We Can't Keep Meeting Like This

by Rachel Lynn Solomon

my anxiety-brain is never content to stress over one thing when it could be stressing over five,

I have spent the past year convincing myself I despised you, I want to tell him. And I’d finally gotten good at it.

the thing about telling yourself you’re firmly not thinking about something guarantees it’s all you’re going to be thinking about.

if I was ever going to have the kind of romance he bundled into his grand gestures, I wanted it with him.

You know better. You’re so mature. Now I’m wondering if maybe those compliments took something away from me. Not anything dramatic, like my entire childhood, but the ability to try things out. To fail. To venture out on my own, not as one-fourth of the B+B Berkowitzes but as Quinn.

Oof

I kept hitting the lock button on my key fob and the car kept honking. And yet every time I put the keys in my pocket, I worried they’d brushed the wrong way against my hand or the fabric and accidentally unlocked the car. Cue unbreakable cycle.

Been there

“I never laugh more than when I’m around you. And you were—you are so damn cute.”

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.

“And sometimes the world is terrible, and love stories… They make it feel less heavy.”

Part of it was sweet, that gesture. At least, I think my heart fluttered, or whatever it is a heart is supposed to do in response to that kind of thing, before the dread set in.

I don’t need to do this to turn off my brain, I remind myself. I wasn’t searching for a distraction—he just happens to be one. I am in control.

Sometimes I’m so wrapped up in sensation that the person I’m with almost becomes faceless, but Tarek seems intent on reminding me that it’s him I’m here with.

It confirmed everything I thought was true about relationships: that they don’t give a fuck about who they hurt when they go up in flames.

With Tarek, my mind is quiet, and god that’s a nice feeling.

“How do you convince yourself that it’s worth it?” I ask, voice shaking. “Even knowing it might end in disaster someday?” “You take a chance,” she says simply, like it really is that easy to close your eyes and leap. “And you hope the other person takes the same one.”

Everyone’s been telling me I have time to fall in love, to discover who I want to spend the rest of my life with. But it’s not just a who. It’s a what, too.

“When you’re in love, whether that love is platonic or romantic, you get to be the fullest version of yourself, uncertainties and mistakes and all. You get to be that version of yourself—because it’s a privilege, really, to open up that much, even when it’s challenging. And it is going to be challenging sometimes, especially if you’re not used to being your whole self. Especially if your whole self is something of a mystery, even to you.”

But when you’re in love, you do wild things. That love isn’t always visible to the people outside of it, but you can feel it.