Jessica Mousaed

Jessica,

You love books, so you already know what it feels like when a story gets inside you and rearranges something. When you finish the last page and sit there for a moment because the world outside looks slightly different than it did before you started. When a book changes the way you read everything that comes after it.

That is what knowing you has been like for me.

You got inside something. Quietly, the way good books do, not by demanding your attention but by being so genuinely themselves that you couldn't look away. And somewhere between the first chapter and wherever we are now, you rearranged something in me that I wouldn't want put back.

I think about the conversations we've had, the ones that started about something small and ended up somewhere neither of us expected, and I think: this is what the best books do. They take you somewhere you didn't know you needed to go.

You have taken me there more times than I've told you.

What I want you to know is this: you are not a side character in anyone's story. You are the kind of person a writer would spend chapters on. Complicated and warm and honest in a way that doesn't flinch. The kind of character readers mourn when the book ends.

I am lucky to have you in mine.

Thank you for every conversation, every moment of honesty, every time you made me feel less alone in my own head. That is what the best books do too.

With so much love,

Elia