Chapter 109
Chapter One Hundred Nine
Private Message | EchoZone Internal Chat
From: DeadStrings
Subject: Can people fall in love again?
I was thinking about switching gyms.
There’s a new one a few blocks from my place—open twenty-four-seven. Maybe I’ll start showing up at 2 a.m. instead of sitting in front of the stereo, waiting for the perfect song to tell me whether I’m doing something right . . . or if I’m just convincing myself that I am.
Insomnia makes everything feel like a metaphor.
A song.
A question.
A memory you weren’t planning to revisit.
Sometimes I think about how easy it is to start over with strangers. You’re blank pages to each other. No scribbled-out arguments. No crossed wires or faded notes in the margins.
But what about people you already know?
People who mattered?
Is it na?ve to think we get second chances at that kind of thing?
That maybe, if you’ve done the work, if you’ve taken responsibility for the damage—you can earn the right to try again?
Would you ever give a second chance to the love of your life?
Or is once enough, and anything else just a ghost in borrowed shoes?