This Used to Be Easier

Meg Doyle did not intend to return home from college with a suitcase and nowhere else to go.

Ideally, she would have rolled up to her tiny home town in a limousine and jumped out wearing a designer tuxedo. She would have shaken a few hands, signed a few autographs, and maybe kissed a few girls before riding off into the sunset of her glorious, post-grad future in set design.

Instead, she's stuck spending the summer in her childhood bedroom, trawling the internet for job listings after a last minute internship cancellation in Europe.

It's anything but triumphant. Her friends in the city won't stop reminding her what she's missing, her mom won't stop researching lesbian slang terms to seem more "relatable," and around every corner in the small town of Chapel Creek, there's Connie Shipley.

The girl Meg used to know better than anyone in the world. The girl she spent countless nights huddled under the blankets with for sleepovers and movie marathons. The girl who leaned in and kissed her four summers before.

The girl who hasn't spoken to her since.

. . . Which makes it very inconvenient that Meg's heart still stops every single time she sees her.