Dani doesn’t talk, but her silence encourages me to finish.

“I wasn’t a wild child. Not by a long shot. I was the silent one that flew under the radar and hid in the shadows. Jack was one of my only friends and by far the closest. Had we not grown up next door to each other, I’m sure we wouldn’t have even been friends. I was that much of a wallflower. But Jack, despite where we lived and how we grew up, was destined for greatness. The most popular boy in school, captain of the football team, class president, you name it and that was Jack.” I smile and look over at Dani, meeting her sympathetic eyes. “My parents were shit, Dani. Not like yours. Nothing like yours. Home wasn’t a safe place for me. I’ll spare you the details of that because really, you don’t want to know. When I got pregnant with Molly, Jack left all those huge dreams he had and joined the Marines, married me, and gave me the promise of a safe and happy love. He knew that he had nothing to offer me with just a pocket full of dreams and by enlisting, we might not have a future he had imagined for his life, but he did what he felt he had to do to protect me. Having Molly turned a love we had as friends and it grew into one that we had as husband and wife.”

“I don’t know what to say, Megan. I know a bunch of ‘I’m so sorry’s’ aren’t going to make it better, but I’m glad that you were able to get out—make a better life out of a bad start. Did he . . . um, did he regret it? Not following his football dreams?” I can tell she doesn’t mean this in a nosy way, but just to better understand what Jack and I had.

“Never. Jack wasn’t built in a way to ever regret the path his life took. He believed that everything happens for a reason. Although, I’m not sure he would feel the same way now seeing as he died jumping on that new path he dug for his life.”

“You miss him,” she states without any doubts in her tone.

She would understand, as a wife of an ex-marine she knows what it feels like to live without someone, even though her husband came home, you still feel that emptiness when they’re gone. The physical void, as well as the cold hard fear that they may never make it back.

And Jack . . . he never made it back.

“Every day.”

And I do. Not just because the physical loneliness, but losing him—someone that I had had by my side every day since I was in preschool—was one hell of a hit to take mentally too.

She nods, reaches her hand over the table separating the love seat from the couch and takes my hand. She doesn’t speak, just gives me a gentle squeeze and looks back at the television. I’m sure neither one of us are even watching the reality show rerun that’s playing on the screen. I’m lost in my thoughts and I’m sure she is too.

It’s hard to believe just how much my life has changed in the course of six years. I went from being a single teenager without much care to what happened in my future, to married with a newborn in what felt like seconds. Don’t get me wrong, I wouldn’t change having Molly in my life for a second, but losing Jack has changed me. At first I struggled with the will to live, sinking into a depression so deep that I’m shocked I made it out. Molly helped with that. She was my will to live. But even now, after all of these years, I still have days that I sink right back into that dark place. I’m sure a lot of that has to do with the fact that I’ve never had to be alone, aside from him. Now it’s like I’ve had to learn how to not only live without him, but to live essentially alone.

For the last three years I’ve been in some sort of limbo. I’ve come so far from where I was when he first died. Instead of thinking I would never have good days, now I know the bad days come few and far between. His birthday, our wedding anniversary and the date he died are still, and probably always will be, dark days. Moving forward, one foot in front of the other, in the process of moving on. Even though the thought of ‘moving on’ is still, to this day, laughable. To move on, I would need something to move toward, and it’s really hard to focus on the beauty in life when you’re stuck living a haunted one with the memory of someone who has been dead for years. Back in the shadows. All those moments that once brought a smile to my face and gave my heart a reason to beat a little quicker, gone. I was reminded, while Dani and Cohen completed that fairy tale for the record books that is their love, how beautiful life can be and as I watched them dance on their wedding night, I found myself wanting that. Craving for a love that deep that I physically ached for it.

And for one night I let myself forget the weights that have held me down.