Here is what nobody tells you about love it does not wait for you to be ready. It does not check if your walls are down or your fears are quiet or your past is fully healed. It simply arrives. And then it asks you the hardest question you will ever face: will you let me in?
The next morning I woke up before my alarm.
I lay in the grey early light listening to Flourish breathe in her sleep, to Best's quiet stillness, and I thought about everything. About my mother's words. About every woman I had watched love someone and lose something. About Felix standing in the middle of it all warm, steady, real and about the terrifying gap between wanting him and trusting him.
Was I being wise or was I being a coward?
Was I protecting myself or was I punishing myself for something that had not even happened yet?
I thought about the way he had come back with oranges. The way he had not pushed when I said I was uncomfortable. The way he had knelt in front of me and apologised. The way he had whispered I love you like it was the truest thing he had ever said out loud. I thought about the hug in the lecture hall and the laughter and the silence that needed no words.
And I thought about Flourish's tears. About Best's broken voice saying her life was finished. About the way love had entered them like sunlight and exited like a fire.
The truth is this there is no guarantee. There has never been a guarantee. You can love someone perfectly and still get hurt. You can be chosen and still be left. You can give your whole self and still end up sitting on the edge of a bed at midnight crying in a way that has no bottom.
But here is the other truth, the one that lives quietly on the other side of fear.
You can also be loved well.
You can be the woman who takes the risk and finds that the risk was worth it. You can be the girl who let her walls down and discovered that what was waiting on the other side was not destruction but something steady and real and rare.
I am Jasmine. I am nineteen years old. I am studying medicine and surgery and I wake up at four in the morning because I am serious about my future. I was raised on warnings and I built walls so perfectly that I forgot what warmth felt like inside them.
And I am standing at the edge of something I cannot control, looking at a boy named Felix who remembered I loved oranges and knelt on the floor to apologise and called me his best gift and I am terrified.
But I am also ready to try.
Not because the fear is gone. The fear is still here. It probably always will be. But because I have finally understood something my parents never meant to teach me the opposite of love is not heartbreak. The opposite of love is emptiness. And I have been empty long enough.
I picked up my phone. I read Felix's message one more time. And then I typed back slowly, carefully, like each word was a brick I was taking down from a wall I had spent years building.
Good morning. I love you too. And I am choosing you. I am scared, but I am choosing you.
Some fears keep you safe.
Some fears keep you empty.
And some if you are brave enough to walk through them lead you exactly where you were always meant to be.