Disclaimer: All rights go to John Green, author of the Fault in Our Stars, and not me.
Enjoy! :) x
It had been exactly six months since Augustus died, and Hazel had begun to wonder if she was ever going to move on.
She didn't think so. Like, how could she move on when she started tearing up whenever anyone mentioned Gus's name? How could she move on when she spent a sizable bit of her abundant free time listening to his voicemail? (Nobody had taken his number yet, thank heavens.)
It wasn't like she was depressed or anything. She still watched America's Next Top Model. She still went out with Kaitlyn and kept in touch with Lidewij and participated actively in the many celebrations her mother organized. Augustus's death was more like a shadow than a fog. Like a giant cloud in an otherwise sunny day.
Of course, Hazel still cried in the middle of the night, when it was dark and she could see nothing but his smiling face. She always cried herself back to sleep. She always cried until her lungs hurt...the way they hurt when he made her laugh too hard. And of course, thinking about laughing with him would bring on a whole new round of sobbing.
On the weekends, she would call Isaac and they'd go hang out together at Funky Bones. His company almost always made her happy. Maybe it was because she could see a touch of Augustus in him. She hadn't figured it out yet.
But sometimes, they wouldn't go to Funky Bones. They'd go to Augustus's grave and put a bouquet of bright orange tulips there. Hazel would trace the letters of his name on the stone and Isaac would mumble softly about how Gus wasn't all gone, that he was somewhere around in the capital-S Something he believed in. Isaac always said that, and after saying that, he would pause for a moment. Then he would tell her that he really did believe it, because what Augustus said was almost always true.
And when Isaac was done, Hazel would gaze at the letters she had been tracing. She looked at them as if she could see Augustus's face in the stone. And she'd say, very simply, "I like my choices."