Out of Love

by Hazel Hayes

Everyone who comes to visit now remarks at how much cozier the place feels, and I wonder why I didn’t do this before.

that I would forever associate those films with this shit show of a relationship—that stung.

I had known he was capable of doing this. I was just too naive and too arrogant to believe he would do it to me. We all think we’ll be different, don’t we?

should eat something. I need to eat. I need to call my mother. What will I tell her? What the hell is that whistling sound?

Once kids come along, loving them is not a choice; it’s an inevitability. And these aren’t even my kids!

I see that he’s commented on one photo. “BEST DAY EVER!!” it says. All caps. Two exclamation marks. I notice I am feeling incandescent rage.

So real.

I tell her all the things we’re afraid to tell our mothers about our partners in case they tell us what we don’t want to hear but already know: that we should leave them.

She loves me. For no other reason than she does. And there’s something heart-wrenchingly pure about that.

“Well, I’m in Paris,” I said, “and I’ve just been walking around a World War II museum.” “Christ no, absolutely not,” said Ciara. “Writers are far too sensitive altogether for that sort of thing. You’re to leave that place immediately and go get a big, buttery pastry and some hot chocolate.”

After lunch, Joanne returns with a cup of raspberry leaf tea, which she hands over with a knowing look. “This helped me,” she says, “when I had the flu.” I watch Maya sipping her tea and I wonder how many women carry the memory of a child nobody knew but them. How many women grieve alone and in silence, without sympathy or ceremony, too afraid or ashamed to speak of their loss? And why should they feel ashamed, or afraid, or alone? When there are so many others, when this is so common, why isn’t it something we talk about? And when it happened to my friend, why didn’t I know what to do?

“Thank you,” I say, and when I look back out the window, she’s gone.

I am my mother’s daughter. For better or for worse. I gravitate toward water when I’m sad. I’m always cold (except when I’m too warm). I can’t drink milk from a cup or eat soup with a dessert spoon. Driving feels like freedom.

the thing I remember most clearly was an overwhelming desire to go home. I wanted to be back in my own bed. I wanted to hear my mother snoring through the wall. I wanted my duvet, my toothpaste, my glow-in-the-dark stars above me, and the familiar sound of the creaky floorboards below me.

And suddenly, breaking up with him seemed drastic and entirely unnecessary. I missed him. I wanted to be with him. So I called him to explain. Cold feet, I said. Nerves, I said. A little anxiety maybe. It might even have been PMS!

Real

try to let it pass. You are not broken just because your brain says so.”

“I’m serious!” I say, throwing a cushion at him. “Tom is so blinded by who he wants Summer to be that he can’t see who she really is. Watch it again in a few years and I guarantee your perspective will change.” “But the story won’t change.” “It doesn’t have to,” I say, “because you will.”