37 - Jack

37

Jack

The future isn’t guaranteed .

That phrase kept rolling around in my head as I paced across my office. Had Ash really said that? It didn’t fit with his personality. But he had been changing in the past week, subtle differences in the way he spoke and acted that nobody but his closest friends would notice.

The future wasn’t guaranteed.

The future was all I had worried about lately. Not just in the last week, but also the last month, the last year . Planning, and preparing, and scheduling. It’s who I had become since Sam left. It’s who I needed to become in order to keep this fucking business running.

But it wasn’t who I really was. Not at my core.

I used to be impulsive.

I used to wake up every morning without having any plans.

I used to live life to its fullest.

But the future wasn’t guaranteed. That phrase, coming from those perfect plump lips, had pierced me in a way that nothing else had since I could remember. And now my entire foundation as a person had been rocked, leaving me listless.

I continued pacing.

It all went back to Sam. She was supposed to be the one. I never even believed in the idea of the one until I’d met her, but once she was in my life, I was a believer. She was so perfect at the beginning, when we were still just friends. The way she smiled at everyone she came across, friends and strangers. Her easy laugh and energetic attitude, throwing all of her focus into whatever activity was in front of her. She was always so present when she was with people, never looking at her phone. She gave you all of herself.

That changed when we started dating. Sure, there was a honeymoon period. Things stayed perfect for a while. But the closer you stared at a painting, the easier it was to see the imperfections. Sloppy brush strokes. Smudges. Soon you realized nothing was perfect, even someone you thought was the one .

Then she left. Not just me, but the business we had started. The life we had begun to build.

As I strode around my office, searching for something I couldn’t understand, I came to a strange clarity about Melissa. I wasn’t just afraid of getting close to her because she was going to leave when her ankle healed. I was also afraid of getting close enough to see her imperfections. That if I kept my distance and never made a move, the painting would remain perfect in my head. Forever.

But the idea of a person wasn’t the same as the real thing. Sure, the closer I got to Melissa, the more imperfections I would discover. But for the first time since Sam left, I wasn’t afraid of that happening. I even wanted to learn what Melissa’s flaws were. That’s how she was different from Sam.

Was Melissa the one? Fuck if I knew. But as I ran out of my office toward the Indigo Cabin, I was filled with a singular certainty: that I didn’t care.

The future wasn’t guaranteed.

But the present could be.