Page 37 of Goodbye Note

“You said he doesn’t treat you like others do. Is that why you like him so much?” Vallen clarified.

“It’s part of it. But he’s different. He’s happy and high on life. He feels like stardust when everyone else is ordinary. He’s excited about me.” It was refreshing after years of how my grandparents acted, and it wasn’t because he was a fan.

“You are addictive. People are obsessed with you. I don’t think it’s as hard as you think it is.”

“Arik is different.”

“Everyone says that about the person they like. It’s a little cliché.”

“No, I mean it. He’s this comet, and unless I catch him now, he won’t come around for another hundred years. I can’t miss my chance.”

Arik would blow up bigger than us. I knew it before I met him. Their momentum was a freight train.

Vallen shook his head. “Don’t get hurt, please.”

“Without hurt, there is no reward. Or some bullshit.” Life was just suffering with little blips of happiness. So why wouldn’t I chase those moments?

“That’s not how the saying goes. Without risk.”

“I don’t think that’s true. It’s hurt. You have to set yourself up knowing you’ll get hurt to even be in place to get the reward. So many things in life end up hurting. I’d rather choose my hurt than not have a choice in it.” I pointed at my scar.

“Even if you know it’s going to end badly?”

“We have to find the ones who are worth the agony, I guess. I don’t know. I’m not the philosophy major. You were.”

“I didn’t get that far.”

“It’s still in your bones,” I said, not unkindly.

Vallen was an old soul. He was made before this age, and in a lot of ways didn’t fit into this time. He was too good. Too smart for it. There was no other way to describe it. I felt like a baby compared to him even though we were only a year apart. Maybe that’s why my grandparents never treated him like he’d turn into my parents. He was born older than my parents ever acted.

I made the mistake of reading Arik’s journal posts.

this glimmer in the dark.

a single ligHt of your star while the rest of the world sleeps.

Are we ever going to be okay?

why are we so easily throwing this white Picket fence out?

was it not meant for People like you and me?

are we just chasing dreams?

or nightmares.

this once in a blue moon i wish you’d hear me out.

or just take me out.

give me one more memorY i want to burn from my brain.

tonight i’m too tired to wish for anything but you.

I hated that they were about her.

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