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Life's simple; you make choices and you don't look back. You just have to be ready to deal with the consequences.
It's a simple philosophy, really. A finite truth that you can plug almost any situation into and still have it be true. The first part of it had worked for Han for years. It helped him get rid of all the 'what if's' that popped up when things didn't go quite his way.
It drove me bat shit insane. It might work for Han Lue, but it didn't fit for me. While voluntarily strode arrogantly into suicidal business plans and bad ideas, I tried to avoid trouble. Not that it ever did me any good; like Han had once told me, I attract dangerous mobsters.
So the second part of our little philosophy was added. Consequences were something that Han and I couldn't ignore after our bad decisions caused us a lot of grief. It was kind of a given that whatever choice you made was going to have an outcome, but sometimes saying it out loud was a good reminder.
But was that really all there was to life? Choose your path and be prepared for what comes up, or don't live at all?
I used to think life could fit that philosophy, but then everything changed after a phone call. I got hit with a curve ball that hit me straight in the face and left me on my ass staring at the sky wondering exactly what happened. In a matter of weeks, everything bit of solidarity I possessed was ripped to shreds.
It wasn't all for nothing, I guess. What happiness we had lost, someone else had found. They rebuild their lives and their families; picked up the pieces of the life their carelessness destroyed years before.
I was haunted by the way they continued on. My life felt like it was over, why should they get to be happy? Why should they get to carry on like nothing had happened, when I felt like the sun wasn't coming up again?
I let my hand trail down the cold marble stone, traced the name, placed my palm over the final date that came up way before it should have. The cold seeped down into my bones; deep enough to reopen the wounds that were healing and drag the hurt back out to the surface.
I was shaken to the core, but I knew two absolute truths; the first being that life wasn't simple. It was twisted and complicated. The second was that none of this would have happened if Leticia Ortiz had actually died.