She Gets the Girl

by Rachael Lippincott

I keep scrolling, until the screen bounces as I hit the bottom of the list. There’s no one I can call at 1:00 a.m. Nowhere I can go except to the Greyhound station to sit and wait for seven hours for the bus to come. You’re alone. Natalie’s face pops into my head, the pointed look in her eyes clouding my vision.

When you spend as much time as I have worrying about what to say and how to say it and it still comes out wrong, it just becomes easier to not say anything at all.

If you spend your life focusing on the never, then you’ll never actually do anything. You gotta cut it out with that self-pity shit. You think you’re this little victim that no one is ever going to like, but how is anyone supposed to get the chance if you won’t even speak above a whisper?”

“Well, you clearly don’t feel as strongly toward your girlfriend, or else you wouldn’t be flirting around with Cora at a party.” I shrug. “If you felt the way I do, you wouldn’t have even wanted to, because you’d already have everything you could ever want.” She watches me silently for a few seconds, the look on her face shifting from anger to hurt to indifference. “Okay, maybe you’re right,” she says finally, her face hollowing as she bites the inside of her cheek. I can tell it’s not really what she wants to say, but she moves on anyway.

There’s something reassuring in books and stories older than you are. Still talked about long after they’ve been written and long after their writers die. When the world around you is on fire, there’s a certain kind of comfort in that.

Maybe she’s so good at helping me show myself to the world because she’s put up a front of her own.

There’s an unexpected feeling in my chest as she gives Molly a small smile before taking the bench. I rub the spot thoughtfully. Probably shouldn’t have eaten three cookies on my way here.

Some things have to fall apart because they don’t belong together, but some things belong so much they could never break.”

“Like I’m so in love with you, Molly Parker.” And… it feels right. The words I’ve been so scared of for years suddenly come easier than I ever thought possible. “I love you too, Alex Blackwood,” she says, and it’s all the things I never knew an “I love you” could be, meeting me exactly as I am, without a single condition.