This Time It's Real

by Ann Liang

It’s not like his features are inhumanly perfect or anything, but together, they just work. Still, I get the sense that he’s every bit as aware of this as all his adoring fans, which kind of ruins it.

Summary of why pretty boys simply dont work sometimes

Sometimes I think loneliness is my default setting.

Words just move me. A beautiful sentence will sneak under my skin and crack me open the way a phrase of music might, or a climactic scene from a movie.

Generally speaking, I try to stay off social media as much as possible. Every new post from an old friend serves as a painful reminder: This is their life now, without you. This is their group of best friends, their boyfriend they didn’t tell you about; this is them moving on completely. This is proof that when they said they’ll remember you, stay in touch with you, they were lying. Sometimes I’ll stare at an Instagram photo of someone I was close to in London, New Zealand, Singapore, at their fresh-dyed hair and wide grin and the kind of cropped jacket they wouldn’t have been caught dead wearing years ago, and get the odd sense of seeing a total stranger on my feed.

I guess my point is that I do believe in love. Really. I’m just not convinced that kind of love could ever happen to me.

I’ve been through this enough times with old friends from old schools to know how this tends to go. How those daily texts turn into weekly updates turn into sporadic once-a-month catch-ups turn into nothing.

And this, I think, is my ultimate fatal flaw. Missing people who don’t miss me back. Clinging on to strands of string that shouldn’t mean half as much as they do. It takes so little for me to love someone, yet so long for me to move on.

Oh my.

just—don’t like inconveniencing people.” His mother jabs her chopsticks at him again, but it’s a gesture performed with exasperated affection. “Sha erzi, what do you know? When you care about someone, you want to be inconvenienced—you wouldn’t mind being inconvenienced by them every day for the rest of your life. That’s what love is. That’s all love really is.”

“It’s not funny,” I say, even though I’m laughing a little too, my cheeks damp and my nose running, the sound rattling in my throat. I’m basically the definition of an emotional mess right now. “Of course it isn’t,” Caz agrees. He wipes my cheeks again, then brings his other hand gently to the back of my head, consoling me as if I’m still just a kid.

Imagine thinking a guy doing this to you isn't into you...bye

I tense. The words are there, crowded in the back of my throat. I could tell him. Be honest for once in my life. Be brave. My heart starts drumming louder, so loud I’m certain he’ll hear it. I breathe in. Tell him. But all that comes out is: “Of course not.”

Im going to slap her

hi, it’s me again sorry for the spam lol but I’m lowkey really worried about u? Are u at home rn?? Then, realizing I’ve just admitted in the written word that I’m concerned about his well-being, I quickly add: obviously it’d look really bad if my supposed bf just died of a fever one cold friday afternoon like some 16th century Victorian housewife … i mean if you’re going to be in mortal peril, at least let it be bc of a dramatic horse-riding accident or smth

ARE YOU DUMB???

Angry that even after all this time, he’s still too obsessed with putting up a front to ask for help when he needs it.

Well youre a compulsive liar so

Even though the sun has already disappeared below the horizon, leaving the air comfortably cool, I’m sweating by the time I arrive outside Caz’s apartment.

This is giving gu ran and jiang jia that one time AAAA

He only seems to relax when I scoot forward, bring my hand lower down to his arm, and tell him what I’ve wanted someone to say to me for as long as I can remember. What I’m still waiting for someone to say. “I’m not going anywhere. I promise.”

And it’s all so corny and unexpected and ridiculously ill-timed that I can only gape at the poster, at his beautiful, familiar face, the features I’ve studied in such close proximity in private, blown up for everyone to admire. Something hot and painful wraps around my heart and squeezes. This poster shouldn’t be here.

Dating a celebrity must be hard

Romantic breakups are romanticized constantly, talked about everywhere by everyone, but platonic breakups are swept to the side, suffered in secret, as if they’re somehow less important.

“Most sincere things feel at least a little embarrassing. It’s part of our defense mechanisms. Our heart’s way of protecting us from potential hurt.”

“Whether they’re real or not—all your words have consequences. You can’t just take them back.”

Preach caz

But insincerity is easy. Bullshitting your way through things is easy. It doesn’t require any emotional attachment; there aren’t any stakes involved. It can’t hurt you, because you never believed in any of it anyway. But telling the truth—saying exactly what you mean, how you feel, to the people you care about most … That’s one of the hardest things in the world. Because you have to trust them. Trust that they won’t hurt you, even when they have the power to.

This is what I need to get into my head. Hope is not weakness. It’s oxygen, a crack in the window, the pale slash of moonlight across a dusty room. Maybe I should start learning to invite it in.

But certain joys, I’m discovering, are worth the potential pain.