Then he offered to cover the cost of the whole trip himself.
It was a mic-drop moment. How couldAlex, who had never in his four years of college taken on more than a part-time minimum-wage job, instead working back-to-back unpaid film internships and volunteering on friends’ short films, afford to pay for a seven-person trip to Thailand by himself?
Then he showed me his bank account.
Alex—twenty-one-year-old, not-even-a-business-owner-yet Alex—was already well on his way to becoming a millionaire.
It made me livid.
“You promised you wouldn’t get rich off the backs of others this time,” I screamed.
“I didn’t get rich off the backs of others—I got rich playing the stock market,” he responded calmly, his calmness fanning the flames of my ire.
“That still counts.”
“I’m always going to be me. I can’t justnotjump on an opportunity when I see one,” he said, then added, “You act like you aren’t still waiting for Bitcoin to skyrocket.”
The conversation had sent me spiraling. I’d stormed off, too proud to admit that (a) he had a fair point about Bitcoin, and (b) I’d already forgotten how to access said Bitcoin.
Eventually, I realized Alex was right.
Because that’s the thing. He might not be the earnest eighteen-year-old boy I thought he was at the start, but he’s also not the thirty-two-year-old guy I left behind. He’s not even the fifty-eight-year-old man who died alone in his hospital room.
He’s a mix of all three of those men and a new man all in one. He has all the context and wisdom of the man he once was and the life he lived, but some things can’t be changed even by death.
One of those things is that Alex is a man who notices opportunities and jumps on them. Asking him not to invest in what he knew were safe bets felt a little like needless punishment—and considering I plan to spend the rest of my life with him, I might as well be punishing myself too.
I love him the way he is.
I think that once, I might have said that I loved him in spite of hisflaws. But I don’t think that’s quite right. Now, I think that every single one of his quirks and flaws only add to the whole picture of Alex that caused me to fall for him.
Maybe that’s what love is—learning to appreciate someone not in spite of their flaws but because of them.
Plus, it’ll be nice to have help as I work my way through grad school. In two months, I’m getting my bachelor’s degree in psychology, and then I’m going straight into a PhD program. All that talk about trying new lives, and it turns out that no matter who I try to be, certain things will always ring true. One, I don’t have an artistic bone in my body. Two, I’m someone who thrives on academic excellence—only now I’m locked into evenmoreyears of schooling.
At least this time, I’m going to try to use my work to make an actual difference—my intention is to become a therapist for other people living their second lives. I’ve continued going to Second Take Anonymous meetings with Alex and Kimiko, and as the years have gone on, something from my first meeting has really begun to resonate. Someone—I don’t remember who—made a comment about how over time, the meetings begin to feel sparse, quieter than they should be, like someone is missing, maybe many someones, but you can’t quite place who.
It’s true.
There’s an absence there, and I feel it every time I go.
This second life is a gift—it’ssucha fucking gift. But that doesn’t mean it doesn’t come with its own challenges. I get how someone wouldn’t be able to handle the secrecy of it all and would just—break. Let it slip, either intentionally or unintentionally. I feel like maybe, if people had someone they could talk to candidly, someone who could offer one-on-one support and perspective, fewer of them would slip. At least, I hope that’s the case.
“What are you thinking about?” Alex’s voice cuts through the quiet moment of the two of us standing together, listening to waves breaking.
“I’m just thinking that I’m glad I got this second chance with you,” I admit.
“I’m glad too,” he says. After considering me for a long moment, he presses a kiss to my forehead. “I’ve got a good feeling about this life.”
“You guys are so cute together, it makes me want to vomit,” Kimiko yells from behind us, and then I hear a strange whooshing sound. I turn and look at her lying on a reclining beach chair next to Helen, both of them sunbathing.
“Did you just throw sand at us?” Alex asks Kimiko incredulously.
“Why, did it hit you?” When we both laugh and inform her it didn’t, she says, “Come closer.”
I watch as she picks up another handful of sand and throws it, and sure enough, it doesn’t even come close to hitting us.
“You’re being ridiculous.” Helen snorts, only to find herself with a face full of sand for the comment. Helen quickly joins in Kimiko’s antics, the two flinging sand back and forth.
