It's the same old you, the same old me / You get bored and I get cold feet
It always starts the same: with a restless feeling in the pit of her stomach or a paranoid thought bouncing around in her head. For weeks they pretend everything is fine, but they both feel the distance growing between them. Everything between them starts to become monotonous, starts to feel like a routine they have been practising forever. Nothing feels new anymore, the way it did when they first got together, when they would spend hours, days even, exploring each other's bodies. Nothing feels exciting anymore; like when a single touch from Katie would send Effy into a frenzy, or how Effy could release a swarm of butterflies into Katie stomach with a mere look or a few simple words.
Effy starts to remember all the things she dislikes about love and committed relationships. She sees how love gets under people's skin, infesting and infecting them. It feeds off the host like a parasite, draining them of everything until there's nothing left, then it moves on to the next victim. The feeling that her life belongs to someone else starts to drive her mad. She doesn't want to be that person. She wasn't designed for love. Not for loving other people, at least. It all starts to build up: the monotony, the need, the dependence on another person, it surrounds her, burying her and leaving her feeling suffocated. It gets too much and she does what she does best: she runs. She has to get out while she still can.
She's out the door and halfway down the street before she even realises it. Her feet moving of their own accord, carrying her away from Katie, away from the home they made together and all the complications that go along with it. She starts to feel better for about five minutes. Then she starts to remember other things. She forgets about the petty arguments and remembers the way Katie looks at her first thing in the morning. The routine they have fallen into becomes less boring when she thinks about how cute it is when she's trying to reach something from the top shelf of a cupboard – her ass does look exceptional when she's on her tiptoes.
The further she gets from the one she loves the less important all those small things she'd been complaining about seem. She starts to find humour in how little Katie knows about current affairs. After all she looks adorable when she blushes after realising she's just asked another idiotic question. Her obsession with fashion might drive Effy crazy but fuck if Katie doesn't look spectacular in everything she wears (the underwear in particular).
Twenty minutes after her great escape Effy realises that not only is Katie adorable, sexy and sweet, but she also cares for her more than anyone else ever has. Katie Fitch has somehow found a way to truly love the oddity of Effy Stonem. Not only that, but Katie makes her feel things that no one else ever did. Katie has seen the best and the worst in her and still wants to be around her. When she starts to think of what she's left behind, of those beautiful cocoa coloured eyes that could be looking around their flat for her right at this moment, she realises she's made a mistake. She realises it's already too late; she's already in too deep. She's only been gone for twenty minutes and she's already lost without Katie.
She turns on her heels, knowing she was mad to ever think she was better off without Katie in her life, and sprints back to the flat. She almost tears the door from its hinges in her hurry to get back inside the building. She takes the stairs two at a time until she's standing outside the door. Without a moment's hesitation she opens it and rushes in. Katie's sitting on the sofa, cup of tea in hand, watching the soaps.
"Alright babes?" she asks with a bright and loving smile. In that instant Effy wants to fall at her feet and beg for forgiveness for her stupidity.
"Yeah," she smiles back, crossing the room to plant a deeply passionate kiss on the lips of her lover. Katie kisses back with equal passion and Effy wonders if Katie was aware of her transgression; maybe Katie didn't know of her moment of weakness, her moment of foolishness. Perhaps grovelling and apologies wouldn't be necessary; she could keep her craziness to herself.
"Enjoy your run?" Katie asks with a sly smirk. Effy collapses onto the couch beside her girlfriend wondering how she ever could have doubted this woman who not only knows her better than anyone else, but understands her better than she understands herself. Katie had known she was gone. Katie had known she ran away in fear. But Katie had also known she would come back because no matter how scared she got or how far she ran she always came back home.