her.

If she likes my truck, I love my truck. My truck is my second-favorite thing in the world right now. Her mouth is my first.

I don’t know her at all, but I find her more intriguing than anyone else I’ve met in a long time. I want to ask her more questions. She never even answered the one question I asked about her life. Who the hell is she? Why do I feel the need to find out more about her?

Crying seems to be the only thing left in life that I’m good at. Crying and making bad decisions.

We were in that sickening stage of relationships—the stage I’d never reached with anyone before you. We were happy, in love, full of hormones, full of hope. It was bliss. A bliss we thought would last forever.

Maybe if I acknowledge all the good things, no matter how small, they’ll add up to make the bad things in my life less painful.

We’re all just a bunch of sad people doing what we have to do to make it until tomorrow. Some of us sadder than others. Some of us more willing to forgive than others.

There was before you and there was during you. For some reason, I never thought there would be an after you. But there was, and I was in it. I’ll be in it forever.