Maybe Once, Maybe Twice(7)
He smiled, admiring my eyes and my lips and my shoulders.
“Well, that’s good to know,” I said.
I smiled coolly and inhaled sharply, as if breathing him in for one more second would be akin to sitting with tear gas for too long. I knew what would have happened if I had stayed. I wasn’t yet ready to be ruined by this man, so I walked away without looking back.
4
THIRTY-FIVE
SUMMER STARED ME DOWN, AS my eyes locked on the chandelier above me in her closet. Garrett and I had been inseparable since our early twenties, and the dissolution of our complicated relationship was a fault I’d tried to remedy six weeks ago. I thought our conversation had gone well. I assumed we’d be back to being Garrett and Maggie—or maybe something more—after we hugged goodbye in the coffee shop, his chiseled jawline brushing my cheek; his musky vanilla scent filling my lungs with a chaos of lust and regret. We went our separate ways with smiles—mine was genuine, his turned to agony.
A week after we’d sat side by side, I texted him a simple hey—a casual, unassuming, can’t hurt a fly, lowercase “hey.” Three dots immediately followed. My heart fluttered, and then, the dots disappeared. I had spent the last several weeks masochistically going back over our text chain, staring hopelessly at his non-response. After a successful night gig, I’d plop on my bed with tequila and coffee swirling inside me, grab my phone, prepare to text him every thought in my brain, but I was only brave enough to graze the keyboard. The woman who fearlessly sang her heart out in front of one hundred strangers couldn’t even text a dude.
Hey! Did you get MY “hey”?
Did I say too much?
Every unsent text became a new ache in my chest—until the collective weight punched me down to a devastating reality: I poured my heart out to the man who used to light my soul on fire, I told him a horrible truth, and it made him go away.
I let my teary eyes float back to Summer, who shook her head at me.
“Can you two get it over with already?” Summer said, rolling her eyes.
“There’s nothing to get over. We were never under.”
I turned away from Summer so that she couldn’t see my ears and cheeks reddening.
Why do I have to wear my emotions all over my skin?
“Just go make babies with him. No time like the present.”
“Summer, he has a girlfriend.” He did. And she was perfect. Her hair fell across her shoulders like a Garnier Fructis commercial. “You know…I have a better idea. Why don’t I roam the bars, bring a guy home, and let him come inside me? Cheaper than embryo shopping and IVF rounds.”
“Playing Russian roulette with herpes sounds like a cool plan, Maggie.”
“I do enjoy being STI free.…” I mused. “Ugh, I should have just stayed with the Vine Group. I had health insurance, steady pay…if I hadn’t jumped ship, I would be able to afford like half an embryo, probably.”
Summer grabbed my chin, forcing my eyes onto her.
“You were fucking miserable, Maggie. I’m not letting you work for your mom ever again. Plus, you just booked your largest gig in five years. You should be looking forward, not playing a game of What-if.”
Summer Groves was a realist, yet somehow my biggest cheerleader, which made her belief that I could succeed the most important belief in my life—second to me believing in myself. A part of me wished she’d give up on me already, so I could have another reason to give up on myself.
“Back to Garrett. It’s not the worst idea I’ve had. And I shaved my head in solidarity with Britney in 2007, so that’s saying something. He’s financially stable, you totally love him, your babies would be gorgeous, and he’d support you while you got your career back on track.”
“Summer. It’s never going to happen.”
I hated the sound of saying it out loud. The words tasted bitter against my gums—like a Creed song.
“Never say never,” Summer said.
“Never.”
I poured the wine down my throat, willing away the tingling in my chest. It was a flutter I had bargained with for the last decade: the possibility that Garrett Scholl was maybe, kind of, just a little bit, absolutely my soulmate.
5
TWENTY-THREE
IT TOOK ME ONLY ONE first Tuesday of the month to gather the courage to run into Garrett at the Parkside Lounge. Except, I didn’t work up the courage to do it honestly. I called the booking manager and begged him for his free 11 p.m. slot. I knew Garrett’s band, The Finance Guys, went on at nine. I was pissed that he hadn’t come to see me play first. Society had taught me that men should try harder than women in the world of romance. But as Summer suggested, “You probably scared the shit out of him when he met you. Men are sad, fragile creatures.”
She wasn’t wrong. That night, I walked into the back room at the Parkside Lounge, the Lower East Side’s oldest dive bar. It was dimly lit, but I could hear his unmistakably husky voice the second the front doors swung open.
I stepped farther into the room, seeing the crowd of females stare up at Garrett as if he could read their fortunes. As his cover of Paramore roared on, he found my face in the crowd. There was an instant catch in his throat as his eyes met mine, and my ego did a somersault. I could throw this confident man off his game, and that meant everything to me.