This Time It's Real

by Ann Liang

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’m kidding, by the way,” he says evenly. “You’re still way hotter than my manager.”

Writing is simply a form of lying; I’ve always known this to be true. But to tell a good lie, a convincing lie, one that is both logically constructed and consistent and emotionally resonant—that takes time and effort. Attention to detail. And in this particular case, it also takes cooperation.

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.

“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.”

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.”

“That thing about … being there for me. I want to be that for you too.”

“Caz, I’d love to be inconvenienced by you. I wouldn’t mind being inconvenienced by you for the rest of my life.”