The Pointless Book

Extract From A Book I'll Never Write #22

"Loving someone means a lot of things," they tell her. "Being happy when they're happy. Letting them go, to be their own person. Other shit, I don't know. I've always loved Corbin like a bird, I guess - not something I owned or could keep, but something I could be happy was out there and singing, even if I didn't always get to hear it. Yeah, I want him beside me, but not if that means Ryan's not beside him too, because he loves Ryan, and that means I love Ryan, even if it's not in the same way Corbin does. But he made his choice, and I made mine, and so - I guess that's it. I'm here now, and he's there, and I'll give a beautiful toast at their wedding and help them move into their first house and watch their baby girl take her first steps over video rather than a few feet away."

Gabriella looks at them for a long, long time.

"You've kissed him, haven't you," she says, and it isn't a question.

"No," they say. "But we used to hold hands all the damn time."

And somehow, even if the world won't see it that way, the secret feels all the more dangerous to let go, slipping through their fingers where it shatters on the floor. Like fine China.