Meet Cute

Love can be too painful, especially when you lose it.

“I think you learn how to live with holes in your heart. You can’t patch them up, or plug them with other people, but you find ways to make it bearable, if that makes sense.”

No one ever mentions how much harder everything is once the funeral is over, when everyone else goes back to living their lives and we’re stuck here, wading through years of memories and trapped in the relentless grip of grief.

We’ve shaken hundreds of hands, accepted as many hugs and condolences, but it in no way dispels the feeling that we’re floating, untethered in the unknown

My future with him might not be easy or conventional, but then nothing worth fighting for ever is.

Sometimes the darkest tragedies bring us the brightest lights. I’m lucky enough to have found not one, but two.

Dax had one made for me that reads Daxton Hughes Is My #1 Fan with a picture of the two of us. He’s wrapped around me, chin resting on the top of my head, his smile wide and warm and full of love.

I couldn’t think of a better way to celebrate your birthday than with all the people who helped bring you into my life. I’d like to think without them you never would’ve fangirled on me all those years ago, and then I might not have had the chance to fall in love with you.”

He drops a soft kiss on my lips.

Happy birthday, beautiful,” Dax says as he wraps me up in his arms.

“I can’t believe you did this.” I bury my face in his shirt. I’m sure my cheeks are a vibrant shade of red. “I hate you so much right now.”

“No you don’t.” He tips my head back and smiles down at me. “You love me.”

My gaze snags on Dax as he pushes through the crowd, which comprises the entire cast of It’s My Life. And they’re smiling like loons, shouting my name and clapping like I’ve just put on the best performance in the world. I want to simultaneously melt into the floor and make every one of them sign something for me. I want to be twelve years old again so I can pin the poster to my wall and swoon over it every day.

It’s only when Dax is a few feet away that I notice what’s printed on the shirts. It’s my face, with the text Kailyn Flowers #1 Fangirl. In fact, every single person in the room is wearing the exact same shirt. I look over my shoulder to see that Emme has lost her hoodie and Holly has taken off her cardigan to show off their own shirts. Holly’s reads Kailyn Flowers’s Bestie.

I’m enveloped in the biggest group hug ever for about ten very confusing seconds before the hug mob steps back and I realize exactly whom I’ve been hugged by