The Seven Year Slip

by Ashley Poston

My aunt used to say, if you don’t fit in, fool everyone until you do. She also said to keep your passport renewed, to pair red wines with meats and whites with everything else, to find work that is fulfilling to your heart as well as your head, to never forget to fall in love whenever you can find it because love is nothing if not a matter of timing, and to chase the moon. Always, always chase the moon.

kept him at arm’s length because at least there he wouldn’t be able to see how broken I was. I could keep lying. I could keep pretending I was fine—because I was fine. I had to be. I didn’t like people worrying about me when they had so many other things to worry about. That was my allure, right? That you didn’t need to worry about Clementine West. She always figured it out.

They’d seen the worst, rawest parts of me and they didn’t delete my number from their phones. I wasn’t always the easiest person to get along with, and the fact that they stuck around meant more to me than I could ever actually admit,

I loved how a book, a story, a set of words in a sentence organized in the exact right order, made you miss places you’ve never visited, and people you’ve never met.

My aunt used to say that you could live somewhere your entire life and still find things to surprise you.

She grew and she changed and she became someone new, as time always made you.

‘Travel is about the gorgeous feeling of teetering in the unknown.’ ”

after I no longer had a heart for impossible things.

“A few of my friends would argue that you can’t be uncultured in food because the idea of cultured food derives from the gentrification of recipes in general.”

“Your life changed because of some French fries?” He barked a laugh, bright and golden, and said to my utter surprise, “The things you least expect usually do.”

That’s what a perfect meal is—something that you don’t just eat, but something you enjoy. With friends, and family—maybe even with strangers. It’s an experience. You taste it, you savor it, you feel the story told through the intricate flavors that play out across your tongue . . . it’s magical. Romantic.”

a little softer, a little gentler, because my aunt was a lot of things—loving and adventurous, but also messy and human. Something I never really recognized until the very end.

“New things are scary.” “They don’t have to be.” “How are they not?” “Because some of my favorite things I haven’t even done yet.” “Then how do you know they’re your favorite?”

can plan everything in your life, and you’ll still be taken by surprise.

There was something just so reassuring about books. They had beginnings and middles and ends, and if you didn’t like a part, you could skip to the next chapter. If someone died, you could stop on the last page before, and they’d live on forever. Happy endings were definite, evils defeated, and the good lasted forever.

And I tried—I wanted to cry. I waited for the stinging in my eyes to turn into salty tears, but it never did. Because I didn’t cry over someone I barely knew. That would be silly, and Clementine West was not that. She did not fall in love. And she wouldn’t start now.

distraction,” he added in embarrassment. “There’s someone else?” He nodded. “And you?” “Yeah, but the timing was all wrong.” He laughed. “That’s always the most tragic, isn’t it?”

The thing no one tells you, the thing you have to find out on your own through firsthand experience, is that there is never an easy way to talk about suicide. There never was, there never will be. If ever someone asked, I’d tell them the truth: that my aunt was amazing, that she lived widely, that she had the most infectious laugh, that she knew four different languages and had a passport cluttered with so many stamps from different countries that it’d make any world traveler green with envy, and that she had a monster over her shoulder she didn’t let anyone else see. And, in turn, that monster didn’t let her see all the things she would miss. The birthdays. The anniversaries. The sunsets. The bodega on the corner that had turned into that shiplap furniture store. The monster closed her eyes to all the pain she would give the people she left—the terrible weight of missing her and trying not to blame her all in the same breath. And then you started blaming yourself. Could you have done something, been that voice that finally broke through? If you loved them more, if you paid more attention, if you were better, if you only asked, if you even knew to ask, if you could just read between the lines and—

Sometimes the people you love don’t leave you with goodbyes—they just leave.

“Do you regret it?” “If I said I did,” he replied, looking thoughtful, “would that be a disservice to the past me who dreamed of getting here?

“Why do you love it?” I opened my mouth—and froze. That was a harder question than I thought.

me—I realized that with a pang of dread. I wanted him to kiss me more than I wanted anything in a very, very long time. Being close to him felt like a story I didn’t know the ending to—the fizzy-rock feeling in my bones I always got when my aunt smiled at me with all of her teeth, her eyes bright and wild, and asked me on an adventure. He was an adventure. One I suddenly knew I wanted to take.

Roughly and hungrily, wanting to tattoo the taste of him into the gray matter of my brain.

I was never the kind of woman to fall in love with a voice, but when I came, he pressed his mouth against my ear and rumbled, “Good girl,” in the exact way that made me lose all sense of self-preservation.

“People change their lives all the time, doesn’t matter how old you are.

And, oh, did I realize then, that I had the thirst for adventure sown into my very bones.

I missed that girl, but I felt her coming back now, little by little, and I didn’t quite hate the thought of something new anymore. The longer I sat here, in this small cubicle, the more I began to wonder what, exactly, I was working toward.

Whoever James chose was who he chose. There was nothing I could do about it now. Everything would run its course—come into my life and then leave again, because nothing stayed. Nothing ever stayed. But things could return.

To be okay. I told myself, over and over, I had to be okay.

“Why didn’t things work out?” I asked, and she gave a one-shouldered shrug. “I can’t tell you. I think she was always a little afraid of a good thing coming to an end, and oh, we were a good thing,”

“Isn’t it strange how the world works sometimes? It’s never a matter of time, but a matter of timing.”

“I didn’t find out who I wanted to be until I was almost forty. You have to try on a lot of shoes until you find some you like walking in. Never apologize for that. Once I found mine, I’ve been content for twenty years.”

I was simply here. And that wasn’t enough anymore.

They were opposites of the same coin, one tired of new things, the other searching for them wherever she went.

“I think,” he finally said, choosing his words carefully, “that nothing lasts forever. Not the good things, not the bad. So just find what makes you happy, and do it for as long as you can.”

“You will be happiest when you’re on your own adventure. Not Analea’s, not whoever you’re dating, not everyone who thinks you should do what you’re supposed to do—yours.”

Change wasn’t always a bad thing, like my aunt had convinced herself to believe. It wasn’t always a good thing, either. It could be neutral—it could be okay. Things changed, people changed. I changed, too. I was allowed to. I wanted to. I was.

Seven years ago, I would have been just coming home from our European backpacking trip, tired and in desperate need of a shower, the rest of my life stretched before me like the good parts of a novel that the author had yet to write, and didn’t know how.

but the day was mostly a blur. I’d met so many faces over the last few months, they all tended to blend together. Even the ones that’d change my life.

who won. But I could never run far enough, not really. I missed her every day. I missed her in ways I didn’t yet understand—in ways I wouldn’t find out for years to come. I missed her with this deep sort of regret, even though there was nothing I could have done. She never wanted anyone to see the monster on her shoulder, so she hid it, and when she finally took the monster’s hand, it broke our hearts. It would keep breaking our hearts, everyone who knew her, over and over and over again. It was the kind of pain that didn’t exist to someday be healed by pretty words and good memories. It was the kind of pain that existed because, once upon a time, so did she. And I carried that pain, and that love, and that terrible, terrible day, with me. I got comfortable with it. I walked with it.

Sometimes the people you loved left you halfway through a story. Sometimes they left you without a goodbye.

And, sometimes, they stayed around in little ways. In the memory of a musical. In the smell of their perfume. In the sound of the rain, and the itch for adventure, and the yearning for that liminal space between one airport terminal and the next. I hated her for leaving, and I loved her f...

Maybe she liked the thought of being imperfect, but being loved anyway.

last forever. It wasn’t a lie. There was sadness, and there was despair, and there was pain—but there was also laughter, and joy, and relief. There was never grief without love or love without grief,

“I tell them about a girl I fell in love with at the right place but the wrong time.” A knot lodged in my throat. “And what are you going to tell them now?” “That we finally got the timing right.” “A matter of time,” I whispered. “A matter of timing,”

Because the things that mattered most never really left. The love stays. The love always stays, and so do we.