CHASE rolls around on the now-flat air mattress that he’s been sleeping on all night; it was gifted to him by my parents. That’s right. My parents actually like him; he’s the first guy I’ve brought to them that they like. He makes up for my mom’s poor Internet skills and my dad’s quiet predisposition, and I guess they like that.

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He's super cute when he’s sleeping, and even though every time he gives me permission to wake him up, I can never get myself to do it. Instead, I wait on the couch next to the air mattress. It’s blue, the one color that could never match my emotions when I’m around him. It’s old too; there’s cotton stuffing leaking out of its arms.

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I’ve only lost my phone in it twenty times, so that’s why it’s on the end table where he now makes sure I put it. I think the whole thing is funny; I still have an accidental voicemail on my phone when we called my number to find it and we’re arguing in the background from how hard it is to move the couch of bricks.

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He hugs his pillow tightly like I’m going to steal it from underneath him. He has short, flat brown hair but it spikes at the very top; it’s a schoolboy haircut that becomes new again each year. He has brown eyes that contrast my blue ones, and he’s super tall and skinny; he’s 6’ 4” to be exact and has the metabolism of my 16-year-old brother who can eat chocolate for breakfast, lunch, and dinner, and still stay in shape. Unlike the couch, he’s young, cleanly shaven, and three years my senior.

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His height sticks out like my red hair. My pink striped PJs read, “Too Cute To Care,” and I know that if it came in his size, that it would fit him more than me. I move over to cuddle him after a half-hour passes.

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We’re in the basement of my childhood home. It’s summer, so it’s not like we have anywhere else to go; we both live with our parents. This is his room whenever he comes over. We sleep in different rooms, but I kind of like it that way. I can’t express how amazing it feels to wake up in my own bed, forget that he’s in my house, and then get to see him all over again.

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Have I fallen in love with him over the four months we’ve been together? No. He doesn’t quite meet the definition of a summer love. But for the first time, I know I can get there with someone. With him.

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The basement is a boring tan, but so is the rest of my house. There’s a foosball table behind the couch, and a treadmill and an at-home office for my mother to the left of the air mattress. Directly in front of us is a huge TV where we binge-watched Breaking Bad together; we’re watching Manifest now.

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It’s cold down here, so he’s wrapped in ten layers. I start to pull all the blankets off him, or else he’ll never wake up. I’m the rooster in the relationship and he’s the raccoon.

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“Babe,” I say in a soft voice, kissing his cheek, “It’s 11 am already, you gotta wake up.” I lightly kiss him up and down his face, holding my arms behind my back so I don’t accidentally elbow him like last time. 

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He wakes up easily with a smile. “Today’s the day,” I remind him.

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Stifling a yawn, he replies, “What day? It’s not your birthday, is it? It can’t be.”

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“You know it isn’t my birthday,” I joke, “Hint, I move in a week from today.”

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“Ohhh, it’s the concert. How could I forget, I get to finally meet your friends. The friends you’ve been hiding from me since May.”

 

“They’re excited to meet you,” I say. I’m laying down next to him now on the air mattress, sharing his tiny, scrunched-up pillow.

 

“I’m excited to meet them too. I hope they like me.”

 

“They will.” I know I shouldn’t be shaking so much about entering the next chapter of our relationship, but there’s always a what if dangling from my tongue. I know he’s amazing, and my parents like him, but I’m living with my friends next year on campus; if they don’t like him, I’m absolutely screwed.

 

I distract my thoughts by watching him scroll through Facebook Marketplace for cars. My passion is writing and his is cars, two completely different passions; it’s the intensity we share, not the subject. He talks about cars more than I talk about writing, but that’s just because he’s more chatty than me. I don’t see it as a red flag.

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A huge reason why I’m so uncharacteristically shaky is partly because I’ve never been in a long-term relationship before. Having grown up a romantic, it’s something that’s hard for me to openly admit. They’ve all ended right around this point at the fourth-month mark, and I’m terrified history will repeat itself for the fifth time.

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He taps me gently on the shoulder, closing out of his precious Facebook Marketplace (what a sacrifice!) to tell me, “Hey, it’ll be fine.”

 

“You’re so different from my friends and me.”

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“We balance out our differences though. I’m sure it’ll work with them too,” he assures me. And as if he is made of nothing but magic, my mind clears and I start playing with his hair; he loves the massages I give him. I can hear the scratch sounds my long nails make on his scalp. “Find any good cars?”

 

“Not really,” he says, “I just wish I could poop money so I could get my mustang back.”

 

“You will,” I tell him. And I don’t doubt it. He has a grey BMW now, but he used to have a bright blue mustang. He had to sell it for school, and that’s his dream is to have the mustang again to race around with his friends.

 

“I’m lowkey jealous. Here you are with your dream job at a publishing agency, and look at me!” He pauses, overthinking his own words, before adding, “But you know I’m proud of you.”

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“I know,” I flirt with my eyes.

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“It’s a good thing you’re good at writing because wow do we need to work on your driving.” It’s his go-to joke. It’s at least his sixth time saying it. He acts like I’m going to kill him every time I drive him someplace.

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Once we get all ready and everything, we drive to the concert. We’re coming from the East Lansing area and the Pine Knob theatre is near Detroit so we have a ways to go, plus we want good seats. Michigan usually means cold, but it’s still summer so it’s a good 80 degrees out and sunny. We’re meeting my friends there, two of them; they’re my roommates for the next school year.

 

We sing some hardcore rock country on the way there, and he makes all his usual comments about how everyone on the road drives worse than him. He always makes a comment about how foreign drivers suck at driving. His stereotypes make me want to hit a reverse button so he can take back what he said; but I’m attached to him and I don’t want to start a fight for nothing, so I remain silent and put an invisible zipper on my lips. Everyone has flaws. Everyone. This is his minor flaw; it’s nothing in comparison to all the good things, like how he holds the door open for me and sends me morning texts consistently.

 

We get there and pick up my friends from the Culver’s parking lot so we can all park together. There’s bumper-to-bumper traffic all the way to the parking area. I’m glad my friend, Ally, takes over driving, let’s just say that. We’re all crunched inside my tiny Impala with the radio on mute, and I think it makes Chase’s voice even louder and more magnified as he introduces himself.

 

At first, the greeting goes well between both parties. Ally and Skylar say hi and tell him what they’re studying (English like me) and he tells them he’s into Cybersecurity. They’re all amazed by that. “Ooo you should totally help us set up our router,” Skylar begs while showing off her new blue hair (it’s a new color every few months or so), “We totally suck at technology. I speak on behalf of all of us.”

 

I laugh until he responds. We’re going 1 mile per hour at this point. There’s napkins all over the ground on the passenger side, and the back is full of clothes I’ve been meaning to return for three months now. Plus it still smells like the strawberry smoothie I accidentally spilled on the seat one evening.

 

“I got you guys covered,” he replies, “Let’s hope I can get it done by Friday, cuz let’s be honest, you guys won’t be able to get it all set up on your own.”

 

Chase, why would you say that out loud??

 

My friends look away from Chase, and so do I. “Look, there’s some nice cars here, aren’t there?” I ask him to give him a second chance at a good first impression.

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“Hell yes,” he says, “If I had a motorcycle here, I’d be flying past all these lazy people.”

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He’s nervous. He’s got to be. The real Chase wouldn’t be saying all these things.

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I carry the same thought process with me for the rest of the night.

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The concert is the best concert I’ve ever seen. Macklemore opens up and the Imagine Dragons perform all the songs I love. I belt it out with my friends, while Chase bobs his head a little bit here and there while sipping his beer that only he can have since we’re all under 21. He reminds us of how we’re underage three times.

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I’m trying to jam it out to all the songs as fire comes on the stage and as everyone waves the white flashlight on their phones on the slow parts. Pine Knob is huge; there are people in lawn chairs and people standing over every last inch of the grass. I feel bad for the little girl behind us because her mom is piggy-backing her, her back dying while trying to peek over Chase’s head. I smell alcohol all over the place, that and sweat, lots of it.

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 I try so hard to enjoy it but I can’t because the whole time in the back of my mind I already know that Ally and Skylar hate the man who wants to marry me someday. I know it’s wrong to talk about stuff like marriage so early, so many of my exes did that, but I thought he was different. Clearly I was wrong.

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It gets even worse when Skylar fan-girls over a guy standing in front of us that she says looks like Post Malone. “He’s the one with all the tattoo’s right?” I say to make conversation.

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But when Chase adds, “Yeah, he’s the fat one,” I have to literally look down at the ground to avoid my friends’ eyes.

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I’ve opened up to him about my recovery with anorexia, and he still decides that’s an ok thing to say??

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To try to forget his hurtful words, I belt out the words to “Natural” and “Radioactive.” I’ve never been so grateful that Imagine Dragons don’t write a ton of love songs. The raging tones make my feet vibrate.

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When it’s time to go, I ask Ally via text message if she likes him. She says yes, and I know it’s crap because she always sends me a paragraph at least.

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I wait until we drop him off at his house before asking my friends about him. I kiss and hug him goodbye first. And they still beat me to the punch.

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Ally speaks up first, probably because she’s sitting right across from me in the very front of the car. She has on a full face of makeup, bright lipstick making her look like Taylor Swift during her Red era. She’s in a skirt and tights; because it would be the end of the world if she matched either of us, I’m in leggings and Skylar is in black jeggings; we planned it.

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“Look Taylor,” she says, “he is a nice guy, but the things he was saying, I know you noticed. I realize you haven’t seen him interact with any major people in public before, so it may be a side of him you haven’t seen yet, but maybe have a talk with him about how his words come across? He hurt our feelings several times tonight, and I didn’t like the way he talked to you either.”

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This is the part where I’m supposed to argue them and tell them they’re wrong, tell them they only saw a snippet of the guy I spent my entire summer with. But I can’t. I think all this time I knew they wouldn’t like him because part of me didn’t like him, and I just needed someone to give me a little push, to splash me with water and bring me back to reality.

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“I know I need to talk with him, I know,” I admit. When I went up north with Chase, there was a moment after he told me he didn’t like my outfit, when I wanted to break up with him. This was before my friends even knew he existed, and I knew I wanted to end it. But I didn’t. I tolerated it, and I guess I just needed someone who didn’t see so many good parts of Chase to let me know it was okay to let him go.  

 

Ally pulls out of his driveway so we don’t look like stalkers and pulls over on a curb a block away. It’s dark out so all I can see is as far as the headlights go. There are houses around us. I can’t make out anything about them, yet I’d rather squint my eyes and analyze them rather than my own relationship.

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Continuing, I fidget with the stringy bottom of my MSU crop-top; Ally and Skylar are also showing off their green and white. “He’s had a rough childhood. He’s an only child, and his parents didn’t even mean to have him. His mom is amazing and treats him perfectly, but she lives all the way up north, and he doesn’t get along with his dad as much. They broke off their engagement years back, and he struggled in high school. All his friends are car people like him and they all talk to each other like how he talks. It’s just the way he was raised. I swear he doesn’t mean to talk like that. He doesn’t, but I do agree it’s awful and shouldn’t be tolerated.”

 

We have the light on the top of the ceiling on so that we can see each other’s faces. Skylar is as close to the front as she can get. “I can tell you care about him,” she tells me, “And that just shows what kind of a person you are that you care so much. But you can’t give him excuses. You did that with your last boyfriend, remember? We care about you so much and you deserve someone who doesn’t talk to you that way.”

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I sniffle instead of cry. On purpose. I kick my seat like that one annoying kid behind you on a plane ride and look out the window into the blackness; it’s like looking into the abyss of my own mind. “I hate when you guys are right,” I admit, “He’s a good guy.”

 

“We know he is,” Ally says while holding the steering wheel, “It doesn’t make him a bad guy. It just means he needs to learn how to treat people better. I think you could definitely use some time to get to know yourself more and what your boundaries are. You let guys take advantage and walk all over you, and we just would hate to see you go through that again.”

 

“We say it in the nicest way, bestie, but you’ve been dating back-to-back. We didn’t want to tell you, but we knew you weren’t ready when you started dating Chase. We knew it but we also knew we couldn’t change your mind. You have to learn these things on your own.”

 

“Even if it’s painful?” I whine.

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“Yes, even if it’s painful,” Ally whispers. She turns the heat up and the windows start fogging up. “That’s the best way to learn. We’re not telling you to break up with him. Just talk to him about it and go from there, but make sure you aren’t settling for him. You deserve a man who is good in every way, not just in most ways.”

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I swallow, and even though there’s nothing in my throat, it feels like I swallowed an ice cube whole. “Let me out,” I tell them politely. They don’t push me out the door, I do that all by myself, and before I know it, I’m on Chase’s porch. I probably look like a lost drunk woman with the clumsy way I stumble to his front door. I trip on my own legs multiple times.

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I ring the doorbell and he comes outside to meet with me, probably because he doesn’t want to talk with his dad in the house. He has a tiny house with a fenced-in backyard. There’s this huge white dog named Hunter that looks more like a polar bear with his size, and through the window, I can see him slobbering all over the glass, watching us.

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There’s a few lights dangling from the porch ceiling, but other than that, it’s pretty bare. There’s no garden or anything fancy like that. “What’s up?” he asks, “Miss me already?”

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“Yeah,” I lie to get him to listen. We sit on the porch stairs because there’s no chairs to sit on. It hurts my tailbone. I wish I could whisper to him pre-conversation and tell him exactly what to say. I wish I could sing him Taylor Swift’s How You Get the Girl. But he’s on his own and I’m terrified he’s going to give me a reason to leave.

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“So a lot of the comments you made today weren’t cool. You really hurt my friends’ feelings. You talked down to them like you were way better. Did you mean to sound like that? What’s up? Something going on?”

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“If it’s about the router, I know it sounded harsh, but they’re the ones who asked me to help with it. They have no right to call me out for something they asked me about. I was just being myself. It’s not my fault they’re so insensitive. I guess when I come over in your new apartment, we’ll have to hide in your room if they hate me so much.”

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I stand up. In his eyes, I can see there’s an underlying problem causing him to lash out, but instead of telling me what it is, he yells. When people aren’t willing to admit they’ve made mistakes, when they don’t want to change themselves, then there’s nothing you can do. Period.

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“I can’t do this if that’s how you’re going to talk about my friends,” I say, “I can’t.”

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He motions for me to sit back down, but I push his hand out of my way. It’s crazy this is even happening right now. A few days ago we were talking about where we would live after I graduated college, and now this? What happened?

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“Look, I’m sorry, okay, this is what I do. I’ve ruined every relationship because I’m a disappointment to everybody. To my dad, and now to you.”

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“You hurt me too. You made fat jokes, and you know I got bullied as a kid. People used to say those fake jokes about me. You knew it would trigger me.”

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“I’m sorry, I’m so used to saying it. I don’t mean it to be mean. That’s how I talk. At work, that’s all we do is make jokes like that to make the day go by.”

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It’s over. I know it’s over, but how do I tell him? How do I tell him that, even though I don’t want to let him go, that I have to? How do I tell him I know myself more than he does without being mean? How do I cope with being single again? How do I, for the first time in my life, walk away from someone I know I shouldn’t be with? How do I have the courage to not settle for the first time in my personal history? How do I do something I’ve never done, and cope with something I’ve never felt? Usually it’s someone interrogating me, but here I am interrogating myself.

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I put on my big girl pants, take a deep breath, and look him in the eye. I pretend for a second that he’s dating one of my friends, and I think that’s what gets me to woman-up because I know I wouldn’t want this for one of them. “The stuff you say, I’ve never really brought it up before because I was afraid you wouldn’t like me anymore if I told you it was bothering me,” I explain, “And the more I think about it, we don’t talk a ton and we’re so different.”

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“Different is good though.”

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“In certain cases yes, but—“

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“If I can’t change your mind, then I can’t.” He hangs his hands over his knees in defeat.

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“I don’t wanna hurt you,” I cry.

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“I’ll be okay,” he admits, “It’ll take me time is all.” His face is pale and he won’t look me in the eye. He doesn’t fight back or try to make me change my decision. He respects it, we respect each other, and it isn’t ugly. I know I have to end it, but I don’t want to, and he’s making it even harder to go through with it.

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It isn’t until after I walk away and hug my friends that I can breathe again. I still want to hide in my bed and cry all night, but at the same time, I know it’s the right thing. He isn’t going to change for me period. He says sorry, but his actions don’t say sorry, and that’s the difference.

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I go home and it still hurts going down to the basement and remembering all our little memories. Tickle wars. Going to Texas Roadhouse twenty minutes before it closed and having the waitresses draw straws for who had to take our table. His BMW parked outside next to my mailbox. Our first date and the awkward silence before the first kiss. Him playing with my dog, who somehow loved him more than me. Him crying in my arms for the first time.

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I know every time I see a car, I’ll think of him, and I know it’s a blessing and a curse (but mostly a curse). Something materialistic like a car shouldn’t be what makes me the saddest, but it is, because cars aren’t materialistic to him.

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I don’t miss him, but I miss the happiness he brought me. Even if it wasn’t true happiness, the me who I was when I was with him thought she was happy.

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Why is it so hard to let someone go you know isn’t right for you?

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And why is it I have no desire to date again, that I actually want to be single for a little bit? It isn’t like me to know when I need a break. 

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My friends point out that maybe I’m finally sick of all the bad relationships. There’s this toxic cycle of not being able to be alone, and I’ve been able to crack it. 

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I’m not going to lie. After the breakup, I cried myself to sleep here and there and I made the mistake of texting Chase once. I did, and I still remember when my stupid phone fell into the couch. I still have dreams about us driving in his brand new mustang. I remember our trip up north and meeting his mom and stepdad and watching him hold a towel over his head like a turban to keep the water out of his face on the boat. I remember saving tadpoles in the little stream by the shore and resting in the sand. 

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I remember all the little details, and they’re like butterflies turning to the dark side and biting and attacking me, the last creatures you would ever expect to hurt you. 

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I also know that I would never be completely, totally happy if I let those memories continue. 

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In society, exes were supposed to be villains, but Chase wasn’t.  

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I once wrote in my journal a line that got me over my last ex. 

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It reads: I’m sorry, but you have to let him go. 

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This time when I write it, the words look the same, but this time sorry means something different. Before, I was sorry for myself. This time I’m sorry for Chase. 

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This is what I write:

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Chase,

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I’m sorry we came from different places, and just because your jokes aren’t things I find funny doesn’t mean someone else won’t find them funny. I’m sorry that you put an effort in to try to get to know my friends and it blew up in your face. I’m sorry that this entire time, I’ve been looking through my own perspective. I’m not sorry to walk away because I know it’s the right thing for me, but I am sorry for not being honest about it in the beginning, for not following my gut and being honest to you, Chase, that I had doubts; I hope you change in the ways you want to and that you find someone, I really do. 

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I’m sorry Chase.