Maybe Once, Maybe Twice(105)

I understood more than he knew. Up until a few years ago, I didn’t think children were for me. It wasn’t until I unpacked my father wound with my therapist that I started to realize that I desperately wanted a child. I hoped, for Asher’s sake, that he would dive into the deep wound left by his brother, even if it meant deciding that children still weren’t for him. I knew I couldn’t wait around for that answer, nor would I ever want to resent him for taking his time to get there. He deserved more than that. And so did I.

Asher pulled me toward him and kissed me, hands in my hair, tears and longing everywhere. Asher Reyes kissed me like it was the end. It felt like falling off a shooting star—gorgeous and devastating.

We held each other until the sun rose. It was the hardest goodbye of my life, by far.

I couldn’t help but think, as I held Asher that night, tears in both our eyes, massive, full love swelling from both our bodies, that maybe I had misunderstood my mom. Maybe this was what happened to her. Maybe she got so much love in that short time from my father that it was enough. Maybe their breakup didn’t leave a void inside her. Maybe their love filled her up, so much that there wasn’t actually a hole. There was boundless untamed love that they explored—that much I pieced together from their stories—especially from the way my dad talked about my mom. I would call my mom and ask her—I owed her that much. Actually, I owed her a lot more than that.

The love of your life doesn’t have to last forever. I would live the rest of my life knowing that loving and being loved by Asher Reyes—twice in this lifetime—was more than enough.





55

SEVENTEEN




I STARED AT THE PHONE, frustration bubbling, pacing back and forth in my tiny dorm room. It was 8:07 at night. Asher had said he’d call at eight. He was never late. He was late.

Already two months into my freshman year, life wasn’t going as I expected, so while Asher being late to call me wasn’t a crime, it was coming on the heels of my crippling loneliness. I hadn’t made a lot of friends at NYU, and everyone in my music classes had the kind of talent I had thought made me rare and sparkly. Not helping was my roommate, Summer Groves, a horrible excuse for a person. Cold and mean, she acted like I had done something unfathomable to her the second I greeted her with a wide smile on our first day on campus. I was thankful that she was at some random rally tonight, not here to flick her eyes at me as I melted down over my boyfriend’s lack of calling.

Long distance, the time change, and Asher’s and my differing class schedules and commitments seemed impossible to navigate. I found myself saying no to going out and making friends, just so I could spend my dinners talking to him on the phone. This wasn’t how I’d pictured college. Asher had a rigorous schedule at USC, the theater program left little time for fun—let alone spending hours on the phone with his girlfriend. And my schedule at NYU, with my major in music production, didn’t exactly leave idle time, either.

I knew we were drifting apart. I knew it, yet I didn’t want it to be true.

I jumped, my flip phone buzzing in my hands. I flicked it open.

“Hey,” I said, a little coldly.

“I’m sorry.” Asher sighed on the other end of the line.

“It’s okay.”

I sat on the edge of my twin-sized bed, swinging my legs back and forth.

“This is hard, Mags. This is harder than I thought.” His voice was thick, as if he was wrestling with something.

I could feel a wave of pain throbbing under my lashes, bubbling, waiting.

“Do you—do you not want to do this anymore?” I asked, my voice small.

“It’s not that. I don’t not want to do this—I just—I can’t only see you twice a year and talk to you when the timing—when we feel rushed, and it sucks for both of us. That’s—that’s not a relationship. That’s not fair to either of us. I don’t know what to do,” he said.

I swallowed the tears, my hands trembling.

“Yes, you do, you just don’t want to do it. So I’ll—I’ll do it for you,” I cracked.

I pictured him pacing outside his dorm at USC, the gorgeous cream fountains and green palm trees in view, his olive skin bathing in the sun, his face filled with sadness. I wanted to hold him, I needed him to hold me, and I knew, the way you just know, that we wouldn’t be holding each other anytime soon, or maybe ever again. And with that brutal thought, my chest caved in, and a special kind of loneliness filled all the spaces he had ever touched. My hands, my arms, my knees, my neck, my heart, my soul—I was consumed by a heavy, dark cloud.

On the other end of the line, so was he.

“Mags,” he said quietly, his voice breaking, his tears audible even through mine. “I don’t want to do this,” he cried.

I tugged myself into the fetal position, holding the phone to my cheek as I buckled, the cries guttural. I’d felt rejection and sadness when my father broke his promises—but his lack of fathering never felt like something that I was losing, like a loss that was permanent. His just felt like a temporary disappointment. This pain was splintering.

Losing Asher Reyes was losing a part of me I would never get back. This was heartache creating a hole inside me that no one else could fill.

No one else but him.