Maybe Once, Maybe Twice(10)
My dad never blindly loved a song. He knew the entire backstory to all his favorites. It was habit—he was a music theory professor. He taught me to appreciate intention behind the lyrics, and he shaped my brain to fall in love with words before melody.
“Mags, this song is about a woman who drops out of school because her dad’s an alcoholic, her life gets worse from there, and eventually the hope she placed in her lover’s arms turns to rust,” he yelled back to me. As a kid, I loved that my dad treated me like I was smart enough to understand concepts that I was not yet smart enough to understand.
The memory of my dad bubbled inside me until my chin quivered, and I came back down to earth—begging my stupid lack of a poker face to hide the fact that I was one move away from weeping openly in the vegetable aisle of a Trader Joe’s in front of a man I wanted to see naked.
I glanced away so he couldn’t see my eyes glassing over, and we approached the checkout line, now just a few people deep. Garrett tilted his blue eyes at me, tall frame looming over my warring expression. Instead of asking what was wrong, he fucking smiled—a goddamn Cheshire cat smile. Was he aware he could heal people with a grin? Because the pang of grief melted away as I lost myself in his sparkling whites.
He pointed to his chest, announcing, “Blink-182.”
I exhaled a laugh. “Blink-182 hurt you first? Yikes. You’re officially no longer allowed to make fun of my chocolate beer.”
“Excuse me? ‘Dammit’ is a national treasure.”
“You cried to ‘I guess this is growing up’?”
“I don’t cry. The song just…spoke to my soul.”
He didn’t cry, but he had a music-nerd heart. Was he repressed, or did he have emotional restraint? Because I had a music-nerd heart, and I cried all the time. I was once reduced to the fetal position over a holiday minivan commercial. I could always find something that would bring me to my knees. And here he was, announcing “I don’t cry” as if it were a shrug.
He grinned at the checkout lady.
“One check.”
“Two checks,” I said gently.
I smiled at Garrett, my heart-shaped face saying, I appreciate the gesture, but not necessary. He raised his hands in the air, backing down.
I was uncomfortable with the idea of being indebted to anyone, except Summer—and it took me years to ask to borrow her white T-shirt. My mother had a spot-on way of making me feel guilty for being born. Every tiny thing I accomplished or failed to accomplish either shined a light on her achievements in spite of me, or her lack of achievements because of me. At my college graduation, my mom tucked my hair behind my ears and adjusted the cap on my head, musing, “I never got to walk at my college graduation. If only you hadn’t decided to come four weeks early.” My existence was one giant favor owed. And this is why I paid for four-dollar beer instead of letting a nice guy do a nice thing for me.
Nice Guy and I pushed our bodies outside onto Fourteenth Street, the balmy August night hitting my cheeks as I turned to meet him. Garrett had just finished redistributing his purchases among his four bags—probably so he could perform evenly weighted bicep curls with his groceries on his walk home. The orange sunset cast a glow on his wicked smile, a smile that was impossible not to match.
“I’m that way,” Garrett said, nodding behind me.
“I’m that way,” I said, pointing behind him.
He stepped forward, his blue eyes just inches from my face. My heart fluttered as he took my free hand in his and set the handle of a brown paper bag onto my open palm. He closed my fingers around it.
“Good night, Maggie May.”
Before I had the chance to find words, he curved past my body and disappeared into the packed street. I slowly peered down at the bag. Inside was the nice bottle of red wine and the box of s’mores. A stunning swirling sensation fluttered to every inch of my skin—neon glitter exploding in my chest. This wasn’t the discomfort of being indebted to someone—not even close.
You know the moment you realize the person across from you could be the person who fills the blanks inside your soul? I’d felt this once before—but at fourteen I didn’t understand how rare it was.
For the first time in nearly a decade, I was drunk on the possibility of someone else.
I glanced down at the time on my phone: 7:15. I would come back to Trader Joe’s next Monday at 7 p.m. I would wait for him by the eclectic beer. I could only hope he would do the same.
And he did.
6
THIRTY-FIVE
IT WAS MY THIRTY-FIFTH BIRTHDAY, and I had just been told that I was as fertile as someone approaching menopause. I tried to remember how to pretend that I wasn’t dying inside, which was hard for the woman who wore her heart on her sleeve.
I couldn’t escape the incoming demise of my unrealized dreams, but I could get drunk and high. I was crushing both of those things, swaying against the summer heat on the Great Lawn in Central Park, surrounded by fifty-five thousand strangers as the Dave Matthews Band jammed onstage. Concerts in the Park had been my favorite thing. They were free, they made the park come to life with a melody, and they were absent of New Yorkers who were too good for summers in the city. The loyal lot of us got to party inside my favorite park in the world, while lamenting about how we almost suffocated underground waiting for the C train. Beginning Memorial Day weekend, affluent New Yorkers fled the city’s humidity, camping out in the Hamptons for the summer like absolute assholes. I wanted very much to be an asshole. It was hashtag goals. Summer was a rich asshole who owned a home in East Hampton, but she had stayed behind to embrace the heat and celebrate me amid a sea of Dave Matthews Band bros, like a true best friend and masochist.