The Truth About Forever

by Sarah Dessen

I’d long ago learned not to be picky in farewells. They weren’t guaranteed or promised. You were lucky, more than blessed, if you got a good-bye at all.

As much as I’d been worried about her as she went on this tear, I was even more concerned about what would happen when she was all done, and the only mess left was us.

Grief can be a burden, but also an anchor. You get used to the weight, to how it holds you to a place.

“There is never,” Kristy said adamantly, “a time or place for true love. It happens accidentally, in a heartbeat, in a single flashing, throbbing moment.

Forever was so many different things. It was always changing, it was what everything was really all about. It was twenty minutes, or a hundred years, or just this instant, or any instant I wished would last and last. But there was only one truth about forever that really mattered, and that was this: it was happening. Right then, as I ran with Wes into that bright sun, and every moment afterwards. Look, there. Now. Now. Now.