Tomorrow, and Tomorrow, and Tomorrow

by Gabrielle Zevin

This is what time travel is. It’s looking at a person, and seeing them in the present and the past, concurrently. And that mode of transport only worked with those one had known a significant time.

If this were a game, he could hit pause. He could restart, say different things, the right ones this time. He could search his inventory for the item that would make Sadie not leave.

To allow yourself to play with another person is no small risk. It means allowing yourself to be open, to be exposed, to be hurt.

It was as if being a woman was a disease that you didn’t wish to catch.

She loved playing games with him, and having sex with him, and telling her ideas to him. She loved him.

He was like a bright, warm light over everything in her life. She felt lit up, turned on. There was no one better to talk to about games. There was no one better to run ideas by. Yes, she loved him, but she also liked him. She liked herself when she was with him.

“Her parents can buy her anything she wants. Why would she want some dumb thing I drew on the back of an envelope?” Sam said. “I suppose,” Dong Hyun said, “because her parents can buy her anything she wants.”

In the end, all we can ever know is the game that was played, in the only world that we know.”

“The good news is that the pain is in your head.” But I am in my head,

How much of your life had been happenstance? How much of your life had been a roll of the big polyhedral die in the sky? But then, weren’t all lives that way? Who could say, in the end, that they had chosen any of it?

No loss is permanent, because nothing is permanent, ever.”

There is no purity to bearing pain alone.

When I’m honest with myself, the most important parts of me were yours.”