We Can't Keep Meeting Like This

by Rachel Lynn Solomon

Tiffany Schumacher’s wedding,

me if i married mick schumacher

The idea of being trapped in this for the rest of my life sends me into a spiral so smothering, I’m not sure how I’d be able to climb out.

And an eight-year-old Quinn up in a tower, wondering how two people in the business of happily ever after could have a kid who felt this lonely.

I hate myself while I’m doing it, but I don’t hate the way he fists a hand in my hair.

When Noelle tells a joke, Julia throws back her head to laugh, and every time, Noelle twists her mouth to one side, like she’s trying not to let on how much she enjoys Julia’s laugh. It’s the kind of thing that could almost make me believe in romance.

It’s something I think about only when someone else’s Jewishness—namely, Gabe’s, and I guess Asher’s now too—is so clearly on display in front of me, and it makes me worry sometimes that I’m not quite Jewish enough.

cultural identiry crisis for americanized children check

You remember that vision board I had.” “The one that was ninety percent Chris Evans? How could I forget?”

This doesn’t get a laugh. Damn. Are all priests this tough a crowd? Fleabag betrayed me.

HOT PRIEST REFERENCE ARE U KIDDIN

The van used to have the vanity license plate MTRMNY, for matrimony, until I pointed out to my mom that it looked like we were hard-core Mitt Romney supporters. She ripped it off with the kind of superhuman strength usually reserved for a parent whose kid is pinned underneath a car.

If there are tiny animals on it, I will buy it.

When we’ve collected enough food to fill our canvas tote bags, we nab the last empty table at one end of the market.

farmers markets and canvas tote bags = peak gay

I have really bad social anxiety. Like… do you ever get home from hanging out with people and immediately start analyzing everything you did and convincing yourself all of it was completely wrong? I’m positive at any given time that eighty percent of my friends don’t actually like me.”

We match, the garish green of his tie and my dress. The wave of his hair and the swooshing thing my stomach is doing.

Eczema can be triggered by anxiety, and if that’s the case with these flare-ups, I wonder what’s been making him anxious.

i've had eczema my whole life...why has no one ever told me this???

“You look nice, by the way.” His mouth is close to my ear, as though, even with the noise all around us, he only wants me to hear. “Not sure if I mentioned that.” He definitely did not. My lizard brain would remember.

Everyone must realize how lovely their friends look in the light of a firepit on a beach at midnight. It’s one of the hallmarks of friendship, I’m pretty sure.

“Fine. Maybe I am a little jealous. I’m jealous because you and I used to have that. And now what we have—it’s weird, Tarek, and I don’t like it. I don’t like it at all.”

And—” A pause. A softening of his mouth. “Being away from you… was harder than I thought it would be.”

“Quinn, I was crushing on you last summer too,” he says. “The boat I rented—that was for you.”

“I’m eighty percent sweat right now,” I inform him. “Ten percent ginger ale, and ten percent Whitney Houston songs.”

He lifts his eyebrows at my strange greeting—which, fair—and one corner of his mouth turns upward. I am fine. I am great. I am the coolest of cucumbers. I have taken the chillest of pills.

and before I do, he pulls me close one more time and kisses my forehead. A soft sweep of his lips. Somehow, that’s the one that feels the most dangerous.

“Yeah? Tell me,” he says, and there’s a look of such genuine interest on his face that makes my heart do something strange and foreign in my chest.

When I was little, I’d see couples like that, the kinds who were all over each other and who didn’t care who saw, and I wanted so badly for someone to love me like that someday.

I don’t trust my brain and I don’t have the right words, so I just hold him tighter.

I fight the urge to hurl myself out of the car Lady Bird style.

It feels like only the two of us exist up here in the tower, and I’m thinking I would be okay if we never left.

I could really fall for him. I’m convinced of that now, and it would be a catastrophe.

“I love you,” I say quietly, and it’s not enough, and I’m not scared anymore, so I say it again. Louder this time. “I love you, Tarek.”