Tilt: A Novel

by Emma Pattee

But it’s not the beginning; it’s the end. It’s just coming towards me in slow motion, so I can’t make out the shape of it.

We eat frozen pizza, change the Brita filter, spend hours on the couch looking at Instagram while watching Netflix, go play trivia at the neighborhood pub with another couple we don’t like that much but are too lazy to break up with.

The short version is that nobody told us (us being me and your father and everyone who grew up watching Britney Spears and LeBron James explode from nothingness into white-hot stars) that it is worse to try and fail than to not try at all. Because when you don’t try, you can always imagine the life you could have lived.

At the end of the world, the men with the guns make the rules. We’ve known this forever.

“Should you really…?” He holds his hands out. This is a thing people do to show they’re not holding weapons, Bean. But this doesn’t mean they’re unarmed. The weapons are just hidden.

Your father and I probably are, if not on the path to breaking up, at least able to see the path to breaking up from where we’re standing. Like if we both ran full speed ahead, it wouldn’t take long before we were broken up. Not something I ever thought I’d think. But standing on the street in the dark, it seems so obvious.