Living In The Present Book Novels & Stories

"Yes, of course, baby." As I climbed up the stairs and entered my room, I closed and locked the door behind me. Forcing myself into a calm state, I sat in the bed. The pictures taped to the walls felt like a constant reminder of the drastic change I had undergone. I was smiling in every one of them and what hurt was that it was genuine. All of that happiness was burned away by my fear. Then I thought. What was the use of living if I wasn't happy? Was life even worth it? What was the point of existing if I couldn't ever enjoy the moment? I sighed. It didn't matter anymore anyway. Life was meant to be lived. There was nothing more you could do than live in the present and hope it brought you g

"You walked through the gate and refused to sit down, and something in the house changed. Not immediately — it took months. But something shifted. The house became somewhere I actually lived rather than somewhere I defended." I thought about that. About what it meant to make a place livable for someone else by simply being genuinely present inside it yourself. Not through strategy or arrangement. Through stubbornness, through honesty, through the daily insistence on being exactly who you were in the space you were in. "I didn't know I was doing that," I said. "I know," he said. "That was the important part." My phone buzzed. Giulia: Come down. Your mother has made something extraordinary and

Why allow it escape and regret when she could avoid that and anymore regret in her life. In that moment, she made up her mind. Fuck regret and hesitation, starting this moment, she was no longer going to live her life on regret and hesitation, walking on egg shells and waiting for sudden salvation. Whatever happens in the future, then so be it, but right now… right now she was going to live in the present and give up the past. Starting with her very first step. “Hey Dar, do you want to go grab a cup of coffee sometime later in the day and maybe talk?”

Staying has matured into something that doesn’t need to be defended. It’s self-supporting now. We also talk about time—not as something slipping away, but as something we’re inhabiting well. We’re no longer racing toward milestones or fearing delays. We are present. Presence, sustained, becomes rhythm. This chapter touches on a subtle but powerful shift: we no longer ask, Is this enough? We ask, Is this sustainable? And sustainability feels like love’s quiet victory. There’s no grand gesture at the end of this chapter. No turning point. No revelation.

But living—messy, imperfect, shared living—that keeps going. Thank you for reading. Thank you for witnessing. And if you’re standing at the edge of your own next chapter— I hope you step into it unafraid. — Willa Roane

It seemed like she knew what was going inside me at that time. “He turned his face so that you can apply on his right side too.” She said and I stilled. I knew what she meant and the way my heart was beating at that time didn’t make me stop from taking a deep breath to never help for my good. Should I try to live my present? Should I try to make it happy knowing it won’t be permanent? Nothing’s permanent. Things move up and down. Hardships always come in life but there is something positive going by side too so that you can make yourself run with the life.

When he heard Damon calling me his wife, Noah seemed struck. He looked around in disbelief and ground out, “And so you let her live in a place like this?” Then, he came forward and grabbed me by the wrist. “Come. I’m taking you somewhere better to live.”

I said. "Which one?" he said. I thought about it. "No specific one," I said. "Just — the next one. Whatever it is." I looked at him. "I think we're in it now. The actual living of it. Not the building toward. The being in." He looked at me. "Yes," he said. "I think so too." I reached across the island and put my hand on his and the kitchen held us and the night held the kitchen and the city continued below, ordinary and ongoing and full of its own ten million separate stories, and ours was one of them, small and specific and entirely ours.

Or part of it. The thought should have felt satisfying. Instead it felt terrifying. *** Outside, rain began tapping softly against the building. The sound reached us faintly through the walls. A reminder that time continued moving. Night was coming. Daniel was waiting at home. The baby shifted lightly beneath my ribs. Just enough to remind me that life was there inside me. Life. Present tense. Not archives. Not Arthur. Not dead researchers. Life. I placed a hand against my stomach and then looked toward the shelves one more time.

"I am in love with you. In the full sense. The specific, present, ongoing, daily sense. Not as a historical fact or a recovered feeling or the restoration of something that existed before. As a current, active, first-person present tense reality." Don looked at him. He was holding the book but he was not seeing the book. He was very present in the room. "I am telling you this," Ernest said, "not because it requires a response. Not because I am asking for something in return or marking a transition or performing anything. I am telling you because it is true and because the sitting room and the November evening and the fire seemed like the right place for true things." Don looked at the fire.