Page 120 of The Problem with Falling
I wiped the tears that kept falling from my eyes. “I wanted to be here, Anna. I swear to you, I wanted to be by your side every step of the way. I just… I thought…”Oh my gosh. All these years… All this lost time…
She smiled. It was small, but it felt so big. My clementine. My forever favorite clementine. “During the hardest parts of my recovery, the only thing that got me through it was thinking, ‘What would Willow do?’ Whenever I felt weak and thought I couldn’t keep going on, I’d think that to myself. And then, I’d find my strength to keep going.” Anna reached out for my hand and took it in hers. “Willow…if anything, you saved me. Without you in the back of my mind, I would’ve given up so long ago.Don’t you remember from when we were kids? You were the reason I lived life instead of staying dormant.”
I broke into uncontrollable sobs from those words alone.
“I’m so sorry, Anna. I’m so sorry for everything,” I cried. “I should’ve stayed longer. I should’ve reached out more, but I didn’t think that was what you wanted. And then, when I saw how sad you were last month, I felt an even heavier amount of guilt and well—”
Anna laughed, making my words fade off.
“Willow… When I saw you in town that night, I was sad. But it wasn’t because of my situation. That was the day of my grandmother’s funeral. We were going for ice cream for a pick-me-up after the service. It was a bad day, not a bad life.”
Oh my gosh.
I felt so silly.
Anna’s smile widened as she patted my hand in hers. “I have a beautiful life. Are some days hard? Yes. But everyone has hard days. I mostly have amazing ones, though. And there have been so many days when I wanted to share parts of it with you.” She wiped her own tears away. “There have been so many days when I wished you were still my best friend.”
“Tell me,” I begged, my voice cracking from the overwhelming emotions swirling within me. “Can you tell me about all the beautiful parts?”
“Only if I can tell you about the ugly parts, too. Because that’s what I am. I’m the beauty and the beast. It’s what makes me…me.”
“Tell me it all,” I pleaded. “I want to know all about you, Anna. Every single detail. Every single word.”
She told me everything.
She got a degree in photography. She loved blueberries more than strawberries nowadays. She still laughed during sunsets and cried during sunrises. Her favorite color was midnight blue,but jade was a second favorite. She didn’t watch thriller movies at all because they gave her too much anxiety. She’d finally read and watched the Harry Potter series and was a Hufflepuff. Her mother was still overbearing. She had her first kiss with a guy named Jason, who used too much tongue. She had many more kisses since Jason. Her current crush was River Pierce, which wasn’t shocking—the Pierce brothers were everyone’s crush at some point in their lives. River was a good option.
She still loved love stories most of all.
She missed me.
I missed her.
Oh, how I missed her.
Each time she told me something about her current life, a weight lifted from my shoulders. Anna hadn’t missed out on life. If anything, she’d lived it to the fullest. From winning horseback riding competitions to baking sourdough bread to sell at the Honey Creek farmers’ market—which, let me tell you, wasn’t easy. Her photographs were published inNational Geographicmagazines. She showed me all the copies. I cried. She cried. We cried. She traveled the world and touched the oceans and seas. Nothing held her back. Nothing kept her still.
Anna Lane was an adventure seeker who lived each day as if it were her last.
And finally, I felt as if I could breathe for the first time in eight years.
Then I told her everything.
I told her about the places I’d been and the boys I’d kissed. I told her I still laughed during sunsets and cried during sunrises. How my favorite color was lavender. How that was also my favorite scent. How I still hid under blankets during horror movies and still never finished them. How I loved love stories most of all. How I fell in love with a man who I swore I couldn’t have. How I missed him.
Oh, how I missed him.
We talked for hours, not even noticing that the sun had set and it was now dark outside. Anna listened to every word I gave her with those wide doe eyes that I always loved.
“Theodore, huh?” she said with a smile in her eyes.
“Yes, but only his grandmother can call him that,” I teased.
“You have to get him back.”
I shrugged. “I want to, but…” I sighed and looked down at my hands in my lap. “Sometimes I think I’m too much. Too emotional for love. I feel everything so deeply, to the point that it’s almost suffocating. Theo is a good man. The best one I’ve ever met. And I cannot imagine him having to deal with all of me for the rest of his life. With all of my feelings and flightiness and emotions. I’m too much.”
“Never,” she said, placing her hand on my kneecap. “Willow Kingsley, you do feel a lot. You feel everything. And I don’t know where on your path you decided that feeling deeply was a flaw because it’s not. It’s what makes you…you. It’s your greatest superpower. Your light, your emotional depth, your ability to see things differently than most are what brings joy to this world. I always said the world needed more Willows in it. If we had more people like you, more empaths, I think the world would heal.”
