Come As You Are

Flash Fiction

He told her to come as she was, now, not as she was all those years ago when they had known each other last. ”Come as you are”. He thought she would try to recreate herself as she had been 15 years ago, just to please him and to show she had not changed, when, in fact, she had. She had always been the type to please people and he thought she would not want to seem changed, even though she certainly wasn’t 18 anymore. They had not seen each other since they had a huge fight years before about relatively nothing. They had both been 18 then, but she had not wanted to reconcile with him after the fight, and so they became former flames, just as they had once been lovers. 

Fifteen years ago had been the heyday of the popularity of Nirvana and songs like ”Come as you are”, and he had been a fan of the group, and that was one of the songs he liked. Danielle had liked some of their songs, too, he recalled. He did not want Danielle to pretend the past had not happened when they met, which is why he had told over the phone just before they planned to meet, to come as you are and not pretend the fight had not happened, or that she hadn’t changed, and that the fight had been just a moment unlike her.

They had had no contact for years, but now both lonely and single, and in their thirties, they had reconnected online and realized they should never have given up so easily what they had years ago when they were teenage lovers. So they planned to meet again and take it from there. They lived a hundred miles apart now, but to both of them that didn’t seem too much distance to just meet and see where life took them. At the very least, it would be closure if that was needed. 

So he told Danielle to meet him at the beach, which seemed like a place where things could begin anew away from the past, thus it sounded to him like a good spot to meet. He would come as he was, now, still hurt and confused by the past, but ready to start over. He hoped she would come as she was, too.