[Writing Prompt] Write about a complicated relationship.

I met her when I was in a dark place.

The girl before her had died. Suicide. I still can’t even think of it without gripping whatever is close and hyperventilating for a moment. She was there, though, to help me get through it. I allowed myself to hope again. I allowed myself to dream.

Still, the thoughts come, unbidden and intrusive. What if she’s not the one? I shake those thoughts out of my mind as they come, but still the question remains like a phantom in the back of my mind. She’s not the nicest. She’s not the best with my family. She’s not the emphatic, relatable person that Allison was. But I love her still.

It’s funny to think about the first time my family met her. Allison had been gone for a month when I turned up to family dinner with Kacey in tow. My mother gave me her signature look, raised eyebrows and all. My father didn’t say a word to Kacey. My little brother went on about high school, I went on about college, and my parents hardly said three sentences between each of them. Steak had never tasted so bitter before.

I can’t help but smirk as I think of that.

Last week we went to the movies, followed by her favorite restaurant. The movie was fine; it’s always fine when there’s no reason to speak to each other. Dinner, though… Sitting face to face brings out the hope. The reason I believed. I’d never been with a girl that would split the check. Even Allison. As we walk to the parking garage my hand slips into hers naturally, like it was meant to be there. For a half hour I am happy.

Then we get back to our home. She moved in shortly after her first dinner with my family. When she’s asleep or away I wonder how it would work if we were to break up. What happens when you cosign on a house together? Who does it go to? Maybe I’m just planning for what will surely happen eventually. Maybe I’m just being silly. All I can think of is my thoughts when Allison was with me. I didn’t wonder how the breakup would go. I knew that in the event that she left me I would move somewhere else, maybe California or Massachusetts. In her final act she had robbed me of that decision. So I stayed here, where I grew up. Where my family was from. Where I was safe.

Sometimes it was easy to forget where Kacey had come from. Sometimes she wouldn’t let me forget. Through it all, though, it’s impossible to forget where we started.

We met each other in a dark place. And I feel some responsibility to make whatever place we leave in a better place that the one we met in.