Hello Beautiful

by Ann Napolitano

Sylvie had never admitted, even to herself, that writing a novel was a dream. But her sister had snaked the truth out of her and said it in front of everyone, and—even though Sylvie knew Julia had meant well—that felt painfully, strangely, like a loss. The dream was now in the air, at risk of the elements, beyond her grasp.

She knew it was a strange contradiction, but despite her interest in love, weddings made her uncomfortable. They were too showy, too public. Deep love between two people was a private, wordless endeavor, and to place the lovers in fancy clothes in front of a crowd seemed antithetical to the nature of the thing. No one could see love—this was what Sylvie believed, anyway. It was an internal state. Watching that moment between two lovers felt wrong to her, almost blasphemous.

Then he smiled with so much warmth it was as if a sun had risen inside him.

“It’s because you know that more is possible that you’ll always see the pointlessness in following a stupid rule or clocking in and out of a boring class. Most people can’t see that distinction, so they just do as they’re told. Of course, this makes them bored and irritated, but they think that’s the human condition. You and I are lucky enough to see that it doesn’t have to be that way.”

She wanted to be true to herself with every word she uttered, every action she took, and every belief she held.

She would wait, forever if necessary, for a man who saw the expanse of her, the way her father had.

Everyone Sylvie encountered seemed to sense that she was wearing death, so they gave her a wide berth.

He could see tears trapped in her eyelashes, and he lost his breath. He could see her sadness traced across the lines of her body, overlaying her arms and legs and the oval of her face.

No one else in Sylvie’s life had identified the specific swirl of her pain; no one had understood her since her father died. That recognition had felt like drawing in giant mouthfuls of air after holding her breath for a long time.

Kent’s affection for William was too clear and too uncomplicated. It shone on William like the sun. No one had ever loved him unconditionally like this, and that love, when he was the most undeserving he’d ever been in his life, made William feel like he was burning up. He paced the room, trying to cool himself down with motion.

It felt like she’d been holding an umbrella to deny that it was raining, and now the umbrella was gone, and she was standing in a storm.

“To love.” Everyone up and down the table said and felt the words—the beauty, and the cost, of love.

But perhaps what felt impossible was leaving that person behind. When your love for a person is so profound that it’s part of who you are, then the absence of the person becomes part of your DNA, your bones, and your skin.

the losses ran like a river inside her.