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.

I 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.

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.

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.

“You could never be a bad idea, Lemon.”

Fiona had to drag me away from my computer before I sent another heated email to the book box company, absolutely about to sign it with Have the day you deserve.

“It was good to see you again, Lemon,” before he slipped out of the conference room, and I was left, mouth open, staring after him.

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

“I’m going to kiss every part of you. I’m going to commit every piece of you to memory.”

“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.”

That was love, wasn’t it? It wasn’t just a quick drop—it was falling, over and over again, for your person. It was falling as they became new people. It was learning how to exist with every new breath. It was uncertain and it was undeniably hard, and it wasn’t something you could plan for. Love was an invitation into the wild unknown, one step at a time together.

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 for staying as long as she could.

He’d gotten a lemon flower tattooed over his heart. “What do you tell people, when they ask about it?” His shyness melted into a smile, warm and gooey like chocolate. “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.”

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