Maybe Once, Maybe Twice(53)

Summer stared past my face, her lips slightly parted with the pop culture epiphany. She shook her head and pointed her eyes back to the task at hand: my self-afflicted chaos.

“Seriously. Maggie. How fucked-up do you have to be to ask two different guys to promise they’ll marry you?”

“Apparently, exactly this fucked-up.”

“At the very least, you could have given Asher thirty and Garrett thirty-five, just to space your chances out. But honestly: Why? Why did you ask Asher to marry you at thirty-five?”

I stared at Summer, holding my arms, not wanting to unload my issues.

“Your mom?” she said, reading my mind.

I nodded. Summer started to pace in front of me, like a PR shark circling a crisis.

“This is a whole phenomenon,” she noted.

“What is? Marriage pacts? Being casually ruined by our parents’ lack of therapy? Showing up at your soulmate’s engagement party?”

“Retrosexuals,” she said. “High school sweethearts who reconnect. The world is a garbage fire and nostalgia is cheaper than drugs and therapy. There was an article that said for older millennials, backsliding into your teenage hormones is a comfort—like re-bingeing a late-nineties WB show.”

Well, I did embody the angst of a teenage girl holding back tears as Sarah McLachlan howled in the background. There was even a love triangle. I was living out my own episode of Felicity, but none of it was comforting.

Summer raised her eyebrows at me.

“You just told me Asher’s been working on this movie project for several years. So why announce it now?” I opened my mouth to answer, but she had already formed her own conclusion. “He was waiting for that open door to walk through. A promise that he could deflect as a joke—when really, he’s thought about ending up with you this entire time.”

There was an undeniable swirl in my gut, shooting like a rocket up to my brain stem and nodding emphatically. Instead, I scrunched up my face.

“I don’t know…we were babies.”

“And yet, you were his longest relationship. And him, yours.”

“Longest, but I doubt the most meaningful. I can’t compete with Penelope Lynn,” I said, referring to Asher’s ex-girlfriend.

“Oh please, that was a PR relationship.”

“No way.”

Summer’s sideways look said otherwise.

“How do you know?”

“Because it’s my fucking job. They both had Oscar-worthy films to promote at the same time, and they looked good on each other’s arms. Conflict-free beginning and end.”

I shook my head, stunned people lived this way.

Summer stopped pacing to chew on the edge of her lip. She grinned, way too buzzy about the whole thing.

“You were always the ideal option for these two stupid boys, and now they have excuses to show up and make it real,” Summer said.

“Well, Garrett’s about to marry someone else.”

“Debatable,” she said.

I shook my head as my heart raced with the thought.

“And Asher?” Summer asked.

“My manager said I can’t touch Asher until after the work is done.”

My brain swirled in the other direction. The scruff on Asher’s cheek as it brushed my face when we said goodbye the other night. The crisp scent of wildflowers in my lungs. How he used to study every freckle on my skin. How he used to look me in the eyes as he came—naked and unafraid of how much he loved me.

“You’re thinking about him naked right now, aren’t you?” Summer asked, interrupting my ode to Asher’s torso.

“I’m not, not…”

“You are so, so fucked,” she said with a laugh.

I closed my eyes and exhaled, defeated.

“So fucked.”

“What about Garrett?”

I bitterly edged my heel into the soft grass.

“What about him?”

“Why did you ask him to marry you?”

I kept my lips together, unsure how to release the words.

“Oh, come on. Just spill it.”

“I was in a bad place,” I said slowly. “It was a couple weeks after—” There was a hitch in my throat, not letting me finish. Thankfully, I didn’t have to. Summer nodded, letting me move past the end of my sentence.

“I felt like I couldn’t begin my thirties that lost. When I’m with Garrett, I always feel like there’s no one else. It’s a cruel spell. Maggie Vine, doomed to let logic and rationale go out the window when faced with her—her…” I trailed off, terrified of what it would do to my body if I said the two words aloud.

“Your person?” Summer guessed.

I stood frozen with my palms open at my side. My person. There were years when I felt like Garrett was my person. A decade, even. If you’d asked me a month ago, with a gun to my head, I’d say Garrett Scholl was my person. But strangely, now, I wondered if Asher was my person. I thought my person would be the easiest definition in the dictionary, and Asher made falling feel like flying. Garrett made falling feel like crashing.

“If Garrett’s my person, then all the fairy tales have gotten it wrong.”

“What do you mean?”

“I thought our person was supposed to fit like a lost shoe. There’s not even a shoe with Garrett. Loving him is like walking barefoot on shards of glass.”