We Can't Keep Meeting Like This

by Rachel Lynn Solomon

She visibly exhales. “Okay. Excellent. Sorry. 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.”

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

“I guess I can’t argue with that,” I say as we head outside, Seattle flirting with dusk. “About wanting something to make the world feel less heavy.”

“Quinn. We’re all performing. Like, all the time. You think I act the same way around you as I do around Mom and Dad? Or that Whitney pole dances in front of her third graders?”

Maybe what I’ve been most scared of is really wanting the kind of love I’ve been around all my life and not receiving it in return.

“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.”

“I get it, now, why my attempt at a grand gesture didn’t work. You were right—that wasn’t me. It didn’t mean anything, me interrupting you at a wedding. I assumed I could show up and that would solve everything, but that’s not what a grand gesture is about, is it? It’s never one big gesture. It’s a series of small ways to let someone know you care about them. Maybe I’m not cut out for a cinematic kind of romance. But what I do know is that these two weeks have been torture. What I should have done—not just then, but weeks ago, months ago—is tell you how much you mean to me. How much I like you. All the ways I’m”—I break

all the ways I’m falling for you, from your baking to the sound of your laugh to the way I feel wholly myself with you in a way I’ve never let myself feel before.”