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You see her at the grocery store when you’re home for Thanksgiving during your senior year at MIT. Really, you should have seen this coming, are surprised it hasn’t happened before—during freshman year, or Easter, or that overly snowy Christmas season a while back.
Even though you always knew this was a possibility—it’s a small town after all—the sight of her jars you to the point where you stop dead in your tracks in the middle of the baking aisle and just stare. She’s got a can of pumpkin pie filling in each hand, scrutinizing the labels even though they are probably identical.
Her hair is longer than it used to be and she doesn’t have bangs anymore. Instead, long blonde strands are framing her face in the most perfect way. She looks beautiful. The thought hits you with enough force to take your breath away.
Memories come flooding back, little moments from years ago, before everything fell apart in the most horrible way and you made what is most likely the worst mistake of your life.
It started in the fall of your sophomore year in high school. You’d known each other ever since you can remember, used to go on playdates, to birthday parties, cookouts together. Were acquaintances long before you became actual friends during the first few weeks of high school because she was sitting next to you in almost all of your classes and would ask to borrow your textbook or a pen or the homework due that day. In return, she brought you candy—bought you lunch sometimes and sat with you while asking about your favorite color, your favorite book. It wasn’t like you were an actual outcast but you were kind of a loner, and while you knew a lot of people you didn’t really hang out with them outside of class, so having the most popular girl in school make a sustained effort to get to know you was slightly odd. For a second, the thought that you were being played—that you were about to be thoroughly humiliated—crossed your mind but then she smiled at you when you told her about the Star Wars documentary you’d watched the night before and you knew none of this was an act. She kissed you for the first time under the bleachers after soccer practice. You didn’t play because you were too uncoordinated but she was the star of the team—fast, precise, athletic—so you’d go meet her after training. It was a Tuesday. She was sweaty, still slightly red in the face from running around the pitch for an hour and a half, and before you could even say hello she grabbed your face and pressed her lips to yours. You were frozen in place for a few moments before kissing her back, hungrily opening your mouth and running your tongue along her bottom lip. As far as first kisses go, it was pretty perfect.
“Lena,” she says when she sees you, voice barely more than a whisper. Her expression looks like she’s just seen a ghost. And maybe that’s what you are to each other now; ghosts from relationships past, a haunting feeling underneath your breastbone.
“Hey,” you reply because you don’t have anything better to say. It doesn’t seem like enough—nothing you can say will ever be enough, not when you’re the one who did this to the both of you.
Over the years, there were so many moments where you wanted to call her to try and salvage what you had but then you just didn’t. Because you’re a coward. But seeing her here like this, looking more beautiful than ever, brings back so many memories that you want to turn around and run because realization dawns on you that, maybe, you never actually got over her.
“I think I forgot my scarf at your sister’s place,” you told her the day after you came back from visiting Alex in D.C. because you couldn’t find the thing for the life of you and the last time you had it was in Alex’s spare room. She said, “You did but I took it with me so it’s mine now,” shrugged, and turned back to her calculus homework. You gaped at her for a second. The audacity. “Well, in that case—” you said as you walked over to her closet and pulled one of her oversized sweaters off of its shelf “—this is mine now.” It was your favorite, dark blue and a little tattered, soft to the touch. Her eyes twinkled when you put it on right away, probably looking like a jock, but it didn’t matter when all you could smell was her. “Also, I’m taking this,” you announced, grabbing one of the baby pictures from where it was hanging on the wall. She threw a pillow at you in response and told you to at least take one of the cute ones but joke’s on her because they were all cute.
“You look good,” she says just as you ask her how she’s doing and she chuckles, lowering her gaze to the floor briefly before looking back up and into your eyes.
“I was in a pretty dark place after we broke up but I’m good now. Realized I wanted to be a journalist, turned an internship in London into a full-time position and now I work at Time Magazine.”
You are rendered speechless by her honesty, the raw emotion in her gaze, the relief you feel knowing that she found something to strive for again. Plus, it explains why you didn’t run into her before now.
She’s the first person you ever slept with. It happened when you’re both seventeen and home alone because your parents were visiting your aunt in Boston. It was soft, and awkward, and perfect, all clumsy fingers and shallow breaths. Afterward, you lay next to each other in your bed, naked except for the duvet covering both of your bodies. The only light was the shimmer of the streetlight outside of your window and it was quiet except for the sound of your own heart beating against your ribcage as if trying to escape. You were sure she could hear it, too, that’s how loud it seemed, and you were so focused on calming down the frantic rhythm that you jumped when she placed her hand on your chest. “Relax, the worst part is over,” she said softly and you could’t help but laugh because nothing about this had been bad. Not even a little bit.
“What about you?”
You tell her that you’re about to finish your Bachelor’s degree and have a job in New York lined up afterward. Her eyes go wide.
“No way, I live in New York. We should go for a drink some time, take a trip down memory lane.”
You’re not sure if she’s joking or not, still don’t know where you stand exactly—even after all these years. (Maybe especially after all these years.)
The car windows were down and the radio was blasting a song you only knew half the lyrics to but you sang along anyway. Your hair was all over the place, being blown around by the wind, and you felt completely and utterly happy, one hand on her thigh and the other hanging out the window, moving up and down in waves. You were somewhere in the middle of nowhere, streets lined with trees, sun peaking through the leaves, and you’re pretty sure that, after taking a wrong turn a few miles ago, you were technically lost. But she was next to you, laughing at your pitiful attempts to not be completely off key, so it didn’t really matter. You looked at her, the pair of dark glasses on her nose, the way her lashes stood out against her tan skin, and the words just burst out of you. “I love you.” Because you did; you felt it right in the middle of your chest and you just had to say it. You needed her to know. She looked at you in a way that no one had ever looked at you before and slowly—very, very slowly—a blinding smile appeared on her face. It started at the right corner of her mouth, moved across before the left one quirked up as well. Then broadened until her eyes lit up and the skin around them crinkled. The sight would forever be burnt into your mind. Just like the moment right after when you yelled, “Red light!” and she slammed on the brakes with such force that you’re sure you would’ve flown straight through the windshield if it hadn’t been for your seatbelt. Somehow, the car actually came to a stop just in time and you looked at each other, breathing hard, before she said, “I love you, too,” and smiled again.
Before you can make a decision your eyes fall to Kara’s neck, follow what they see down to her chest where the blue fabric stands out against her light grey coat. Your brow furrows. “Is that my scarf?”
She looks down as well and she laughs, shrugging.
“I told you: finders keepers.”
The realization how much you missed her hits you all at once.
Her parents were out of town so you spent the night at hers, making out on the couch while some movie you weren’t paying any attention to played in the background. Eventually, she shoved you away, laughing, to go and get popcorn because it was past midnight and you hadn’t actually had dinner yet. When, five minutes later, she still hadn’t returned you got up to check if everything was alright. You found her by the stove, pan in hand. “What happened to popcorn?” you asked, leaning against the doorframe to take in the scene in front of you. There was flour all across the countertop, a few cracked eggs to the side, and the fridge was still open, casting its harsh light over the semi-dark kitchen. “I wanted pancakes,” she offered by way of explanation and smiled. You stepped closer, let your arms wrap around her waist from behind and put your head on her shoulder to peek at the stove. The pancakes looked barely edible but it didn’t matter, not when you had her. “I could get used to this,” you said before you could think about it. “What? Midnight pancakes?” You started swaying slightly from side to side, still holding her close. “All of it; domestic life.” She pressed a kiss to your jaw in response.
“I can’t believe you still have it.”
There’s awe in your voice, sadness, and she seems to feel everything you are because she looks right at you and says, “Well, I was never good at letting things go.”
Something shifts, then.
Looking back, you getting into MIT was the beginning of the end. It’s not that she didn’t support you, not at all. She was elated, proud, so happy for you that she turned her enthusiasm into a t-shirt. At the same time, however, the fact that you were moving on brought out her own demons. She wasn’t going to college because her scholarship had fallen through, didn’t really know what to do with her life after high school, and while you were trying to give her options—to get her out of the rut she was in—you could feel her withdraw from you more and more. It hurt like hell because she was slipping away and you couldn’t do anything to stop it, not when you were in Cambridge and she was halfway across the country. Nightly calls turned into speaking on the phone every other day which turned into only talking to her once a week until, eventually, you met a girl in one of your labs who wouldn’t stop flirting with you and, at some point, you realized that you didn’t hate it. You called her on a Friday night when you should have been at one of the dozens of parties you’d been invited to but weren’t in the mood for. You didn't actually want to break up with her but told her all about the girl, anyway, in the hopes it would at least get a reaction out of her. Something. Anything. She was quiet as you explained who and where and what and why, didn’t say anything when you told her that this wasn’t working anymore. “I’m sorry,” is what came out of her mouth eventually, defeated. You could hear that she was crying and you started crying, too, because it shouldn’t end like this.
“Go out to dinner with me,” you blurt out before your brain has time to catch up with your mouth. “I mean…”
“I’d love to,” she says simply and smiles at you like she used to do.