Maybe Once, Maybe Twice(17)

All at once, inhaling the wind was painful—shock turned to fury, insides tightening and boiling. I stepped in to his face, brows pointed together, anger showing. He froze, stunned by a version of Maggie Vine that he hadn’t yet seen. Few got to meet her.

“Are you bringing up my thirtieth birthday? Bringing up that promise?” I asked, my voice loud and mad. “We were sitting across from each other six weeks ago, and you failed to mention you were engaged. I poured my heart out to you, you hugged me—you fucking hugged me, and you left. And then, you iced me out. You couldn’t even text me back. And you’re bringing up a stupid promise we made five years ago?”

“It was more than that and you know it.”

“You put a ring on someone’s finger! If it meant more to you, if you wanted to start a life with me today, you wouldn’t be starting one with someone else,” I said, forcefully.

“Goddamnit Maggie, I thought you were turning me down on your thirtieth birthday,” he said, exasperated. His voice got quieter. “After that night, I thought that for you, the idea of me was always going to be better than the real thing. And then you told me—” He stopped for a moment, words stuck in his throat. “When I proposed to Cecily, I’d…I didn’t think I was a possibility for you. I’d put it out of my head. What am I supposed to do now, knowing that we should be together? You waited until after I’d put a ring on my girlfriend’s finger to tell me that for the last however many years, you were in love with me. And you knew I was in love with you.”

I couldn’t speak, tears were everywhere.

“I would have walked away from anyone for you. Anytime. Anyone,” he said, inches from my face, tears still holding tight in his eyes.

I let my lips part, knowing that the result might throw dirt on our coffin.

“And now?” I cracked, my voice quivering.

He swallowed hard and looked to the darkening sky before his eyes came back down to mine. His lips searched for words, even though it was clear he already had them. He just wasn’t sure how to make the delivery.

“I’m getting married.” He said it like an exhale that hurt.

I felt my chest caving in, my breathing turning rapid.

“That was always your answer, wasn’t it? She was your endgame when your feet led you to this park, when you saw me standing here, and you kissed me anyway.”

I was fully aware of what we had just done. The kiss would live inside me forever, filling me up and then bleeding me dry. From this day forward, “Crash Into Me” would land like tiny paper cuts all over my skin. Silent tears rolled down my chin as I stepped back from him.

Hope is The Unknown wrapped in a safety net. It’s wading through rough waters, clinging to the possibility that a big wave might push your shivering, tired body onto the balmy, sun-kissed shoreline, and ignoring the fact that a big wave might sneak up and drown you. When sparkly hope gives way to a cruel reality, when you can nearly taste the shoreline but you’re caught in the undertow, it’s heartbreak.

I felt my chest split in two. The possibility of Garrett was one of the things that I had allowed to pull me further away from reaching the shore, from finding the right man to start a family with. I believed no one else measured up to him, so I didn’t give myself a fair shot to test the hypothesis. There was a part of me that believed he’d show up on my thirty-fifth birthday and put it all on the line. He’d kiss me, and that kiss would be the beginning of the rest of our lives, just like I had promised. Instead, it was confirmation that Garrett and I fit perfectly, but we would never be. I was thirty-five, and the road less traveled was officially a dead end.





9

TWENTY-SEVEN




I SUCKED THE FRESH BLUE ink off my index finger, rereading the outro. It was beautiful, but thanks to the swaying tour bus, I was certain I wouldn’t be able to decipher my jittery handwriting come tomorrow.

Twisting tides breaking your fisherman’s bend

I like it when I’m afraid of how it ends



I grinned, steadied the open notebook on my bare thigh, and reinked the lyrics as the minor key danced in my brain. The tour bus’s bunk alley had become my favorite place to write. It was a warm cocoon: velvet blackout curtain around my twin-size bed, the lingering smell of frequent palo santo cleansings, and miles of blurry fields and crisp stars out my window. The road swayed my body like a hammock—ideal for focusing and sleeping, not so much for eligible penmanship.

I glanced up from the rewritten words, seeing my phone brighten under my notebook’s leather binding. My heart stayed neutral as I read Garrett’s name atop the lock screen.


When are you getting back here already? It’s peak NYC. Sheep Meadow awaits!



I clicked on his text’s accompanying photo: a picture of barely clothed New Yorkers sprawling all over Sheep Meadow’s green lawn—enjoying the first warm day of the year. I spotted Summer in the corner of the photo, flipping the camera off. While I was on tour, Summer had invited Garrett to come to one of her client’s fashion shows, and apparently, they shut down the after-party together, getting happy-drunk and sharing a cab ride home. And then they started going for coffee. And now my two best friends were sitting in Central Park annoying the hell out of each other in a loving way. I smiled big, comforted by the idea of them becoming friends. I took in the photo, reminded of the first time I saw Garrett running through that patch of grass.