Named after the Iron and Wine album. Probably going to name the chapters after the songs, make some lyric references.
So, watch out for the lyrics of each song. And listen to them, of course! They're beautiful.

Passing Afternoon

There are times that walk from us like some passing afternoon. Times when we're rarely aware that our clock is ticking, and times like that will never last forever. Times we don't realize that 'too good to be true' is something real. Times when we are weak.

Times when we've mustered up the last bit of happiness inside us, and it all comes down in unreconcilable shrapnels.

I knew the end was inevitable. But I hadn't quite imagined the end to be like this. I hadn't even imagined having all this. I hadn't imagined ever achieving something so impossible. I hadn't imagined myself befriending her, loving her, or being by her side.

My obsession with her was beyond my notice, and before I had even realized, I'd fallen into a hole of a world that I judged too harshly to explore. And I knew that I belonged to her because she opened my mind to a world I never would have known about if it weren't for her existence – she opened my eyes, she opened my heart.

So it seems it's an endless cycle of what goes around, comes around. I screwed with the way of the world. I guess I deserved the screwing back. This is the price I had to pay for wanting what I should not have touched in the first place. I should not have wanted her so badly. I should have killed her when I had laid eyes on her the first time.

The pain wouldn't be as great.

Better I'd be labeled a murderer than endure this ache. Better she'd be dead and I'd never met her.

But in that split second, horror washed through me.

Where would I be without her? Where would everyone be without her? Jamie would have died, Walter would be in pain, the caves would be the same.

I would be the same.

It was too hard to make sense of the world, or make sense of what I felt – it was a mixture of anger, frustration, and pure devastation. I could already feel my tethers to my small happy world drift away, like our endless, numbered days. Everything that I felt, I could only pour it into five words.

"You. Are. Not. Leaving. Me."