The Imitation Game ✓

TWENTY-FIVE | RUN AWAY WITH ME

Cora and Simon rarely talked about what they could have been. For the remainder of high school, she spent a lot of time beating herself up over the fact that she couldn't love him the right way. Until eventually, after much too long, she finally realized that there was nothing wrong with the way she loved him now. Being platonic didn't mean that their relationship had any less meaning. And if there was anything that dating and then breaking up had taught them, it was that nothing was capable of tearing them apart.

Still, there were instances where they wondered what that other life might have been like. It was much more complicated to process your emotions towards someone on days when it felt like they were the only bright spot in your life, the only person on Earth who truly loved you exactly as you were.

The furthest Cora ever took the fantasy of her and Simon getting back together was on a dismal, windy night during their junior year of college.

It was a bad day all around. For starters, she was on her period, and during one of her classes, she realized that a tiny spot of blood had somehow leaked onto her light pants. She'd fled the room under the guise of feeling sick, paranoid that Rasmus—the only male in the room at the time—was going to notice the stain if she stayed around for the rest of rehearsal. Then, the boy she liked texted her to let her know that he "wasn't really interested" anymore after they'd gone on two dates together and he'd kissed her just the night before. Now, she was cramping so badly that she wished she could rip her uterus out.

Her stomach growled, yet she didn't feel like eating dinner. She'd indulged in some hard seltzers while she was at the peak of wallowing in her misery earlier and they weren't sitting well in her stomach. The thought of ingesting cafeteria food right now was nauseating, but she didn't have it in her right now to drive out for something else, either.

So her feet carried her out to the ocean, where she settled herself down into the sand in spite of the wind that blew grains of it into her hair. Breathing in the salty air always helped to soothe her for some reason and sometimes even helped when she felt physically unwell like she did now. Perhaps it was just that the sensory experience of it was strong enough to distract her from everything else.

The light of her phone screen pierced the foggy air around her as she pulled it out of her pocket to text Simon. Her fingers stumbled around the screen a little bit as she typed out his name.

simon?

What's up?

will you run away with me?

Simon is typing...

Where are you?

our spot.

Stay put. I'll be there in a few minutes.

Cora smiled. He was coming to hear her out. He was always willing to hear her out.

She saw him from a distance, a black silhouette against the swells of the sand dunes and an angry sky. But as he got close and at last lowered himself into a crouch at her side, she could see a disconcerted frown marring his lips.

He took in her appearance, then asked, "Are you drunk?"

She raised her chin defiantly. "I'm not drunk. I mean, I was earlier. A little bit. But I'm not now. I meant what I said."

A gust of wind surged around them, but he brushed the front strands of her hair behind her ears before they could blow in her face and sat down next to her. "Then what's this running away stuff about?"

She glanced down at the ground, drawing little swirls in the sand with her fingers. "I'm tired," she confessed. "And angry. What if we could start over? What if we just went somewhere where no one knew us?"