The Pairing

I dropped out of college two months into my first semester.

It was supposed to be fun, going to college with Kit—and the Kit part was fun. UC Santa Barbara had a good art history program for him, and their swim team had scouted me, and I missed him. I’d tried so hard to get over him, but I missed him like tea misses honey, boring without him.

It had been easier than I expected to have him back. I’d anticipated the gut punch of our first reunion, how New York had made him taller and surer and even more sparkly, but then he had just been Kit. As much a part of me as the rest of me.

Lectures were boring, and I kept forgetting exams, but I could stick it out as long as I got to keep swimming. The pool was the one place I was really, truly great, so great that my coaches threw around words like college record and Olympic trials. Then I wrecked my shoulder at invitationals and the doctors benched me for good, so I didn’t see the point anymore. I didn’t tell anyone I was leaving; I just cleared out my dorm and silently moved back into my parents’ house in the Valley. That was the closest Kit and I ever came to a real, adult fight, when he found out I’d made the decision without him.