Maybe in Another Life

by Taylor Jenkins Reid

. I mean, what if this all could have been prevented if I’d . . . done something different?” It’s sort of absurd, isn’t it? How we grab on to facts and consequences looking to blame or exonerate ourselves? This has nothing to do with him. I chose to go home with Gabby and Mark because that’s the choice I made. Nine billion choices I’ve made over the course of my life could have changed where I am right now and where I’m headed. There’s no sense focusing on just one. Unless you want to punish yourself. “I’ve looked at this problem up, down, and sideways,” I tell him. “I’ve lain in this bed for days wondering if we were all supposed to do something different.” “And?” “And . . . it doesn’t matter.”

“I suppose it would follow that if you and I come to a place we can’t get past, then we aren’t meant to be. Right? Then we aren’t right for each other. I mean, I think I have to believe that life will work out the way it needs to. If everything that happens in the world is just a result of chance and there’s no rhyme or reason to any of it, that’s just too chaotic for me to handle. I’d have to go around questioning every decision I’ve ever made, every decision I will ever make. If our fate is determined with every step we take . . . it’s too exhausting. I’d prefer to believe that things happen as they are meant to happen.”

That’s what you do when you want something. You don’t look for reasons why it won’t work. You look for reasons why it will. So I’m searching, I’m digging, for ways to make it happen.

The smile on his face when he walked in the door rivaled the sun.