You liked to blow dandelion seeds, little parachutes of wishes taking off.

You liked to search through fields of clovers, always seeking that elusive four-leafed one.

You liked to pick roses, even though you always cut yourself on the thorns.

I just liked you.

People had always told me that I had a nice voice, that they wanted to hear it more, that I should share it with the world.

Why don’t you sing more, Jessica? Why don’t you sing this song? Why don’t you sing in front of us? Why don’t you why don’t you why don’t you…?

Eventually the words felt like a barrage and the only one I could focus on was ‘don’t.’

I liked to sing – in the shower, or in my room. I wasn’t ashamed of my voice, but it was something I wanted to keep to myself.

Then I met you.

You heard me sing once and your eyes lit up. I had read so many books and sung so many ballads, but to this day I still didn’t have words to describe your smile.

I was shy, I was hesitant, I was me, but you asked me to sing again, and I couldn’t deny you that. I couldn’t deny you anything.

I had always been private, reserved; I had always wanted to keep things to myself.

Then I met you.

I wanted to give you everything.

Phone, tablet, computer. I was all set. This was my holy trinity.

You would tease me about being a hermit, about staying inside all day, cocooned in my bed and away from ‘the beautiful outside world.’

I didn’t know how to explain to you that there was nothing more beautiful than you, smiling at me from our fortress of sheets, the world we had built ourselves. That I would rather stay in this world with you, this world made by, of, for us.

There was my holy trifecta, and then there was you. I wasn’t a religious person, not like you, but I did have faith. You asked me once, Don’t you want to believe in something, Jessi? and I hadn’t replied even though I had an answer.

I did believe. I believed in you.

Our firsts never went smoothly. During our first kiss, we smashed our noses into each other’s and I accidentally bit your lip. During our first movie date, our first choice was sold out so we ended up watching a horror movie instead. When the first scary scene showed up, you turned into me and I couldn’t hold back my scream, which made you drop the popcorn. During our first meal out, the waiter was flirting with you and I was so angry I shook, which led to me spilling my drink all over you.

I was so mortified that I ran to the bathroom and locked myself in a stall. I thought that you would be mad or upset, maybe both, that you would tell me what a terrible date I was, that you would never want to see me again.

I didn’t expect what actually happened at all.

You followed me into the bathroom and said my name with concern. “I can see your shoes. Please come out. I want to talk to you.”

I meekly opened the door, but I couldn’t make myself walk to you. You didn’t mind; you took the steps toward me. You were so beautiful even with worry all over your face and iced tea all over your dress.

“I’m sorry,” I said in a small voice. “I’ll pay for the dry cleaning.”

“Jessi,” you laughed. “It’s just a dress. I’ll be fine.”

“He was – he was flirting with you.” I bit my lip. “And it’s not just that. He didn’t even pay any attention to your stop signals. He didn’t respect you.”

You smiled. “Do you pay attention to my stop signals?”

My eyes widened. Did I do something that you didn’t like? Was I overstepping boundaries? I thought that I was doing okay, but—

“Relax, Jessi.” I didn’t remember moving, but somehow we were by the sinks, and you had me backed against the counter. “I didn’t tell you to stop.” You smiled again, and I stopped breathing. “I don’t want you to stop.”

I swallowed. “I’m not even doing anything.”

“Exactly. Why aren’t you?”

I kissed you. It was much better than our first kiss, not nearly as clumsy or awkward. Not clumsy or awkward at all, as a matter of fact. I didn’t think I was a great kisser, but you responded so eagerly to me. You made an approving sound from low in your throat when my tongue tentatively touched yours, and pulled me closer until we were pressed flush against each other. I felt like we were kissing with our entire bodies, like my heart wanted to escape my chest and crawl into yours, like I never wanted to stop.

“Sorry,” you said breathlessly. “I got iced tea on your shirt too.”

“It’s okay,” I told you, and returned my mouth to yours.

Our first time didn’t go smoothly either. You’d never been with a woman before, and I’d never been with anyone before.

“We have the same parts,” you said. “It can’t be that hard, right?”

I didn’t know what to say. I hadn’t even told you that I’d never done this before. I was afraid that if I told you how little I knew, you wouldn’t want to do this anymore. I was afraid because I wanted to make it good for you but I didn’t know how.

You undressed first and I couldn’t look away for the life of me. You were so beautiful that it made me want to cover myself up even though I was still fully dressed. I suddenly didn’t want you to look at me.

I didn’t know how to interpret your silence until I saw the mortified flush on your cheeks, the way you reached for your clothes with hurt and embarrassment all over your face.

I grabbed your wrist. You looked at me with a weak smile. “It’s okay. You don’t have to—”

“You’re so beautiful.” I knew it sounded like a line, but it couldn’t have been farther from one. I meant it; I’d never meant anything more. “I just – I’m not… I’m not.”

You looked so confused, like I told you that the sky was green.

I tugged my shirt above my head, keeping my eyes closed. As I reached for the clasp of my bra, I felt your hand on mine. You laced your fingers through mine and pulled my hand away. “Jessi,” you whispered, and just like that, I almost came undone. “It’s okay. You don’t have to.”

They were the same words, but they meant something different. I opened my eyes and you were looking at me like—

I couldn’t describe it. I never had enough words to describe you; I never had words enough to describe you.

“Have you never done this before?” There was no judgment in your voice, only tenderness.

I shook my head silently.

“Oh, Jessi.” You put your arms around me and pulled me right against you. We were pressed together skin to skin, the closest we’d been all night, and yet I didn’t feel nervous or self-conscious at all. “You should have told me.”

“I—” I my lips. “I thought maybe you wouldn’t want me if you knew.”

You looked me in the eye. “Of course I want you.”

You didn’t sound like you were just talking about in bed. I knew that I wanted you in bed and out of it and everywhere in between. I wanted you in every way. I wanted you with me.

I thought that we would have tonight. We did more than that. We made love, and I felt it in your fingers laced with mine, in your heart beating in tune with mine, as we fell asleep in each other’s arms.

Sometimes I hated how socially awkward I was.

I always felt claustrophobic in a crowd of people, like they were a wave that would swallow me. When strangers talked to me, I would find my eyes flickering everywhere but their faces, looking for an escape route. They tried to make small talk, and I tried to be small, because maybe then I could disappear.

It was never that way with you.

You were loud, but you never drowned out my voice. You were hyperactive, but you never left me behind. You were headstrong, but you never ignored my opinions.

You were you, and I was me, and somehow we became us.

We became us, and I thought we would stay us forever.

I was always naïve.

When you brought me home to meet your parents, it was as your “best friend, Jessica!”

Your mom was pale and wan-looking, but her smile was full of warmth. I could see where you got it from. Your dad said it was nice to meet the girl you had been talking about so much and asked me if I was staying for dinner.

I liked your parents immediately. They seemed to like me too, and I wondered if they would had you introduced me as your girlfriend rather than your best friend. I didn’t miss the gold cross glinting at your mom’s throat, the Bible set on the coffee table.

I saw the way your eyes lingered on each of them as well. They weren’t just fixtures, but reminders. I was reminded of your faith. And you – you were reminded of why we shouldn’t be together.

You were too good for me – I always knew this. I was just waiting for you to discover it too. It was my greatest fear, that you would look at me one day and see me the way everyone else did and decide I wasn’t a worthy enough sight to stick around for.

Sometimes I tried to prepare for that moment. I told myself that I could endure it, that I wouldn’t let myself break, I wouldn’t let you break me.

In reality, I knew that I didn’t have any control over it, over the part of myself that I had promised to you. In reality, I had promised everything to you, but I didn’t know how much you wanted of me.

I had always wanted all of you, I had always been greedy, but I knew that I would never get that. That was okay with me; I wanted you however I could get you, and you gave so much to me already, I shouldn’t ask for more.

But I still wanted it. I still wanted you.

I will always want you.

I just couldn’t say the same about you wanting me.

The beginning of the end came on a day like any other. We walked by the bank of the river, side by side, our shadows overlapping. I wanted you to take my hand, but I knew you wouldn’t. You would never do something like that in public.

You wanted to skip stones, and I was embarrassed to admit that I didn’t know how to. You didn’t make fun of me for it like my friends. You never made fun of me if you knew that it could hurt me.

(A lot of things could hurt me. You were on top of the list, but I never thought about it that way because I knew you wouldn’t hurt me. You could, but you wouldn’t.

I was too naïve to understand the difference between didn’t want to and wouldn’t.)

You tossed a stone and it skipped – one, two, three – which I found impressive, but you didn’t. You had always had higher expectations, bigger dreams than me. My dreams started and ended with you.

“You try,” you told me, handing me a stone, fingers curling over mine.

What skipped was not the stone, but my heartbeat. I tried to mimic you, but I could not even get the stone to skip once. It merely dropped beneath the surface of the river, a web of ripples spreading out where it had hit the water.

I gave a sheepish smile and turned to you.

You were quiet and you looked at me like you wouldn’t get to again for a long time. Like you were trying to memorize my face to save for later. Like you were saying goodbye.

“Jessica…” you said quietly.

My heart sank like the stone I had just thrown. You never called me Jessica. It was always Jessi, something only you called me, something that was only yours. You never called me Jessica, except—

“…I love you…”

I wondered how such beautiful words could hurt so much to hear.

“…but love isn’t always enough.”

I wondered how such a beautiful face could hurt so much to see.

“Tiffany.” Your name tangled in my throat and came out half-wrecked. “Did I do something wrong? If I did, tell me – tell me and I’ll fi—”

You kissed me. You tasted like strawberry lip gloss and saltwater. Like tears. When you touched my cheeks, your fingers came away wet.

“Jessica,” you whispered, and I realized the tears were mine. Your eyes were bright with unshed tears, dark with unknown thoughts. “You didn’t do anything wrong. You – you’re… You can’t fix this. We can’t fix this.”

I tried to stop crying, but the tears kept coming, blurring your face from my vision. It didn’t matter, really, because I knew your face better than my own. I had mapped out the plane of your brow, the slope of your nose, the curve of your jaw with my lips. I had made laughter dance in your eyes, drawn my name from your lips, left my marks on your skin.

I had loved you with everything I had to give, but it still wasn’t enough. Maybe it was love that wasn’t enough; maybe it was me. I wasn’t enough for you.

“Tif—” My voice caught and broke on your name. I wanted to say more, I wanted to ask why, say please, beg no. I wanted to say so many things, but all I could manage was your name. “—fany.”

You reached out a hand toward me, but you didn’t let it get there, you didn’t touch me. I couldn’t tell whether I was relieved or disappointed. I didn’t know whether your touch would be balm or salt on my wounds.

“I’m sorry.” You sounded like a part of you was breaking too. “Jessica, I’m sorry.”

Then you turned and walked away, leaving me by the riverbank with a field of stones and a broken heart.

Later, I realized that I didn’t get to tell you that I loved you too.

Love.

I wondered how such a beautiful thing could hurt so much to feel.

I didn’t see you again for a long time. I didn’t hear from you. I didn’t talk to you.

You were absent from my life, but you weren’t absent from my thoughts. You weren’t just present in them; you were omnipresent.

I used to think that I wasn’t a person who dwelled on the past, but you weren’t supposed to be just a part of my past. You were supposed to be my past, present and future. You were supposed to be mine.

You weren’t anymore, but I was still yours.

I will always be yours, but you didn’t want me anymore.

I tried to block you from my mind, and sometimes I succeeded, but I couldn’t erase you from my heart.

You were everywhere.

In the pink roses winding around my terrace. (Later my sister asked me where the roses went and why my nails were crusted with dirt and dried blood.)

In the faces of girls whose eyes disappeared when they smiled. (But nobody’s smile could compare to yours. I found myself looking for you in everyone I saw, and none of them could measure up.)

In my dreams, which almost always featured you in some way. (I didn’t know whether I yearned for or dreaded them. No matter how they ended, they always left me in pain because they were the only place in which I could see you. I would never wake up to you, only to tear-stained pillows and an aching chest.)

You were everywhere, but you weren’t where I wanted you to be.

You weren’t with me.

Sometimes I found myself analyzing our past conversations, trying to look for hints that things were amiss, things I did wrong, things I didn’t do. I didn’t want to do that, not just because it hurt to think about you – to think about us, even though there was no longer us, just you, and me, not you and me – but because I wanted to leave those memories untouched. Pristine. I wanted to remember us happy, even if that was more fantasy than memory.

It was a particularly good season for wildflowers. You had always loved flowers, especially wildflowers. Once you told me to meet you in a meadow, and you spent the whole afternoon there, fiddling with something you wouldn’t let me see, only to give me, hours later, the ugliest crown I had ever seen.

I kept it on for the rest of the day. Your smile made up for how it snarled in my hair and scratched my temples.

I was in the meadow now, and although it was full of colour and life, it felt so empty. I picked a flower and started plucking the petals systematically. Thinking of you.

You miss me. You miss me not.

You want me. You want me not.

You need me. You need me not.

I miss you.

I want you.

I need you.

I lo—

Of course, the flower didn’t really have so many petals. I wasn’t plucking the flower by that point; I had already stripped it of all its petals, left it bare, with nothing left to give.

I kept my hands at my sides so I wouldn’t pick more flowers. I wouldn’t want to strip the meadow. My fingers flexed, yearning for something to hold. Heartbreak wasn’t isolated to the chest; I missed you all over.