Page 4 of Here's to Yesterday

I need…real…tangible. And as head over heels as I was for Tanner in the beginning, that’s faded. A lot. If a person were to ask, could I say I love Tanner? Sure. Would I mean it? Probably not. Dead giveaway for how much longer this “relationship” needs tolast.

“How’s the how long-distance thing working out?” Becca asks, twisting my hair up into a clip a little toohard.

“Ouch.”

“Shit. Sorry,Maura.”

“It’s fine. I kinda expect your abuse by now,” I tease. I have a rather sensitive head, and Becca always ends up pulling my hair a little toohard.

“You should.” She winks at me in the mirror. “But don’t dodge my question. How isit?”

I hold back my sigh and respond with, “Awesome.”

But that’s a lie.Again.

The first month we were together was wonderful. Everything moved fast, and it was so storybook perfect that I let myself get lost in it. I didn’t pay attention to how genuine my feelings were. Or weren’t. It didn’t prepare me for the long-distance part of the relationship at all. I didn’t know how hard it would be. I didn’t know that when I saw him again, it would be different. I assumed it would all be the same, and that I would feel cheap when we met up for weekendvisits.

“Babe,” Tanner says, grabbing at me as I close the door to the mediocre hotel room we got for theweekend.

His mouth is on mine before anything else can be said or I can even set my purse down. I kiss him back with equal fervor, hoping for a spark ofsomething.

Tanner tugs at my cardigan, pulling it from my shoulders haphazardly. Annoyed by his lack of grace, I push him off and pull the garment down my arms. He rips it from my hands, tosses it to the bed, and reaches for the button on my jeans. They’re on the floor before I know it, and he’s pressed against meagain.

“I need to fuckyou.”

And I let him. Right there on the back of a motel door, I lethim.

Because that’s how desperately I want to feel withhim.

In the end, Idon’t.

I assumed wrong because that’s exactly what they felt like after our last encounter—cheap. It wasn’t until then that I realized that it had been about the same all the times beforethat.

Not at all what I was hoping for when we first started allthis.

We met unexpectedly when he came into Clyde’s, the sports bar where I work, with his younger brother and friends last year. It was a lust-at-first-sight type of thing, and after hitting it off so well, we plunged head first into a relationship and never lookedback.

Or ahead,apparently.

I’m not saying Tanner is an awful boyfriend. He’s not the best, but he’s far from the worst. He may come off as this tough guy, asshole type to the world, but he’s not like that with me…most of the time. It’s like I hung the moon for him and him alone, and I don’t doubt for a second that when Tanner says he loves me, he means it in his special way. And when we’re together, wework.

Or at least weusedto.

“I couldn’t imagine having a long-distance relationship myself,” Becca comments. “It all seems so difficult to keep up with. Easy to get separated from who youare.”

Bingo!

When we’re together, I tend to let Tanner take the wheel and drive my emotions instead of kicking it over into manual and driving myself. Without him, I’m on guard and always watching over my shoulder, expecting to find my parents there correcting me since that’s what they’ve done all mylife.

I need to be one or the other. And so far, the version where I’m not checking over my shoulder constantly—the one where I feel as though I’m more capable of taking control of my own life like I was starting to do before—is the one I like themost.

I understand that finding a balance between the two different people we project is hard, but lingering in the middle like we have been isn’t working. It’s making everything much moredifficult.

We started off as these different people and created a beautiful friendship in the short time we had together. Thinking that was who we truly were, it bloomed into this whirlwind affair. Shortly after he left, we reverted to who we were before. Because of this, we’ve stayed in this never-ending push and pull of pretending. I think we enjoy those impeccable versions of each other too much to break it off, but it’s becoming exhausting to keep up thecharade.

“It’s hard, but someone has to do it,right?”

“Right,” Becca agrees distractedly. “Almost done. You’re gonna looksohot!”

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