The Mountain Between Us

by Charles Martin

He looked early seventies with the body of a fifty-year-old and the heart of a teenager.

“A Midwest girl. She married me when I had nothing but love, dreams, and lust. Gave me children, stuck with me when I lost everything, believed me when I told her we’d be okay. No offense to present company, but she’s the most beautiful woman

Romance goals

Marry the man who’s going to walk with you through the next fifty or sixty years. Open doors, hold your hand, make your coffee, rub lotion on the cracks of your feet, put you up on a pedestal where you belong. Is he marrying your face and your bottle-blond hair, or will he love you when you look like whoever you’re going to look like in fifty years?” I

More peak romance from Grover

“I don’t know if I’ve ever had someone comment on the color of my pee before. I’m not quite sure how to take it.”

Who treat their spouse like a roommate. Somebody they cross paths with, split the mortgage with, maybe have kids with. Two people bent on individuality.

Waiting for somebody does that. It turns minutes to hours, hours to days, and days to several lifetimes.

You had little trouble communicating what you felt. You wore your heart on your sleeve, and what your heart felt your mouth could say. And did.

Same

“Once a heart breaks…it doesn’t just grow back. It’s not a lizard’s tail. It’s more like a huge stained glass that shattered into a million pieces, and it’s not going back together. Least not the way it was. You can mush it all into one piece, but that doesn’t make it a window. That makes it a pile of broken colored glass. Shattered hearts don’t mend and they don’t heal. They just don’t work that way.

I realized that I had grown used to the sound of her voice. And for the first time, the silence caused me to wonder if I missed it when it wasn’t ringing through the air.

I think you’re quite remarkable, and if Vince isn’t, if he’s not remarkable and he doesn’t light you up, then, with all due respect to him, don’t marry him.”

“Being tempted and doing it are two different things.

being lost with you is better than being found and alone.

Forgiveness is a tough thing. Both in the offering…and the accepting.

Maybe piecing is continual. Maybe the glue takes time to dry. Maybe bones take time to mend. Maybe it’s okay that the mess I call me is in process. Maybe it’s a long, hard walk out of the crash site. Maybe the distance is different for each of us. Maybe love is bigger than my mess.