How to End a Love Story

by Yulin Kuang

killer of my sister.

Helen has never been cool enough to be “a music person.” She prefers leaving that up to strangers on the internet who’ve experienced the same specific soundtrack-worthy moments in life—“cozy October morning in the kitchen” or “driving toward my uncertain future”—and hoping they’ll tell her exactly what songs would bring those feelings out best, like a purple scarf for green eyes.

You’re too good-looking to be a writer, Helen immediately wants to say out loud. You didn’t have an awkward teen phase that forced you to develop a rich interior life to compensate.

She sometimes wonders if she’s incapable of loving the way other people do, and if the ones closest to her can sense it.

Helen tries to remind herself that her least favorite thing about herself is how much she cares about what other people think. And that they probably aren’t thinking about her anyway.

“I can only take so much, Helen,” he murmurs. “I’m just a man.”

“I need to get a coatrack,”

“Helen,” he says firmly. “If you come in here, I’m gonna fuck you on my bed until you forget your name, my name, and whatever very smart and important questions you have brewing in that beautiful head of yours because you can’t think straight from how many times I’ve made you come. So if you don’t want that, you should stay . . . put.”

tattoo

You can still get hurt with your eyes wide open.”

This is what it would feel like to love Grant Shepard, she thinks, and it aches.

Grant chuckles and she thinks, I would keep this feeling, if I could.

Good in a room: he’ll win you over and convince you just how much you need him, when really, he’s the one who needs you.

The kind of ending where someone else sees the best and worst of me and loves me back. We’d be happy together, we’d be sad together, we’d be everything together. And when it’s all over and we’ve reached another ending, my ashes would be scattered over the tree that grows from his body because till death do us part wouldn’t be enough, because I’d need more than one brief eternity with him.

“You don’t have to be completely healed to be everything I want. To be mine. I love every part of you, you silly, infuriating woman. I love the parts of you I haven’t even met yet.”