Page 80 of When You Were Mine
“Of course they are.” He smiles and pulls me closer. “Just because you can’t see things sometimes doesn’t mean they’re not there.”
I think about the things I haven’t seen. How much has changed. How six months ago I thought I had everything figured out. I was so sure of how things were going to unfold. I think about Len saying he wasn’t finished with high school yet, and I think I know what he means now, because I’m not either.
“I got my letter from Stanford.”
He smiles. “They paying you to go?”
“I don’t know. I didn’t open it. I don’t even know if it’s what I want anymore.”
Len considers this, running a hand gently through my hair. “You know, NYU has a great music school,” he says. “And it’s not too late to apply.”
I lean back and look at him. “This wouldn’t have anything to do with the fact that Juilliard is in New York, would it?”
He scoffs and rolls his eyes. “Please,” he says. “I have better things to do than sit around and think about us spending our college years together, playing music, sitting in coffee shops.…”
“We probably wouldn’t even see each other,” I say, teasing. “I’m sure we’d be very busy.”
“Plus, there’s that girl with the tattoos I need to date in order to properly rebel.” He laughs. “Still and all, I think we could make it work.”
“Yeah?”
He looks down at me and touches his forehead to mine. “We’re here, aren’t we?”
Here. This place that has seen a beginning and an ending and now a beginning again. He pulls me toward him, and when our lips meet, the possibility of life seems to explode outward, and the astounding energy of the universe, of how alive the roots andthe leaves and the stars and even the delicate, white, precarious snow is, makes me smile against his lips.
“So what happens now?” I ask.
He kisses my nose, and I can see his dimples dancing. “Anything you want, Rosaline,” he says. “Absolutely anything.”
Epilogue
Olivia was right. The pointof the Choose Your Own Adventure books was just that: choice. It wasn’t about where you ended up; it was about the decisions you made to get there. And I don’t want to skip to the end anymore. Because in real life there is no way to know, anyway. There are no guarantees. You can start down one road and figure out it wasn’t the one you really wanted to be traveling down at all. Or you could switch courses just to realize this new path leads to the exact same place as the old one. And, see, that’s where choice comes in. Because while you can’t know where you’ll end up, you can, even in the last act, alter the course you’re taking. You can veer off to the left, swing right, and find yourself somewhere you thought you’d never be. I guess the thing I’ve realized is that fateand destiny only get you so far. Because they decide beginnings, not endings. Destiny might drop you off somewhere, but it’s your job to get where you’re going, to decide your own ending, what moment you choose to close the curtain on. So I guess Shakespeare didn’t get it wrong, after all. The truth is that there are many different endings to the same story.
This one is mine.