Maybe Once, Maybe Twice(81)

“He’s just…” Raini’s eyes found the blue sky, with a giddy smile plastered on her cheeks.

“I know that look,” I said, shaking my head. “That right there is the best and worst feeling in the world: love and uncertainty.”

“You’re so lucky. You have love without any of the confusing parts.”

“How do you know that?” I laughed, tickled by the way she spoke so surely about situations she’d only taken a peek at.

“I see the way Asher looks at you, and the way you look at him. It’s like…” She studied her open palms, carefully finding the words.

Okay, maybe she wasn’t so much like me. I’ll tell you who Raini was like: Raini Parish was like Asher Reyes.

“It’s like watching two people just exhale,” she added.

I felt my chest warm with the truth. Asher and I had exhaled around each other for the last few weeks. In so many ways, it felt like we’d picked up where our teenage selves ended. But neither of us had outright said “I love you,” or asked the other to define the situation. That being said, we were bathed in bliss—and something about feeling this secure left me perfectly happy in the undefined gray area.

“Well, not every man has been like Asher,” I said, smiling and marveling at the fact that Asher brought me fireworks without question marks. “If possible, try and find someone who lights you on fire without leading you down a dark, torturous smoky maze of unrequited love for twelve years.”

“Twelve years?” she asked, eyes wide.

“Oh girl, I have a master’s—no—I have a PhD in pining,” I said.

I felt my throat tighten with the realization that Garrett was getting married in two months. I wasn’t going. I was leaving masochism in the rearview, but the reality was still a little gut punch. Our ending wasn’t wiped clean from my heart, but it wasn’t screaming in my ear, either.

Raini smiled.

“Honestly, I’ve met a lot of creepy dudes who are older and…Asher is just…he’s the nicest person in this business—the kindest I’ve ever met.”

“He’s been through a lot, and I think he actually does treat people the way he wants to be treated, which is rare,” I mused.

“What do you mean?” she asked, taking a sip of her tea.

“I mean…his life hasn’t always been easy.”

Raini shrugged, setting down her tea bag.

“I guess I don’t know much about him, like, personally? He’s super quiet.”

I grinned.

“What?”

“Around me he’s not quiet. Not at all,” I said.

“Like all I know about him personally is what I read before the audition—that Rolling Stone interview from a couple years ago. But it’s sort of sexy that he’s an enigma. I wish Josh didn’t have Instagram—God that would be so hot,” Raini said, referring to her current crush who was keeping her up at night—a young heartthrob not worthy of her heart.

“Okay, you little sneak, stop trying to deflect from the fact that you hate my bridge,” I said, picking up my guitar.

“I don’t hate it, it hates me.”

“Neither is true, but what if we do a key change?”

“Then you’d be my hero, because I can’t do that low-register shit the way you can,” she said, with a big smile.

A little while later after Raini left, I sat on the Barcelona chair in Asher’s living room, poring over the Rolling Stone article Raini had been referring to. It was surface at best, or at least I thought it was, because I knew most of the corners of Asher’s brain. I pulled my neck back, shocked as I read the end of the article. When asked about what his family thought of his fame, Asher joked about how his parents wished their only child was doing something they could brag about to their friends—like becoming an attorney. The phrase “only child” twisted my heart. I checked Asher’s Wikipedia page, seeing in plain black type that there wasn’t a sibling listed.

Asher walked into the kitchen as I set down my phone, and I hesitated before standing up and leaning against the kitchen island. I watched him open the cupboard above the stove and grab a bottle of tiny lime-green pills. He put the pill on his tongue and swallowed it down with running sink water. I looked away, not wanting to be intrusive. We had been doing this for a few weeks, occupying our own corners of our creative universes under one roof—keeping our relationship secret. And then at night we would collide—bodies discovering ways to light each other up that our teenage selves were too modest to try. Every morning I looked at him, at the stillness of the room and the calmness of his body, at the new life outstretched before me, and I thought, I could get used to this. But I couldn’t escape that we both had pasts that were treacherous, pasts that made us who were today.

“Can I ask you something?” I said.

He leaned forward across the marble, smiling warmly at me.

“Anything.”

I searched for the words, and he tilted his head, waiting.

“You don’t talk about your brother. Not to me…not to anyone…”

He froze. “What’s your question?” he asked, eyes unblinking.

“Asher, are you okay?” I asked quietly, my throat quivering under the possibility that he wasn’t.