Page 93 of Never Give Up

Pure happiness.

“Am I hallucinating?” she asks, and everyone around her laughs. “No, seriously. Am I imagining this?”

“No,” Brian says. “You’re not. Is that a yes?”

“Of course it’s a yes. I wouldn’t want to watch anyone else get old while I stay young and hot.”

They kiss, and I smile at the happiness between my friends.

Everyone celebrates. Maya decides she wants a long engagement. She wants to make sure everything is perfect, since in her words, “There was no way in hell it was happening more than once.”

We are all celebrating but I take myself off to a quiet corner, a dullness in the pit of my stomach.

I have to face the fact that the woman I’m supposed to spend the rest of my life with, the woman I love more than anything, isn’t coming back.

And there’s nothing I can do to change that fact.

Nothing I can say to bring her back to me. Sometimes, when I’m all alone at night, I open my phone and type out a message to my Lilly-girl.

But I never get the courage to hit send.

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