Good For You

There are a million ways to lose someone you love.

When you finally figure out what you really want, everything else pales in comparison.

How could I not love you? No one has ever affected me like you do. When you told me goodbye last month, I tried to let you go. I told myself it was the best thing for you because you wanted it. But you’re wrong, Dori. I’m good for you even if you don’t know it yet. I know because I’ve never been good for anyone before.

Tonight I want to stand on the side of a cliff and look down, dare the wind to gust and knock me off. Everyone thinks that falling to your death is the worst thing that can happen. But that’s a lie. The worst thing is to be alive for no reason.

I've changed since I've known you. Not because you made me into someone else - but because you showed me a path I'd never paid attention to, and I chose to follow it.

The key to lying skillfully is never lie to yourself.

But just because you’re strong and resilient doesn’t mean you never need someone to be there for you, to take care of you.

I thought I dreamed you." The words whisper from my parched throat. His head tilts to one side, his mouth shifting to something less sarcastic, more amused. "That may be the most enchanting thing I've ever been told after spending the night with a girl.

It isn't fair how I doubt him, and I wonder if he'll ever gather that my loss of faith extends further than I'd ever known it would, severing lines of trust and leveling my confidence like a city-flattening tornado.

And then she told me she didn’t want someone who needed her in order to be a better guy. She wanted someone who was better by himself, with or without her.

Few of us can actually change the world. We can only change ourselves. But if enough people took that to heart, the world would change.

I don't believe there's a reason for everything, and having faith doesn't mean I'm blind. I believe people make poor choices. I believe bad things happen to good people. I believe there's evil in the word that I will never understand, but will never stop fighting.

When you tell me to be good, it makes me want to be good,' I say, hearing the undisguised desire in my voice. I run my fingers through the hair at her temples, taking her face between my palms, and she doesn't move. 'It also makes me want to be very, very bad.

There's something uncontaminated about her, and I don't even mean sexually or whatever. I mean the way she is, at her core. Like when you wake up and the world has been blanketed by snow overnight, and not a single footstep or tire track has spoiled the untouched perfection of it.

The exception is I'm not going away. Don't ask me to do that ever again.

Testing her sexuality, she thinks she's caught a beautiful fish, when in reality, she's netted a shark.

I’ve come to ask how you do it. How you feel what I know you’re feeling and then walk away like that.

I just told her I love her. There’s no going back. Nothing to do but own it. But there’s the crux of the matter—I want to own it.

Even still, there’s more to this complex girl, and the physical craving I feel for her is merely an index to the rest of it. I know her patience, her kindness, her inherent desire to leave the world a better place than she found it. I’ve felt her forgiveness, her strength, and her ability to see something good in anyone. The whole of her is overwhelming, and the fact that I may have found her only to lose her scares the hell out of me.

Why me?" I hear his answer in my head before he says it. "Don't know, honey. But there's a reason for everything." Dad pats my hand. "We'll just have to wait patiently to see what it is." As i do every time he says that or something like this, I bite back what I'd say if I could reply honestly. I don't believe there's a reason for everything, and having faith doesn't mean I'm blind. I believe people make poor choices. I believed bad things happen to good people. I believe there's evil in the world that I will never understand, but will never stop fighting. If I believe for two seconds that there was a reason behind some of the awful things that occur in this life, I wouldn't be able to stand it.

I'm eighteen, so he's right-- there's no hurry. I don't tell him how much I want that sort of connection-- a relationship like he and Mom share. The trust and respect between them is plain to see, but I know that under the surface, their relationship simmers with passion. I don't tell him how much I worry it will never happen for me. I don't tell him how some days, I feel as though everything I do is an attempt to be worthy of being loved like that.

I fight the urge to enjoy anything too much in front of him, actually, and now that I’m aware of that fact, my brain gets hung up on why that is.

Wow, shit. Gotten us a place? I am gone. Over Dorcas Cantrell, a girl who convinced me in a one-minute phone call that I meant nothing to her.

What the hell is it about brooding guys that’s attractive to women, anyway? I’ve become one since Dori’s call three weeks ago, and it’s made me more of a chick magnet. I shouldn’t be surprised—being a dick never hurt my appeal before.

The worst thing is to be alive for no reason.

Despite the crushing weight of the expectations placed on her, from the theological to the self-inflicted, what I needed was the last, selfless thought in her sleepy head.

One of the reasons AA works is that the individual makes the decision not to drink, one day at a time. One hour. One minute even. You can do that, right? One minute?...There's one minute. You're stronger than you know, Mrs. Alexander.

I’ve changed since I’ve known you. Not because you made me into someone else—but because you showed me a path I’d never paid attention to, and I chose to follow it."- Reid Alexander When you finally figure out what you really want, everything else pales in comparison.