You, Again

by Kate Goldbeck

I don’t participate in the romance industrial complex.”

when friends become people you squeeze into your schedule because your world revolves around your significant other.

Her name sounds different now when he says it—like things have already been altered on a molecular level.

Because some random Hinge match will never look at her in this specific way that breaks her heart and melts it back together in the space of one breath.

There aren’t any more layers to strip away. Just the slightest push and she’ll bruise.

This goes wrong one hundred percent of the time—until the one time it doesn’t.

“I want everything and I’ll give you everything.”

He’d just sat on the sofa with his slowly dissipating fury, like an inflatable mattress with the tiniest leak—every

How he feels Ari’s absence every single day. How she’s taken root in some deep, inaccessible place that can’t be edited or overwritten—just managed.

like his whole life

has been a party where everyone else is enjoying themselves while he sulks in the corner.

Maybe being in love is knowing that you’d live it all over again—every part, suffering included—to get right back to the place where you’re standing.

“I’m not getting rid of you.”

“If we met in some other timeline, I

couldn’t have gone back to my life like nothing happened. You would have fucking ruined me.”

Maybe there’s no such thing as soulmates. Maybe there are only people who trust each other enough to begin something without being assured of the end.

Romcoms aren’t simply humorous stories about two people falling in love. They’re all, in essence, about people who become better versions of themselves in the course of falling in love.