Status Updates From A Novel Love Story

“I love you,” he said, and it felt like a phrase he’d uttered a thousand times even though I’d never heard it before. He said it like it was a part of a grocery list, like it was greeting, and a good night, and a promise all in one.

He began to hum to the music inside-and I recognized it, finally.
It was the starlings’ melody.
“Come on, Eileen.”

A part of me wondered if I should just get in my car and go. I would just be a chapter in his life, anyway, perhaps not even that. But it was a good chapter. A lovely paragraph. A blissful mention.

I felt my stomach twist, my heart burn. Was this what it looked like, true enduring love? Because it was something that I couldn’t describe, something that i had next felt-not once-in my life. And I wanted to. So, so badly.

-before I curled my knees up to my chest and buried my face in them.
“I just want to stay,” I muttered to the empty loft, but the only answer was silence.”

“Year after year after year, books that ferried me through heartbreak and hope and those terrible nights after Liam left. They were words that tucked me into bed at night when I was alone, they were words that played the soundtrack of my heartbreak, the what-ifs, the second-guesses, the nights I sat alone and wondered, Why not me?”

“You didn’t-you didn’t give your car to Frank to fix mine, did you?”
“You have people waiting out there for you,” he replied, and that was all the answer I needed.