ŷ������

“We’ve known each other for almost half our lives.
I’ve seen you smiling, confident, blissfully happy.
I’ve seen you broken, wounded, lost.
But I’ve never seen you like this.
You’ve taught me to look for beauty. In darkness in destruction, you always found light.
I don’t know what beauty I’ll find here, what light. But I’ll try. I’ll do it for you. Because I know you would do it for me.
There was so much beauty in our life together.
Maybe that’s where I should start.��

On the day that Lucy and Gabriel met, he was late for class, Professor Kramer’s Shakespeare seminar, and about to discuss what Brutus is saying about fate and free will in Julius Caesar when the TA walks in and announces that he was late because a plane has just hit one of the twin towers, but it was still believed to have been an accident with a prop plane. Class continues.

They emerge from the class in that blissful ignorance of the reality of the news, that both towers had collapsed, hearing the news in snippets, and no one really knew what has really happened or what to do, where to go, what to think.

So they go to Gabe’s room to check on the news, everyone still in a state of shock and disbelief.

�� The world felt like it was cracking in pieces, like we’d gone through a shattered mirror into the fractured place inside, where nothing made sense, where our shields were down, our walls broken. In that place, there wasn’t any reason to say no.��

A year passes during which they don’t see each other, but when they do it’s almost as if no time has passed. The what-ifs that had been running through their minds for all that time, a year of missing that feeling of an instant connection, unable to find it in anyone else.

There’s a need, an immediacy to their love, hers and Gabe’s, born out of a recognition of the frailty of life, the knowledge that it really could be over any second so you have to grab hold of it right then, right now, and never, ever let go. Gabriel makes Lucy feel infinite. Lucy makes Gabriel feel invincible. What Lucy grabs hold of is Gabe, and the thing that Gabe grabs hold of is doing something with great magnitude, with principal, something that will share his vision with the world, so that the work he inevitably leaves behind will be invincible.

”Love does that. It makes you feel infinite and invincible, like the whole world is open to you anything is achievable, and each day will be filled with wonder.��

Gabriel is a dreamer, a dreamer with a goal to use his photography to share his vision of the world. The people in the photographs �� what he sees in these moments he finds and shares, the emotion he pulls his viewer into found within the image. He wants to make a difference.

”So you find yourself at this subway
With your world in a bag by your side
And all at once it seemed like a good way
You realize it's the end of the line
For what it's worth

“Here comes the train upon the track
And there goes the pain, it cuts to black
Are you ready for the last act?
To take a step you can't take back?��

A Step You Can’t Take Back �� Kiera Knightley
Written by: Gregg Alexander, Danielle Brisebois, John Carney

Lucy is a planner, not a dreamer. She wants to know the plan, be part of deciding on the plan. She most definitely does not want anyone else deciding on anything without her. She has goals, yes, but she senses the balance in everything, how her goals can’t negate the goals of others, hers are not unimportant, but she understands when others choose their own needs over hers, even when it hurts, she allows them to choose.

Lucy can’t stop wishing her marriage to Darren had as much passion and caring and equality as her relationship with Gabe had. Darren treats her like a child, a pat on the head and a “good girl�� type comment to placate her, but all it does is infuriate her more. Makes her miss Gabe more, miss the life they could have had, should have had, together.

Soulmates. Fate. First Love. The ideals we build upon in our lives, based upon a once upon a time kind of love. The writing is charmingly lovely, and if you enjoy love stories, this is a very good one. Think of Jo Jo Moyes “Me Before You�� or one of Joshilyn Jackson’s novels, with a sprinkling of Gae Polisner’s “The Memory of Things.�� Personally, I loved the way she told this story, there’s a vulnerability that felt very real as she shares it all.

“Here comes the rain, so hold your hat
And don't pray to God, 'cause He won't talk back
Are you ready for the last act?
To take a step you can't take back, back, back?
You can't take back, back, back.

“So you find yourself at this subway
With your world in a bag by your side��

A Step You Can’t Take Back �� Kiera Knightley
Written by: Gregg Alexander, Danielle Brisebois, John Carney


Many thanks, once again, to the Public Library system for the loan of this book!