An Optimist's Guide to Heartbreak (Heartsong, #1)

by Jennifer Hartmann

You think you know what’s coming, but you never really do. And sometimes, when you think something is coming to an end, it’s actually the beginning of something beautiful.

When you care about someone, you worry about them, no matter what. That’s just the way it is.

“I just mean…not everything that makes us hurt needs to be forgotten or banished. It hurts because it mattered. And things that mattered once, will always matter,”

He tosses a twenty-dollar bill atop the bar counter as he stands, and before he turns to leave, he swipes up the napkin that holds Nash’s note and crumples it in his fist. Then he turns to me. He turns to me ever so slightly, the musk of his cologne fusing with the spell of his next words. “You sing like a fucking angel.”

As I stand here with tears tickling my cheekbones, I know that life’s truest treasures live inside the unexpected moments. The little curveballs that sweep us off our feet and steal our breath. I told my parents the bike was the best gift I ever received, and nothing could ever top it. I meant it at the time. But then… Cal smiled at me.

I’ve always been a sucker for the things deemed less desirable. The overlooked.

It’s the last week of September—officially fall—and there’s something in the breeze today that makes me feel nostalgic. It’s funny how that happens sometimes. There’s no exact recollection that springs to mind, no precise moment, but it feels like I’m lost to a memory I can’t quite pinpoint.

Before I can inhale another breath, one arm dips beneath my knees while the other cradles my back. He lifts me in the air and pulls me to him, whispering, “Fuck, sunshine, I got you.”

It’s fascinating how two people burned from the same experience can come out on the other side with completely different scars.