Kimberly Novosel

“He told me that when we first met, he had said to a friend about me: “If I get that girl’s number I will never ask another girl for her number again.”

“I remembered learning from my favorite professor at Belmont to “surround yourself with people who are better than you,” and I was now living that mantra.”

“But I tended not to date men who ever showed up for me.”

“I thought about how the past can become so small. An entire day, 24 separate, heavy hours, becomes the size of a tiny brown leaf falling from a tree. Before you know it, a whole year is just a pile of dead leaves on the ground. The year or so I’d spent in love with Chad was starting to feel so long ago, swept away by the wind. I knew that this year would soon feel far away too.”

“That’s how it felt – that the loss of him had a life of its own. I lived with it as I could have lived with him. Some nights it was quiet and sometimes it pounded on my door.”

“On day one of the drive, I saw my first dome sky. The world was so flat that I could see the level horizon all around me and the sky looked like a dome. Skies like that will give you perspective when nothing else will. The second day, a tumbleweed blew across the interstate. I’m in a western movie, I said to myself, laughing. I found it so much easier to laugh now that this weight had been lifted from my shoulders.”

“We kissed each other until we were too tired to keep going. I could still feel him holding back. It was my penance for what I had done to him. All I could do was hope the walls would fall and that I could have all of him again, but I was always leaving and he was tired of watching me walk away. We both knew that I couldn’t stay and that he couldn’t come with me, but still, we couldn’t let go.”

“Even though I always came back, he said he was always watching me leave.”

“I was girly and friendly and my family life was happy but many days I felt like I was on the inside what Chase was on the outside. I always believed I was a happy person with a sad soul. I felt like I had had tragedy in my life when I hadn’t. Somehow, without having experienced what he had, his scars resonated with me.”

“We had so much to say to each other, like we’d been quiet our whole lives until we met. It was as if I had underestimated how hungry I was for a companion, how much I needed to be understood, to be pursued, to be seen and to be reflected in someone’s eyes.”

“I told him I had once lost everything I had, too, and that I think that can be God’s way of building walls around us to force us to look up at Him.”

“Go for it, my heart said, my heart always said.”

“I didn’t answer. We were not buddies. We could not chat about the proximity of our offices, or football, or forgiveness.”

“Unfortunately, he still hadn’t asked for my number, or a date, or my hand in marriage, and my drink was getting low.”

“I used to cover my windows in heavy curtains, never drawn. Now I danced in the sunlight on my hardwood floors.”

“Each guy stamped the passport of my heart. “You’re worthy.” Stamp. “You’re enough.” “You have not failed completely.” Stamp, stamp.”

“I wrote. I wrote all the things I couldn’t say to him. I wrote about how much I believed in us. I wrote about how much I trusted God. I wrote that I was praying for him. I wrote down all the jokes I could remember, which weren’t many.”

“I decided I would fill the emptiness in me with God and with paint.”

“I threw his framed picture off my balcony just to hear my heart break.”

“It was strange walking through the empty apartment. My battered purple room was gone, Brittany’s bruised blue was gone. Two coats covered everything. It was like none of it had ever happened.”

“And so I just kept writing to myself.”

“If they were the jokes, I was the punch line.”

“The voice sang on, “I am ready, I am ready, I am fine. I am fine, I am fine, I am fine.” I played it again. I was not fine.”

“I tucked the Camel coupon from his cigarette pack into my pocket. A souvenir of the moment where he said maybe. I would hold on to his maybe for as long as it would take, even forever.”