Natural Selection

by Elin Hilderbrand

JP first told Sophia he loved her a week after they’d met.

🚩

It was an affliction of the millennial male: the utter downplaying of emotion. Everything was casual; in a world where their next hookup was only a swipe away, everyone was disposable.

Sophia nods along like she agrees, though when she replays the scene in the terminal, she gets the feeling that JP was trying to get rid of her. Sophia isn’t family, and now she understands that she and JP aren’t a couple, at least not the kind of fully realized couple she wants to be.

It is not the strongest of the species that survive, and it is not the most intelligent. It is the one most adaptable to change.

Everything is silent except for the sound of Sophia’s breath through the snorkel and the light slap of waves against her skull. She pulls herself through the water, trying to catch up with the others. And yet it feels good to relax and float, to let the fish dart around her.

Sophia wonders if it’s possible to miss people she has only known for a week. She thinks she might.

But Sophia realizes that Debbie Satterwhite will stay with JP because she’s unable to adapt to life without him.

she will remember the moment this picture was taken—and she will marvel at her own evolution.