The Thing About Tilly

by G. Benson

It only took Evie six months to fall in love with her. It happened accidentally. As all true things are wont to do.

So she had no excuse: she knew the jokes. The in-love-with-your-best-friend cliché. It never went well. So, she buried it.

But most of all, she’d promised Evie. A stupid, immature promise you make at nineteen when your friend was sad and looking at you with wide, wet eyes. Because people hurt people, it was what they did. Inevitable. They made each other happy and they tore each other apart. If you were lucky, you did more of the former than the latter.

But then he saw the pink in Evie’s cheeks when Tilly stood close, or the way, so rarely, Tilly’s gaze followed Evie as she walked out of a room. It was all so subtle.

Barely there. Something shuttered within themselves, only glimpses available when the light hit them just right. The sight of it had made something inside him warm, almost glow. They were, he could see, so obviously falling in love with each other, moment by moment, that he couldn’t be sure they were even aware.

Except maybe she had given the largest piece away ten years ago in a shared room at university.

Being in love with Evie was like breathing. It was something essential that she simply did all the time, without conscious thought.

Evie was solid and still, the roots of a tree, embedded and deep. Tilly was all wild leaves that blew about in the wind and only sometimes found themselves whipping back to where they came from.

You can have a person in front of you for over a decade and your expectations make you miss that they’re actually not meeting them anymore and are going their own way. Who knew?

Repairing something you’d broken, accidentally or not, took a lot of time. Especially if you realised that, as you started to fix it, there were other little holes—other tears and slip-ups that your actions had caused without you noticing, too focused were you on the big, visible mistake.

But more than how she made it race, it was how Evie made it slow. How they could be calm and easy together.