The Break-Up Pact

by Emma Lord

When you have a sister, you don’t realize how much of the way you think, the way you exist, is framed not just by your own thoughts, but hers. Don’t realize how much of her colors the way you look at the world until she isn’t in it, and you’re staring at all the same people and places you’ve known your entire life and trying to recognize some new version of them, with the old colors gone.

The moment I realize it’s over Griffin, it stops me in my tracks. Levi takes a breath, and some of the tension goes with it. “I’ve never seen you cry like that.”

But I never wanted Levi back in my life because he thinks I’m broken. I wanted him back because he wanted to be back.

Back then it felt like the grief would swallow us whole. It’s different now, more like the waves at our feet—constantly ebbing and flowing, swollen one moment and quiet the next. A tide I can dip my feet into and let myself feel, or a swell that will hit me from behind when I least expect it.

The truth is, it’s almost impossible these days to meet people in a way that gives you time to be friends first, to feel each other out. Most people expect to know whether you’re attracted to them on the first or second date. But it’s never been like that for me. I’ve always had this strange feeling of not being able to keep up. I can’t run headfirst toward something without knowing there’s a solid foundation under my feet, and judging from all my friends’ stories about the dating out in the wild, I worry there aren’t a lot of people willing to wait for me to find it.

It made me appreciate that life is both too short and too long for being something you’re not.

“I don’t think anyone ever gets to be settled in life. I think you just find people who weather it with you.”

“Anytime I felt out of place, I would think of you. Something funny you might say. And then I didn’t feel so out of place anymore.”

“It’s that both of you were a little bit lost a few weeks ago. But neither of you pushed. Nudged, occasionally. But mostly just encouraged each other. Tried to make things easier, when you could.”

“Neither of you wants to change the other one or tell the other what to do. You just want each other to be happy. And that’s what love is supposed to look like.”