Maybe Once, Maybe Twice(54)
Summer studied me for a long while, and slowly, the sharp angles of her face softened in front of me.
“It’s okay if he’s not your person,” she said, alarmingly delicately.
Summer spoke with a coolness, almost always. The vulnerability, the quiver in her words kept my attention on her face. Her eyes weren’t on me at all. They had floated past mine, glassing over as they took in a woman chasing her giggling toddler in the distance. Summer’s expression stiffened my entire body. I had only seen her hint at crying once since our freshman year of college. Summer peeled her eyes away from the mother, clearing her throat before coming back to me. I stepped closer, ready to ask if she was okay, but Summer’s face found its trademark edge and she crossed her arms, able to go from teary to judgmental with the flick of a switch. A master class in deflecting human behavior.
I stretched my neck past the vines, seeing Garrett standing next to his beaming parents. His arm rested perfectly on Cecily’s lower back, as he tilted his chin up in a friendly chuckle. He had become the golden child.
Cecily, the refined, pragmatic, list-checker-offer, fell in love with the amateur rock star. Cecily had dreams of working eighty hours a week as a paralegal, flaunting a sizeable emerald-cut diamond on her dainty finger, renovating an eighties Tudor home in Scarsdale on the same street as her parents, and having one child via a scheduled a C-section so as to not ruin her beautiful labia. I surmised that Garrett’s parents had probably been searching for Cecily for years: someone who would tug Garrett’s heels out of the creative mud and keep a smile on his face as he embraced an entirely different goal.
“I don’t even recognize him anymore,” I said, with a crackling sadness in the back of my throat. “And he’s in love with someone else. Garrett’s going to spend forever with another person.”
I felt the need to verbalize the permanence of it all, equal parts reminding Summer and equal parts reminding myself of the very reason we were standing in this godforsaken stretch of wine-soaked heaven.
“He can’t show up on your birthday and say all these things while being in love with someone else. You can’t be in love with two people, Maggie. Not fully.”
My eyes darted away from Summer in disagreement, causing Summer to tilt her bob at me.
“Oh, Maggie Vine…” she sang, shaking her head.
My body was able to lose its shit in the presence of two different men. Asher lit me up, like swimming in stars. Garrett tore me apart, like little paper cuts all over my skin. Both of them felt like the best and worst parts of being in love.
Summer offered up a weak grin. “We should get back there,” she said. “Just smile and nod for two hours, and drink heavily.”
I followed her past the vines, toward the gorgeous twinkle lights, when I felt a hand grip my arm. I turned, nearly choking on my tongue as Cecily beamed at me. Summer raised her eyebrows.
“I’m going to go get us all the drinks,” she said to me, before escaping toward the bar.
“Congratulations!” I blurted to Cecily, in a high-pitched tone that screamed “trying way too hard.” Thankfully, Cecily usually brought this level of enthusiasm to a conversation, so I knew my excessive pitch would be matched.
“OH MY GOD! I should be saying congratulations to YOU,” Cecily said, smiling with a perfect row of white teeth.
“You heard about the movie deal?”
“The what?” She scrunched her face and leaned in, bulging eyes and cheeks turned upward. “Was it Raya?” she whispered loudly.
“Huh?”
“Did you match with Asher Reyes on Raya? They all want to know.”
Cecily nodded to the high-top table behind her, where her friends gawked at me, not hiding their curiosity.
Cecily was referring to the exclusive dating app, Raya, and my newfound fifteen minutes of fame, thanks to the photo of Asher and me from Marea: Asher gazing hopelessly into my eyes, me laughing into a glass of wine. The image had spent the last week everywhere, leaving tongues wagging and interests high. Her friends were foaming at the mouth for any morsel of a scoop. It was a strange feeling, but for once, I was on the inside of something. I stood up straighter, feeling less like a weirdo outcast amid the privileged housewives of the Northeast, and more like the Cool Mysterious One.
I let my eyes wander toward Cecily’s friends. I recognized this group as her high school buddies from Taft. I met them at a dive bar during Cecily and Garrett’s first year of dating, a group of women in their midtwenties who Clorox-wiped the bar’s counter before they sat down. The Taft group had all survived a prestigious boarding school together and then filtered off to separate Ivy Leagues before landing back in New York like a terrifying pack of preppy wolves dressed in Ralph Lauren linen dresses. There was a baseline of three carats on their respective ring fingers and bouncy blowouts atop their very minimal laugh lines. Cecily was the last of the women to acquire a diamond on her left hand—thanks to her fiancé taking roughly four years to get down on one knee.
“It was Raya. I knew it,” Cecily said, believing that my silence was an admission of guilt.
“Oh, Asher? No, we know each other from forever ago. I’m not dating him. Also, I’m not cool enough for Raya.”
“Yes, you are—well, now you are.”
“I’ve already fucked enough DJs to last a lifetime,” I mused.