The Invisible Life of Addie LaRue - V. E. Schwab Page 0,100
see the holy texts as stories, sweeping epics, and the more you study, the less you believe in any of it.
Blink, and you’re twenty-four, and you travel through Europe, thinking—hoping—that the change will spark something in you, that a glimpse of the greater, grander world will bring your own into focus. And for a little while, it does. But there’s no job, no future, only an interlude, and when it’s over, your bank account is dry, and you’re not any closer to anything.
Blink, and you’re twenty-six, and you’re called into the dean’s office because he can tell that your heart’s not in it anymore, and he advises you to find another path, and he assures you that you’ll find your calling, but that’s the whole problem, you’ve never felt called to any one thing. There is no violent push in one direction, but a softer nudge a hundred different ways, and now all of them feel out of reach.
Blink and you’re twenty-eight, and everyone else is now a mile down the road, and you’re still trying to find it, and the irony is hardly lost on you that in wanting to live, to learn, to find yourself, you’ve gotten lost.
* * *
Blink, and you meet a girl.
* * *
The first time Henry saw Tabitha Masters, she was dancing.
There must have been ten of them onstage. Henry was there to see Robbie perform, but her limbs had a pull, her form a kind of gravity. His gaze kept falling back toward her. She was the kind of pretty that steals your breath, and the kind you can’t really capture in a photo, because the magic is in the movement. The way she moved, it was a story told with nothing but a melody and a bend of her spine, an outstretched hand, a slow descent to the darkened floor.
The first time they met was at an after-party.
Onstage, her features were a mask, a canvas for other people’s art. But there, in the crowded room, all Henry could see was her smile. It took up her entire face, from her pointed chin to the line of her hair, an all-consuming kind of joy he couldn’t look away from. She was laughing at something—he never found out what—and it was like someone went and turned on all the lights in the room.
And there and then, his heart began to ache.
It took Henry thirty minutes and three drinks to work up the nerve to say hello, but from that moment onward, it was easy. The rhythm and flow of frequencies in sync. And by the end of the night, he was falling in love.
He’d fallen before.
Sophia in high school.
Robbie in college.
Sarah, Ethan, Jenna—but it was always hard, messy. Full of starts and stops, wrong turns and dead ends. But with Tabitha, it was easy.
* * *
Two years.
That’s how long they were together.
Two years of dinner, and breakfast, and ice cream in the park, of dance rehearsals and rose bouquets, of sleeping over at each other’s place, of weekend brunch and bingeing TV shows, and trips upstate to meet his parents.
Two years of drinking less for her, and staying clean for her, dressing up for her, and buying things he couldn’t afford, because he wanted to make her smile, wanted to make her happy.
Two years, and not a single fight, and now he thinks that maybe that wasn’t such a good thing after all.
Two years—and somewhere between a question and an answer, it fell apart.
Down on one knee with a ring in the middle of the park, and Henry is such a fucking idiot, because she said no.
She said no, and that wasn’t even the worst word.
“You’re great,” she said. “You really are. But you’re not…”
And she doesn’t finish, and she doesn’t have to, because he knows what comes next.
You’re not right.
You’re not enough.
“I thought you wanted to get married.”
“I do. One day.”
The words, crystal clear, despite never being said.
But not to you.
And then she walked away, and now Henry is here at the bar and he’s drunk, but not nearly drunk enough.
He knows, because the world is still there, because the entire night still feels too real, because everything still hurts. He’s slumped forward, chin resting on his folded arms, staring through the collection of empty bottles on the table. He looks back from half a dozen warped reflections.
The Merchant is packed with bodies, a wall of white noise, so Robbie has to shout over the din.