Chapter

EMILY BURDITT | FRESHMAN, ENGLISH AND PSYCHOLOGY

When I tell people about us, they react. How could they not? With my storytelling weaving us in and out of parked cars, ice cream shops, your leafy green bedroom walls; they find themselves there with us. When they know the end, they’ll be relieved they weren’t. With each turn they react in the ways you should have: shock, delight, spite, and the apologies that leave their lips by “the end” almost make up for the one I never heard from you.

If only their interest and awe could make up for your lack for it was only in the end I learned to separate your fact from my fiction: you were never enraptured by me, taking my morals as gospel and letting me ramble until my throat ran dry and I ran out of things to say. Any story I told you never took up space in your brain, but even without ours to tell, I will have something to say and someone to listen. And so I could say that I don’t need you but I may never really mean it