Back When You Were Easier to Love Read Online Free

Super-Saturday. I unlocked the toy closet and weeded through the toys, throwing away broken stuff and matching up the underwear-clad dress-up doll with her various felt outfits. Soon moms started dropping off their kids—mainly boys, or girls too young for the Super-Saturday festivities.
    “I’ll make you a flower barrette,” one mom promised a clingy toddler. “But you have to be good.”
    Bribery by barrette. Only in Haven.
    Pretty soon we had a full house, and I was managing nicely. One group was racing Hot Wheels on a homemade vinyl mat with little streets and parking lots drawn on it. A four-year-old was playing the minikeyboard with her little brother. I was regulating a dull game of Red Light/ Green Light with everybody else.
    It was only when a girl in pink-sequined shoes asked me to take her to the bathroom that I realized something: I was all alone.
    Where was everybody else? Was there an everybody else? I checked the standard-issue wall clock. Super-Saturday was well underway.
    So I did the only thing I could think of: I texted Zan. Wanna help me babysit? It’s dire!
    What about your friends?
    They’re at Super-Saturday. I’m alone. Help! Church on Nola Drive.
    He was there six minutes later. I knew I’d woken him because his hair was still wet and his chin and upper lip were stubbly. “Hey,” he said, sounding tired.
    “Be right back,” I said, running out of the room holding hands with sequin-shoes. “I’m taking Trina to the potty.” I whirled back around. “I mean, I’m taking her to the restroom.”
    Zan’s lips hinted at a smile. “Go. I’ll take care of things here.”
    Sometimes, lonely times, I replay those words in my head, the way I replayed them out loud that morning. “Yeah. You take care of things here.”

BACK WHEN YOU WERE EASIER TO LOVE
    I have an exceptionally large bladder, so usually it’s easy to avoid the school bathrooms. Today there’s no way around it: the girls’ room is the only place I can go where Noah won’t follow me. The fluorescent light bouncing off the pink-tiled walls practically gives me a seizure, so I lock myself in the nearest stall.
    There’s zero actual graffiti anywhere on school premises, because whenever students get more than three tardies in one term, they have to “work them off” by cleaning the school for two hours. It’s common to see a kid from your French class scrubbing garbage cans while you’re heading out to the parking lot after school. The bathroom stalls are usually sparkling, according to Mattia, who has cleaned them more than once.
    But while I’m standing in the stall, waiting for my eyes to adjust, I see something written on the top corner. There, in black Sharpie, are small letters—too deliberate for your run-of-the-mill vandalism. Back when you were easier to love.
    Blink.
    When did loving me become so hard?
    Blink.
    Why did loving me become so hard?
    Blink. Blink.
    What did he want me to be that I wasn’t?
    I can be that girl again. But I need him, first.

FABULOUS
    My first date with Zan was to a gay-rights rally on Super-Saturday.
    After the crafting died down and moms and big sisters came to collect, and after Zan and I put away the slobbery, broken toys, I was sure I’d never see him again. Not because I hadn’t had fun.
    I had. Kids loved Zan. Zan, who wore old-man shoes and had probably never played with a toy in his life. He talked quietly, and kids dropped their own voices to hear him. They laughed easily with him. They touched his no-time-to-shave stubble and he let them.
    I’d had fun. But I wasn’t sure Zan had.
    “There’s a poetry reading in about an hour, at the library,” he said. “Want to go?”
    I didn’t want to feel anything but excitement, didn’t want to feel anything but giddiness. Zan still liked me. Zan liked me even more, maybe. Zan was asking me out on a real date.
    But I couldn’t help the puzzlement crawling in my mind. “The library?” I was thinking a poetry reading at