The Echo Between Beginnings and Endings

(or, Why Jake Opens the Door and Calvin Closes It)

One of the things I’ve always loved about literature — both as a reader and as a writer — is when two passages separated by hundreds of pages somehow end up speaking to each other. When you reach the final words of a book and realize they’ve been whispering to the first words all along, it creates a sense of symmetry, almost inevitability.

That was always my intention with The Wake of Expectations and A Pleasant Fiction. What I didn’t fully appreciate until much later, though, was just how powerful that symmetry would become because of who was speaking in each case — and who was actually writing the words.

Jake’s Voice, Cosmo’s Hand

If you’ve been following the blog for a while, you already know about my friend, Cosmo. He wrote the forewords for both books, speaking in the voice of Jake — the character loosely inspired by him.

Jake has always been larger-than-life on the page: magnetic, complicated, and often contradictory. It felt right to open Wake with his voice because so much of Calvin’s early journey exists within the orbit of Jake’s gravitational pull. And Cosmo, writing as Jake, captured something essential about identity, time, and selfhood — a kind of declarative manifesto:

“No matter what you do, or what you did, the common factor is you. Time is elastic. Perception is subjective. You are you. You are the same you you ever were. You are the only you you will ever be. The courage that led to wonders and stumbles alike—the open-heartedness that allowed for new friendships, and misplaced confidences—it seems distant in both its admirable and idiotic qualities, but it’s yours. Still, it’s yours.”

It’s bold. Defiant, even. A statement of ownership — of identity, of memory, of all the beautiful and regrettable choices that make us who we are.

Calvin’s Voice, My Hand

Then, nearly six hundred pages and a second book later, A Pleasant Fiction closes with a passage that echoes that same truth but refracts it through a different lens — one that belongs fully to Calvin:

“People can love you for who you are or who they believe you’re going to be. Either way, it’s still you. Because even as we evolve, we’re still everything we ever were. Yes, we change, and we grow. But that person that you were, that piece of your history—it’s still a building block upon which the person that you are today is formed; just as who you are today is the springboard for who you will be tomorrow. Who you were, who you are, who you will be—they’re all parts of a whole. Like the block universe, existing as one, but experienced in slices, each one a necessary step in the journey that makes you…you.”

Where Jake’s words are declarative, Calvin’s are contemplative. Where Jake plants a flag, Calvin takes a breath. The philosophy is the same, but the energy has shifted — it’s no longer a statement from the outside looking in, but an understanding Calvin earns for himself.

Same Truth, Different Angles

That’s what I find so beautiful about the echo between these two passages:

• The Foreword of Wake comes from Jake’s perspective, written by Cosmo — an external voice framing Calvin’s story.

• The Ending of APF comes from Calvin’s perspective, written by me — an internal realization after everything he’s endured.

Same truth. Different angles.

It’s a reminder that understanding isn’t just about the words we hear — it’s about the life we live between them. Calvin couldn’t have written the Foreword; he wasn’t ready yet. By the time we reach the end of A Pleasant Fiction, he finally is.

Closing the Loop

For readers who’ve made the full journey through both books, I hope this creates a quiet sense of completion. The duology begins with a voice outside of Calvin — Jake defining the stage — and ends with Calvin reclaiming that truth for himself.

It’s circular, but not repetitive. More like an infinity loop: past feeding into present, present informing future, all of it existing at once. A reminder, for Calvin and for all of us, that who we’ve been, who we are, and who we’ll become are inseparable.

I didn’t write the first words of this journey. Cosmo did, in Jake’s voice. But I did write the last ones. And together, they form the arc I always hoped these books would trace: a movement from framing to understanding, from being defined to self-definition.

The beginning and the ending aren’t just connected. They’re the same truth, seen from opposite shores.

Javier

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