Extraits

I had predicated my life on the idea that I wanted to see everywhere extraordinary, but I’d come to realize that extraordinary is everywhere.

“I am who I am because I loved you once,” he says.

“I am who I am because I loved you once, too,” I say.

And then we say good-bye.

“You’re it for me,” I say. “Forever. Me and you.”

I was wrong before, when I said there’s nothing more romantic than the end of a relationship.

It is this.

There is nothing more romantic than this. Holding the very person that you thought you lost, and knowing you’ll never lose them again.

I don’t think that true love means your only love.

I think true love means loving truly.

Loving purely. Loving wholly.

Maybe, if you’re the kind of person who’s willing to give all of yourself, the kind of person who is willing to love with all of your heart even though you’ve experienced just how much it can hurt . . . maybe you get lots of true loves, then. Maybe that’s the gift you get for being brave.

“You were a wonderful person to love,” I say. “It felt so good to love you, to be loved by you.”

“Well, it was the easiest thing I ever did,” he says.

There are two tracks of footprints leading from the front door.

They start out close together and veer off in different directions as our feet head for opposite sides of the car.

I know those footprints will be gone soon. I know they might not make it to tonight if it keeps snowing like this. But it feels good to be able to look at something and understand it.

The footprints start off together and they grow apart.

I get it.

It’s fine.

It’s the truth.

“If you love me, Emma, then be with me.”

“Shhh,” I say to him, trying to calm him down, trying to hold him and comfort him. “I love you.”

I wish I didn’t say it so often. I wish that my love for Sam wasn’t so casual and pervasive—so that I could save that phrase for moments like this. But that’s not very realistic, is it? When you love someone, it seeps out of everything you do, it bleeds into everything you say, it becomes so ever-present, that eventually it becomes ordinary to hear, no matter how extraordinary it is to feel.

“Just . . . just do me a favor.”

“Anything.”

“Don’t stay with me if you want to be with him,” he says. “Don’t do that to me.”

“It makes me so happy to have you in my life,” I said. “I don’t know what I did to deserve you.”

Sam smiled. “Think of all the people in the world,” he said, tucking my longest hair behind my ear. “And I was lucky enough to find you twice.”

“I think you and I have something that could last for a very long time, Emma. Maybe I even knew that back in high school, maybe that’s why I was as infatuated with you as I was. But I feel—I have always felt—more myself with you than anyone I’ve ever met. And for the first time, I’m starting to see what it would mean to grow with someone, as opposed to merely growing beside someone, the way I did with Aisha. I’m not worried about our future, the way I thought I’d be when I fell in love again. I’m OK just being with you and seeing where it goes. I just want you to know that if what we have lasts, and one day we talk about getting married or having kids, I want you to know I’ll never try to replace Jesse. I’ll never ask you to stop loving him. You can love your past with him. My love for you now isn’t threatened by that. I just . . . I want you to know that I’ll never ask you to choose. I’ll never ask you to tell me I’m your one true love. I know, for someone like you, that isn’t fair. And I’ll never ask it.”