By Karrah Bates
I never told you that I loved you. I can’t remember why I didn’t. But I promise: I will never forget that the love was there.
Our late night drives and the warmth of your fingers between mine have forever folded into the soft spaces behind my eyes. Your golden laugh, the bounce of your heels and the slaps on your knees, still echo in my ears every time a chain of traffic lights stays green. Celebrating an open road, I threw our hands out the sunroof, desperate for any excuse to keep touching you.
I don’t know why I didn’t tell you, back then; only that it was crucial that I commit your laugh to memory.
A summer later, I asked you out on a date. I remember you saying maybe. Then yes. Then no.
The hollowness of empty hoping still aches like it did back then. I lay in bed the next morning, curling into myself like someone had scooped my guts out with a spoon. How foolish was I, to hurl myself into the sky without first learning how to land? A year of gearing up to ask you to dinner, of telling myself it was worth the risk, and I’d gone and broken open my chest without considering what happens to hearts when ribs splinter.
Months later, I found a girlfriend. I remember trying to love her. I remember the guilt, because she wasn’t you.
A year after that, I had a boyfriend. I remember loving him, then leaving him. I remember trying again with him. Then the shame, for wanting it to be over, and hating that I wanted him to be you.
Two years later, I hoped and tried again with you. I asked you to give me a chance to prove I could be worth it. Pleading, maybe, to give me one shot. One date.
After all that, I can’t even say where we went or what we ate for dinner or what we talked about. All I know is that I said you could hold my hand if you wanted to, and that you didn’t.
I thought I’d pushed too hard. I pulled away, hoping you would call to ask for one more night. I bargained with myself to not reach out until you did.
I can’t remember if we spoke again after that. I just remember knowing that it needed to be over.
For a while, I told myself that it was good to stop trying, to simply let go and let burn. I lit a match to every letter and song I never mailed you; I doused myself in gasoline and leapt into the arms of anyone mad enough to catch me. Getting attached would turn me into that pathetic, rabid creature that I hated, so I kept myself slick. Perpetually flammable, any hint of heat meant that it was too dangerous for me to stay. It was safer for everyone if I fled at the first sign of flame.
One day, I leapt into someone’s arms and felt a spark. I ripped myself from him and ran, swelling with pride: I escaped the inevitable explosion of my own design! I didn’t push, I didn’t beg him to change, like I think I’d begged you. I was free to repeat.
But then, the strangest thing happened. He did what I thought no one could ever do for me; he did what I thought I’d burnt out with you.
He hoped, and he tried again.
He did it differently than I did. (Turns out, he’s been me before.) He didn’t try to convince me to change my mind; he changed for himself. (Whether I was there to see it or not.) He said he was glad we were both in town at the same time. (He searched for any excuse to be near me.) He respected my choice. (I changed my mind.)
I don’t know why I never told you that I loved you. Now, I just know why I never will.
Karrah Bates lives in the Denver, Colorado, area in the U.S. and works as a therapist with queer and neurodivergent folk. She has an affinity for writing sci-fi and fantasy, and her seemingly discordant media taste is simply categorized as, “yearn baby yearn.”