tyler doesn’t delude herself into thinking she knows everything. hell, she doesn’t even tell herself that she knows a lot. there’s an entire universe full of things, people, & places that she’ll never really know or understand. & there’s nothing wrong with that. life is about learning, no matter where that takes you or how. she’s spent her entire life getting that into her head. the day she learned how to ride a bike, then roller blades, then a long board. the day she memorized the feeling of her lips pressed against someone else’s, & realized that she quite liked the taste of strawberry lip gloss. the day she learned what it was like to want something so fiercely, & how it led up to the day she learned what it was like to let go. the day she learned to love her mother & the day she learned that she could never love that woman.
that is all to say, tyler doesn’t know much, but she knows a lot. furthermore, she knows ANDREA. once upon a time, she did. one thing she things has never changed is the fact that andrea will almost always try to make others happy, even when it doesn’t make her happy. maybe she doesn’t want tyler anywhere near her, but oh, tyler is a very selfish person. things will never quite be the same with the girl in front of her. they’ll never have the happily ever after that tyler would once swear was promised to them, & she’s long since accepted that. but there’s maybe a part of her that will always yearn for andrea. some part of her soul will always ache for her, & maybe tyler can ignore that, but temptation is a sweet fruit dangling on the edge of a cliff.
now & again, tyler finds that she’s all too content to fall.
she slips into the seat across from andrea, hoping that this isn’t a mistake. it feels like it, when the word friend leaves andrea’s lips, not quite big enough to encompass all that tyler felt, but almost too big for what they were. she ignores the feeling. fuck, why is she here? ❝ it’s… it’s been a while. ❞ a cup of hot chocolate mixed with coffee is placed in front of her, topped with whipped cream & sprinkled with cinnamon. she didn’t order it, but she’s here too often, maybe, & always orders the same thing. she wraps her hands around the mug, her skin almost burning against the heat, but it’s welcome. it calms her. ❝ how’ve you been? ❞
it had been so long since tyler had been this close to andrea. she mainly saw the other girl through screens when she stayed up late at night, stalking her Instagram page, wondering what could have been. but the heat of her computer or phone was nothing compared to the heat andrea used to feel when tyler was close to her. that heat was still somewhat present – the flame burned out but it still glowed. it wasn’t the same intense heat as andrea felt when they first met, but the warmness in her heart was an all too familiar feeling when it came to tyler. a part of andrea felt like she couldn’t breathe with tyler so close, but another part of andrea felt like breathing was easier now that tyler was around. it was like being around tyler was a paradox, something andrea couldn’t quite solve.
with tyler this close, all the memories come flooding back. andrea was pretty good at repressing most of her feelings, most of the time – she was her parent’s daughter, after all. but something about seeing tyler, in the flesh, made everything more real and exponentially scarier. she remembers all the late nights they stayed up, chatting each other up on aol instant messenger, tyler’s dry sense of humor that andrea should have hated but didn’t, the longing looks they would give each other in the hallway, michelle teasing her about her crush on lorfield’s resident goth girl. those were the good memories – but she also remembers the bad ones as well.
she remembers pushing tyler out, seeing the look on tyler’s face when andrea finally snapped, the unread messages, the read but unreplied to messages, the empty promises of ‘maybe someday we’ll find our way back to each other.’ andrea knew it was naive to hope that this was someday but she did. FUCK, she still believed in all those fairytales and romcoms that were forced down her throat as a teenage girl. still believed that maybe the one that got away ( tyler ) didn’t need to be the one that stayed away.
feeling the other girl this close to her was electrifying – something she hadn’t felt in so long. they sit across from each other, their knees almost touching, but just missing – what a fucking metaphor, andrea thinks. always missing; so close to being together yet too far apart for anything to actually happen. andrea eyed tyler’s drink, noting that she still took the same drink she used to get when they went for late night bites in high school. after taking a sip of her vanilla milkshake, andrea nodded. “ yeah, it has been a while. ” understatement of the century, they hadn’t seen each other in over six years, since andrea graduated from lorfield high and got the hell out of the godforsaken town. “ i've been pretty good. living in la, doing music. what about you? ” she asks, as she cocks her head to one side. “ are you still the resident goth girl of lorfield? ”
