We Can't Keep Meeting Like This

by Rachel Lynn Solomon

  My mom gets to her feet, readjusts her glasses, and squares her shoulders. Back to no-nonsense Shayna Berkowitz. “I think we’ve had enough. This whole circus needs to stop, Quinn. You’re acting like a child.”

  “Funny,” I say. “You’ve never treated me like one.”

  25

  I have to find Tarek. After pausing in the bathroom to thumb away mascara smears from beneath my eyes, I race through the museum and back into the tiny restaurant kitchen, where he’s helping unpack a tower of bakery cakes.

  His back is to me, his shoulders stiff.

  “Tarek?” I say, reaching for his arm. “What’s wrong?”

  I want him to tell me that this whole thing is a mess, but we’re going to fix it. Even if I’m not supposed to want that from him.

  I should be glad, then, when he says, “That was… an enlightening conversation you had with your parents.”

  Aware we’re not alone in the kitchen, I lower my voice. “You heard that?”

  “Parts of it. I’d just gotten back with the cakes, and I wanted to make sure you were okay.” He must see I’m about to lose it because finally, he softens. “What you told them, about not being part of the business anymore. That was… a lot. Are you okay?”

  And then he is comforting me, even after I said something so horrible about him.

  Slowly, I shake my head. “I’m sorry. I just need to—” I break off, unable to catch my breath, unsure what I’m apologizing to him for. Tears back up behind my eyes, and I smash my hands into them, again willing them not to fall. I can only hold them back for so long.

  He gets me a glass of water before asking Harun if he can cover when his parents get back and guiding me out of the kitchen and into an employees-only corridor with too-bright lighting and a geometric-print carpet that looks like a relic from the eighties. These are all the things someone would do to comfort a girlfriend, and even if I’m not a girlfriend, not his girlfriend, I don’t ask him to stop.

  I lean against the wall, focusing on the blue-green hexagons on the carpet and taking slow sips of water. “I—I really fucked up.”

  Tarek moves closer, places a hand on my shoulder. It’s not enough. It’s nice, but it’s not enough. I want to bury my face in his chest and lose myself in him, shut out the rest of the world and my parents’ demands and the daughter they wanted that I will never be again.

  I’m no longer the girl who always says yes. I didn’t just tell them no—I told them never, and it feels worse than I imagined.

  “They’re your parents. They’ll forgive you,” he says into my hair in this steady voice that makes me want to believe him. “They’ll understand.”

  Sure, they might understand I want to find something I’m passionate about. But this will forever alter my relationship with my family, Mom-Dad-Asher on one side and me, all alone, on the other.

  Another thought occurs to me. “Please tell me I haven’t completely ruined things for your parents too. No, I don’t deserve that. Let me have the worst of it. Tell me how bad it is.”

  “You haven’t ruined anything for anyone,” he says. “My parents are fine, and your parents are going to bounce back. They’re good at what they do. People will understand that this was a mistake. It could have happened to anyone.”

  “Maybe.” A future in which B+B doesn’t exist is too terrible to contemplate, regardless of how much I’ve wanted to separate myself from it.

  “This is going to be the worst part. You’re in the thick of it now, but it’s going to get better. And hey—you finally did it. You ripped off the Band-Aid.”

  “I just have to hope the wound doesn’t get infected.”

  He cracks a smile at that. “Not sure how much longer we’re going with this metaphor, but hey, even if it does, I’ll get you some antiseptic.”

  God, he’s too good. “I can’t believe they had the audacity to suggest the reason I haven’t been ‘myself’ this summer, or the version of myself I’ve been pretending to be for all these years, is because of you.”

  Tarek’s eyebrows draw together a little too tightly. “But you told them I’m not the reason. That I’m—that I’m nothing.”

  He heard that, too.

  Fuck.

  “Tarek. That’s obviously not—you’re not—I mean—” I stumble over my words, trying to backtrack. “I said there was nothing going on between us. Not that you’re nothing. You’re—you’re not.” I can’t even give him a compliment.

  He pins his shoulders to the opposite side of the corridor. “Right. A huge difference.”

  “You don’t know my parents like I do. This is everything to them. To Asher. They thought it was because of you that I haven’t been fully invested at work this summer. I had to tell them it’s how I’ve felt for a while, that it wasn’t you, so they wouldn’t get the wrong idea.”

  “Wouldn’t want that to happen.”

  I’m not used to hearing this kind of sarcasm in his voice. I want to go back to that night in my room, wrap those rain clouds around us like a blanket.

  But this was never a wrapped-in-a-blanket kind of relationship.

  “I’ve had fun with you,” I say carefully. Having fun. That’s what we said we were doing. Images flash through my mind, the two of us on the yacht and at the rage cage and in my bed with his homemade chocolate mug cake. Beneath my sheets. “Fun” isn’t the right word anymore, but it’s all I can come up with right now.

  “I have too,” he says. “More than fun. I’ve had…” He breaks off, scrubs a hand through his hair. Nervous Tarek is still so foreign to me. “Jesus, Quinn. I told myself I wasn’t going to do this.”

  “You weren’t going to what?”

  A vigorous shake of his head, as though he’s convincing himself he’s not going to do it. “We couldn’t get it right last summer, and I know that was partly my fault. I’ve been trying to make it up to you. Trying to show you that this could be something real. And I just thought, if you changed your mind, wouldn’t it be great to have this amazing story about us?”

  “Is that the only thing that would make it meaningful? Having a story like that?”

  He scuffs the geometric carpet with his shoe. “I just… don’t know what else to do. How else to make it feel that way.”

  Truthfully, I haven’t hated everything he’s done: the mug cake, the time we spent in the Mansour’s kitchen, the movie in the park. But I can’t bring myself to mention any of that right now.

  “I never asked you to be my boyfriend. I made that clear.”

  “I know. I know. And I thought I was okay with it. So it’s clearly my fault I’m feeling this way. But…” He says this next part so quietly, I have to strain to hear it. “I like you, Quinn. I like you so much.”

  The words are as soft as the highest notes on the harp, the “so much” wrapping around my heart in this unexpected, unwelcome way.

  I like you. He said the same thing in the tower. It’s not that most dangerous of L-words, but it’s close.

  “Please don’t say that.”

  “Why not? Is that really such an awful thing, to be liked?” Again, he shakes his head, and then he repeats it. “I like you. And I thought maybe you felt the same.”

  There have been times I thought so too. Those shimmering, faraway-seeming ideas I pushed to the back of my mind. “For a while, I thought I could,” I say. “Last summer, I was ready to go all in with you. I even did that grand gesture of my own, with the email. Maybe it wasn’t as cinematic as anything you’ve done, but it was all I could think to do. And it didn’t work out. It always works out. In every movie you told me to watch. I watched them all, Tarek. And—and it always works out.” I squeeze my eyes shut. When people cry in romantic comedies, it’s only because they’re guaranteed a happy ending afterward.

  “But it can,” he says. “That’s what I’m telling you. We can figure this out together.” He reaches out, twines his fingers with mine, and for a moment it sounds like something I might be able to say yes to. That’s h
ow ingrained romantic gestures are for him—they’ve made me question what I really want.

  “There’s nothing to figure out.”

  That’s all it takes for him to draw his hand back. “Okay. Let me get this straight, then. You wanted me to comfort you, but you don’t want a relationship. You tell me I make you happy, but you don’t want me to be your boyfriend. You want all the perks of a relationship without the actual commitment, because god forbid you let someone hold your hand or open a door for you.”

  “Tarek…”

  “I’m not wrong, am I?”

  He is. He’s so incredibly wrong, but I’m losing the will to defend myself.

  “If relationships are so great, why haven’t your other ones worked out?” It’s a low blow. “You made them seem so perfect on Instagram, but those gestures—were they one-sided? What did your girlfriends ever do for you in return? And what was your record? Three months?”

  “You can’t call it a record,” he says. He has every right to be angry with me, but he’s soft, so soft, the way he always is, and that’s what makes his words cut even deeper. I can feel how badly he wants this like it’s a living, breathing thing in the hall with us. “It’s not some competition. Maybe… Maybe I’m not good at relationships without the flashy stuff. Maybe I’m still trying to figure out how, exactly, to navigate that. But I’m good with you.”

  The fact that he’s still so invested in us when I am clearly upsetting him is further proof of what I’ve believed for so long. I was scared of us hurting each other, but the truth? We already are.

  I have done so much more damage than I thought possible.

  As though it’ll make me more confident in what I’m about to say, I straighten my posture, though the wall is still holding me up. “Fine. Here’s the real reason I don’t want to be in a relationship with you. The reason I can’t. It’s because the last time we got close, the closest we’d ever been, you hurt me. And I know I hurt you too—that I hurt you first—before that. I know we’ve apologized. I thought we’d moved past it, that I was over it, but even if I’m not actively hurting every moment I’m with you, it’s still there, underneath everything, no matter how close we get. That’s what relationships do to people. Every time you do one of those gestures, it makes me realize we’re going to end up back there again. It reminds me that it’s inevitable.”

  That inevitability is the electric current running beneath all our encounters this summer. My good old anxiety-brain, finally stepping up and protecting me.

  I thought we were so different from who we were last year, but maybe we haven’t learned at all.

  “Quinn,” he says, but I’m not done.

  “You don’t know what it was like when my parents separated. How fucking lonely those six months were. Half a year, Tarek, and it didn’t ‘heal with time’ or any of the things people say about shit like that.”

  This seems to only make him angrier. He tugs at the tight sleeves of his uniform, shoving them up so he can scratch the dry skin on his wrist. “You think you can avoid being hurt just because you don’t put a label on it? Because I have news for you. We’re in a relationship. We have been all summer. You can call it whatever you want or you can call it nothing”—he puts a sharp emphasis on that word—“but that doesn’t make you exempt from getting hurt. We’re all hurting, Quinn. In different ways, some that we can treat with medication and therapy and some only with time. And some in ways that might never heal. Sometimes the good outweighs the bad. Sometimes those great times are so fucking great that they make the bad times a little easier to handle.”

  “Or they make them worse.” I’ve hunched back down, my shoulder blades wearing grooves in the wall. “Did you know that even after my mom moved back in, I couldn’t sleep at night for months? But I guess you wouldn’t be able to relate since your perfect parents have their perfect little story.”

  “My parents are far from perfect.”

  “I’ve never seen them fight.”

  “Oh, just because you don’t see them do it when they’re at work, that means they don’t?” he says. “I’m sorry about your parents. I can’t imagine what it was like to go through that, and it’s shitty they never talk about it. But couples fight. You and I did.”

  I scoff at that. “You can’t pretend that’s some sign we’re meant to be together.”

  “No, but it doesn’t mean we’re doomed, either. Sometimes couples fight. It doesn’t mean they’re not right for each other—it means they’re trying to work something out. Together.”

  “That’s what I’m trying to tell you,” I say. Even with as much conviction as I can muster, it’s only a whisper. I make myself stronger, urging certainty into my voice. “I don’t want to try.”

  At that, his face just… shatters. That’s the only way to describe it. It shatters, and I’m the one holding the sledgehammer.

  “Okay,” he finally says, all the feeling drained from his voice. “Okay. I get it now. It should have been clear to me before, but I guess I was too much of a fucking optimist to see it. There’s no way we can make each other happy.” He breaks off, takes a deep breath, as though working to keep his emotions at bay. When he speaks again, there’s a roughness to his voice. “If you were doing this to save yourself from being hurt, well, congratulations. Let’s just end it right now so you don’t have to suffer any more than you already have.”

  I’ve broken him.

  This sweet, romantic, optimistic boy, and I’ve broken him.

  He turns to head down the corridor, and I have to rush to catch up.

  “Tarek, wait—that’s not what I—” I try to reach for him, but he shrugs me off. I was supposed to be in control here.

  “What did you say it was? Inevitable?”

  I did. I did say that. “Please,” I whisper to his back, unsure how this went so wrong and how to make it right. I don’t even know what I’m pleading for, only that I don’t want to be alone right now, and I’m scared of what that means. “Tarek. Please.”

  He just walks right into the kitchen, leaving me in the silent corridor with my brain the quietest it’s ever been.

  26

  For the next three days, I don’t leave the tower, except to sneak down to the kitchen when I’m positive my parents are out of the house. On day two, even Edith gets fed up and goes in search of someone who will do something other than cry into her fur. I listen to Cat Power on repeat, though it only makes me sadder.

  I can’t even bring myself to talk to Julia. Her most recent text says, hey hi making sure you’re alive, and I manage to type back, yep, just busy, sorry.

  It’s too similar to Tarek’s text from last year, which of course only sinks me deeper into this mess I’ve made. I hate how similar I am to that girl I was last year: weepy, hollow, half of myself. The last time I couldn’t control my emotions around Tarek. The last time I let someone get close enough to leave a mark.

  This was supposed to be the easy way out. It was what I wanted since our first kiss, but it’s getting harder and harder to remember why.

  It’s not just Tarek I’ve lost this time. Somehow, I managed to wreck all my relationships in a single day. It aches, imagining my parents downstairs, ushering couples into their office, my dad scratching things out and scribbling over the kitchen calendar. It took a lot of apologizing, but they should manage to get past this nightmare unscathed. They offered every guest at the wedding discounts for their services and for some of their vendors. Victoria even seems to have moved beyond caring what people think about her and Lincoln, since they’re letting Streamr move forward with it next month.

  I’ve seen the trailer. It promises to deliver just as much drama as the show did.

  I shouldn’t be surprised that my parents have handled it all like pros, that they’ve smoothed out my mistake and washed away the evidence. That they’ve cut me out of B+B, exactly the way I wanted. And yet a few times, I’m compelled to race downstairs, tell them I didn’t mean any of it, beg them to let me back
in.

  But I don’t. Despite the way it happened, everything I said was true.

  * * *

  Day four of wallowing coincides with Asher’s bachelorette party. A party bus pulls onto our block and honks to the tune of “It’s Raining Men.” I’ve had enough men for the time being, thanks.

  “It’s here!” Asher shouts from downstairs, where she and her friends have been getting ready. Because we are Just That Kind of Family, our mother is coming too.

  The last place I want to be right now is on a party bus with a half dozen screaming women, but it’s for my sister. I don’t want to ruin the party for her, not after I’ve already ruined so much. I wasn’t sure if she still wanted me there, but when I texted her last night, she said of course she did. So I put on my shortest, tightest dress, paint my face, and meet the rest of them in the hallway. It should be clear I’m not myself: I’m wearing black.

  It turns out that a party bus is precisely as terrible as it sounds. It’s outfitted with neon lights, sticky plastic seats, and a ridiculous amount of alcohol. There are two poles at either end. For… dancing? Yes, I learn as a couple of bridesmaids start grinding against them. Yes, that is exactly what they’re for.

  “Quinn!” yells maid-of-honor Whitney, a third-grade teacher and Asher’s best friend from high school. “Dance with us!”

  “I’m good,” I call back, sipping a sparkling water.

  Asher’s wearing a frilly white romper with a pink sash over it that says OFF THE MARKET. She rolled her eyes when one of her bridesmaids, Brianne, presented her with it, but she put it on anyway. Her hair is down, her waves doused with so much mousse they almost look crunchy.

  The music is loud, and that keeps me from spiraling. Keeps me present. Asher’s friends ask me about my summer, about college, all seemingly innocuous topics that make me borderline hyperventilate. Still, I try to answer with as expressionless a face as possible.