He looked at her steadily. And then a busted up parts girl fixed my bike without asking and passed out on my garage floor. And for the first time in about 30 years, I felt something get all the way through the wall. And it scared the hell out of me, too. Emily, you think you're the only one who's scared?
I've spent 3 weeks terrified because I let you all the way in. And now if something happens to you, it's going to take a piece of me I can't get back. That's the deal. That's the whole deal with letting people matter. You don't get the staying without the risk. There's no version where you get to keep people close and never have it cost you anything.
The room was very still. So why do it? Emily whispered. If it costs that much, why do it at all? In Cole Walker, chapter leader, 60 years old, a man who had kept the entire world at arm's length for his whole hard life, looked at the woman across from him and said the truest thing he had ever said out loud to anyone.
Because arm's length is a lonely damn way to live, he said. "And I'm tired of it, and so are you. And I'd rather be scared with people around me than safe all by myself." I did safe all by myself for 60 years, Emily. Take it from a guy who tried it both ways. Safe and alone is the worst deal there is.
It just takes you a long time to find out because it doesn't hurt. It just empties you out slow. So slow you don't even notice till one day there's nothing left.
Emily didn't say anything for a long time and then very quietly she said, "I don't know how to trust it won't get taken away." "You don't have to know." Cole said, "You just have to let it be here today.
That's all any of us gets is today. You spent three years bracing for the next bad thing so hard you couldn't feel the good ones when they came. I'm asking you to try something different. I'm asking you to just let today be good.
Don't guard it. Don't wait for the catch. Just let it be good today and then tomorrow you do it again. And one day you look up and it's been a whole lot of good days and you're not bracing anymore."
He shrugged. That's the only way I know. Ain't a lot to it. It's just hard as hell to do. And something in Emily, some knot that had been pulled tight for so many years.
She'd forgotten it was a knot and just thought it was the shape of her began slowly, painfully, a fraction at a time to loosen. She didn't fix it that day. You don't fix a thing like that in a day. But she started.