Maybe Once, Maybe Twice(47)

I stared across the room at the couple, watching the woman’s clenched jaw—her happiness hanging on by a thread.

“You know…you broke my heart,” I said softly, with eyes glued to the unhappy couple.

My lips stayed open in the candlelight as my gaze drifted back to Asher. He rolled his shoulders back, my statement hitting him like lightning, jolting his frame. He pulled his eyebrows together, staring fixedly at me.

“I thought we broke each other’s hearts.”

Smile and nod. Change the subject.

“Did we?”

“Are you asking me if our breakup crushed me?” He was fully flabbergasted.

“I mean, it would be nice to hear,” I said, smiling and leaning in, my dimpled chin resting on my hand. I was trying to make light of something that wasn’t light at all.

He mimicked me, resting his hand on his chin, just a handful of inches from my face, but his expression was pained. He took me in for a moment.

“Mags, there’s some nights where I sit alone and think—” He paused, keeping his eyes locked on mine, the rest of the sentence in his throat.

My insides were humming, waiting for him to fill in that blank. He moved his entire body closer, his lips mere inches from mine.

“You were the biggest heartbreak of my life.”

I blinked rapidly, my chest aching. For years I had thought that I was crazy, histrionic, insecure—but it hadn’t just been me. Even as a grown adult, a part of me wondered if I had lost my soulmate as a teenager, and that thought was humiliating. It felt like an admission: I don’t know how to grow up. I don’t know how to move on. I carried it around like a weight. And here he was, telling me that he carried it, too. My heart felt like it was breaking for What Could Have Been.

“You weren’t supposed to lose me,” I said, tears rimming my eyes.

“You weren’t supposed to lose me, either,” he cracked, not even bothering to hide the emotion in his throat.

We traced each other’s gazes, wistful, teary, and a whole lot of something else. He slowly inched his mouth toward mine. He put his finger under my chin, tilting me up to him.

I opened my lips, just an inch from his.

“I—I can’t kiss you. Not until the work is done. And then…I’d very much like to kiss you.”

Asher’s eyes went wide against my words. My manager’s advice was echoing in the back of my head, reminding me not to touch Asher before the work was done. He didn’t flinch or pull back, because neither did I. We were frozen, just inches from each other, his eyes blazed on mine—a fire growing between us.

“One of us should move our lips here,” he whispered, the heat of his mouth floating on my lips.

I couldn’t move as his eyes scanned mine.

“Do you need it to be me?” he finally asked.

“I—I really do…” I said, achingly, desperate to just fill the gap between our mouths.

He leaned back and exhaled, adjusting his jeans and taking a long sip of water. He turned back to me, seeing that I was still frozen in place.

“Do you want to hear the song? I worked on ‘See You if I Get There’ this afternoon, and it’s almost done,” I found myself saying.

“Right now?”

“Tonight? Later? My friend, Summer, grabbed my guitar from my apartment, so I need to go back to her place to retrieve it, but…”

He shot me a warm smile.

“Mags, I’m not going to be that guy.”

“What guy?”

“I don’t want you to feel like I’m taking advantage of you, in any way, ever.”

We had always played on an even field in our relationship. But Asher and I were in two different galaxies now—he had an Oscar, and I didn’t have health insurance. When I was with him all those years ago, all he ever did was lift me up, cheer me on, and want me to succeed. This time didn’t appear to be any different. I wasn’t a woman feeling pressured by a big movie star who could make or break her career. I was a woman openly flirting with her big movie star ex-boyfriend who could make or break her career.

“I want to play you the song. Nothing more.”

I want to play you the song and run my nails along your naked spine.

“I—I’m trying to figure out how to say this without sounding like a complete asshole,” he said, holding my eyes. He leaned forward, speaking lowly so only I could hear, with his arm brushing against mine. “I don’t know how I will be able to go home with you and pull back from your lips if you don’t pull back first.”

I circled the rim of my wineglass with my hand, watching his chest rise and fall under his T-shirt. I moved my hand to the stem of the glass, gripping hard to keep from reaching out and tugging him toward me.

“Are we really this bad at self-control?” I asked, my voice cracking.

“To be fair, we never had to practice self-control,” he said.

“That’s…kind of true,” I said.

I took a sip of my wine to hide my reddening face as he raised his brows.

“Kind of?”

“I actually—” I closed my mouth.

Asher leaned in farther, eyes wide, a smile on his face.

“You what?”

“Last day of camp, our second year. After color war, I really wanted to—you know.”