This Used to be Easier

by Katia Rose

“Yeah, babe, I don’t think that’s gonna fly with the guy I have coming over tonight. Like, ‘Hello, Derek. Welcome to my place. Don’t mind the homeless lesbian hiding under the bed in existential terror. Would you like a drink?’”

There is absolutely no chance I’m going to fall in love in Chapel Creek.

That’s when I realized there was a lot about Connie Shipley you didn’t see until you got close.

That’s when I realized I wanted to be close to her—as close as I could be, for as long as she’d let me. I didn’t figure out what that meant until years later, but I think even

then, I already knew I was going to give Connie my whole heart some day. I just di...

She was my favourite person in the entire world, and now she’s just a ghost that flickers out of view every time I spot her.

I want to say it was good to see her. I want to say far more than that. I want to ask what she’s doing here, how long she’s in town, how her family’s been, if she’s finished her degree, what she’s doing next. I want answers to all the questions I’ve lain awake wondering about on more nights than I’d ever admit to anyone. She’s not the girl I knew, but that girl is still in there somewhere, and as I stand here in this grocery store with what feels like miles of space and a couple watermelons between us, I ache to find her again.

I pull down the visor to block the harsh rays of afternoon light beaming straight into my eyes, but the sun still feels too bright, too clear, too impossible to ignore. Just like Meg every time I close my eyes and see her.

“I didn’t want to lose her. I kissed her because I felt like I was losing her, and for some reason, I thought that would pull her back.

She was always doing that: planting these little moments of kindness like tiny seeds for the universe to watch over and grow. Being around her was like walking in a garden. Every few feet, there’d be some new bloom to stop and marvel over, some perfect spray of stems and petals with just a touch of the wilderness that always seemed to cling to her like a perfume.

She makes stories spark to life in my head. She’s a poem unfolding in front of me. She makes me want to write. I haven’t felt that pull, that magnetic tug to get my thoughts down on a page, in a long, long time.

I didn’t think I could still feel this way. I don’t want to feel this way. Last time, it ruined everything. It made it all so complicated. I couldn’t take it, and just when I finally realized what she meant to me, she was gone.

I’m the one who started calling her Meg. Emmett got in on the habit too, but I’m the one who started it in the seventh grade. Everyone else still called her Megan.

I don’t know what makes my heart beat faster: how good she looks or how much I’m noticing it.

The rest of me is caught up in her like a starving plane crash survivor stumbling toward a mirage.

She didn’t give that name to everyone because it meant nothing; she made it part of her because it meant more than all the pieces of herself she left behind.

“Yeah. Got it. Should I wait for your ride with you?” She shakes her head. “I’m okay on my own.” You’re not, though. I can tell from the way she’s shaking. She’s freaking out about something, but if she won’t let me help her, I can’t fight my way in.

She throws her hands up in a ‘silly me’ gesture as she laughs. She is pretty adorable and a great person; sometimes I just wish she saw me more. She spends so much time trying to give me what she thinks I want instead of listening to what I actually do want.

My mother has been after me to apologize ever since, but for once, I haven’t given in.

“Well there’s a metaphor,” I mutter as I scroll through the email. “She was a crusty old nest full of dead baby birds.”

I drop the Birkenstocks onto the marbled grey floor tiles and step into them like I’m taking a stand. Like I’m taking my place. “I don’t really care how long it’s been,” I tell him with more conviction than I’ve felt about anything in years. “Meg will always be my best friend.”

I felt awake, and I’m so damn tired of sleeping.

I wait for my own panic to hit. I brace for the first adrenaline spikes of anxiety to start shooting through my body, but nothing comes. The more Meg starts to fall apart, the calmer I become. I’m not paying attention to all the people here, all the eyes that might be watching us, all the uncertainty

and dread of the situation. She needs me, so I’m paying attention to her. It’s simple. Easy. Just like my decision to get in the car.

I hold on like her hand is the most precious thing in the world.

Emmett’s not sick, though. As Meg likes to say, he’s just a kid with an extra twenty-first chromosome, and he, ‘deserves everything other kids do, like patience, love, and a kick in the ass when he’s being a turd.’

“You get older, and you realize it’s never actually like that. It’s never so cut and dry. All the coins you thought had

only one side are really, like...decahedrons, and you don’t even know which side you’re on anymore.”

I don’t think. I get out of the boat as fast as I can manage and kneel down in front of her. I cup her face with both my hands before either of us can get another word out. “Meg, I felt gross because that girl wasn’t you. You’re what I wanted. You’re what I was looking for, and it took me so long to admit it that I lost you.”

She said my name and the humming got so loud I left her on the porch with threads of me woven around her ankles. I took the stairs up to my desk two at a time and I waited. When you’re born with a beehive in your brain all you can do is sit and part your lips and let the honey drip from your mouth

onto the page.

Four years after I should have done it for the first time, I’m going to ask Meg out.

Tonight is about her. Tonight is about us.

I can’t look away. I can’t even breathe. All I can do is stand there watching her as I try and fail to remember what life must have been like before I saw Connie Shipley waiting for me in a white dress. I know, right then and there, that something about my life will never be the same.

she says with a smirk that should be known as the eighth deadly sin.

We just fit, whether it’s as innocent as the way her hands slips perfectly into mine, or as electrifying as the way our bodies seem to know exactly what they need from each other before we even have to think about it. She feels like home in a way no one else ever has.

With Meg, I glow. I glow like a hearth on a dark night, like each flutter of her fingers across my skin is lighting me up and guiding me home.

Everything else disappears: the lake, the boat, the half-finished glasses of wine. The past week disappears. The past four years all fade. It’s just us, finally, the way we’re meant to be.

I stare at her back, that Disney princess perfect brown hair tumbling down over her crisp white shirt, and I see a girl

caught up in a battle I desperately want her to win. Not just for my sake. I want her to win for her. It’s clearer to me than ever: it’s not that she can’t handle life. It’s not that she isn’t ready to leave this place and find herself just like I did. It’s that this town and everyone in it are wrapped around her brain like chains she can’t break.

I want to pry them off with my bare hands, but I think they might be the kind of chains you ...

When I asked for time to think, I didn’t realize I was really getting time to see. I stood in front of my mirrored closet doors this morning for five whole minutes, and when I asked the girl I was looking at if she liked herself, I didn’t know the answer.

What am I doing? More images hit, along with feelings that make my stomach twist with a violent dread. The fear. The panic. The desperate scramble to escape the numbness as my own body got the best of me, took away my very breath and left me fighting just to stay conscious. I’m still fighting. I’m acting on instinct, on survival skills, doing anything to mitigate the threat. He’s the threat. He’s the threat, so I went with him. I did what was expected of me because that’s the only way I’ve ever been able to handle the threat before. I’m on autopilot, and this is where it leads me.

I don’t blame her for yesterday. I know she means what she said in her email, but I don’t know how to trust that I won’t keep getting left behind again and again and again.

I take a deep breath and remind myself to be patient, to focus on what I can control, not what I can’t. I can’t control their reactions, but I can keep myself under control when I hear them.

She’s kept her promise: no matter what, she always comes back to me.