“I have an early morning, I should go.” He leaned toward my cheek, brushing his lips against it. “Happy birthday,” he whispered into my ear.
He turned away from me, parting the crowd and edging his body out the door.
* * *
IT TOOK ME EXACTLY FORTY minutes to find the right vowels to piece together kind sentences—sentences I used to break up with Craig. I decided to spare him the knowledge that I was in love with someone else, and instead went to the holy grail of breakup scapegoats: it’s not you, it’s me. Craig responded by showing me that he was not, in fact, perfect in person.
“This is what happens when you fuck an aimless twenty-three-year-old,” he said, shaking his head at me. I fought the urge to correct him with “I’m actually twenty-four.” He kept going. I was a “self-sabotager” who would “never be successful or happy.” Normally, these possible half-truths would swirl around in my chest and tug me down to the hardwood of my apartment until I was sure they were facts, until they turned into a brutal breakup song about why Maggie Vine was forever doomed. But Craig’s cruel turns of phrase didn’t break the surface. All I could think about while he was calling me out on my own bullshit was finishing what Garrett had started.
An hour later, I approached Garrett’s Gramercy duplex, my insides buzzing with nerves. A few months ago when we played New York geography, I realized he lived a few blocks away from our Trader Joe’s. Technically the one-bedroom pre-war co-op I was staring at belonged to his parents—they kept it only as an investment property. Garrett sheepishly assured me he paid them rent.
I stood in front of the burnt-orange brick fa?ade and ornate wooden door, finding his last name on the call box. I pressed my chipped red nails on the buzzer, twirling my necklace in my fingers as I impatiently waited.
“Um…it’s one a.m.,” a breathless female voice finally answered.
I reddened, squinting at the call box, realizing I’d pressed the wrong button.
“Parker, who is it?” sounded Garrett’s voice.
I had not pressed the wrong button.
The fluttering that had consumed my body on the subway ride to Garrett’s apartment darkened to nausea. I somehow remembered how to use my limbs, and I backed away from the call box. Hot tears fell as I held my bare shoulders with eyes drawn down to my heels, walking through Stuyvesant Square alone. I should have just let him kiss me in the crowded room, the outside world be damned, but I overthought everything. He should have sat with rejection for more than a couple hours, but Garrett hated pain, and Quinn was a fast Band-Aid.
We sucked at timing.
We could fit like the fairy tale
But you’re growing out of Us before we can try Us on
Don’t walk someone else’s line
Take me back to the “Once Upon a” time
Before this magic wand hits you like a hired gun
’Cause I can see us dancing through the years
When someone else’s dream outruns its run
Come to me undone
8
THIRTY-FIVE
“KISS ME,” I SAID AGAIN, the words trembling with my heart in my throat.
Garrett and I had been here twice before—an inch of thick air between our lips.
He stared at me, his chest rising and falling through his thin cotton shirt, his blue eyes steady, for what felt like a lifetime. The box was open. He swooped forward with his hand on the back of my neck and tugged me desperately onto his open mouth.
His fingers running down my throat. My hand clenched in his thick hair. A complicated love song come to life. My willowy frame tangled up with his strong build. Twelve years of bad timing seemed to melt away over and under our tongues. It was tender and full of yearning. His fingerprints on my damp skin lit tiny fireworks on delicate places he’d only explored once before. All at once, I could feel wind where there had been fire—he was no longer touching me.
Garrett stepped back as quickly as he’d stepped forward. I couldn’t catch my breath, but by the looks of it, he was searching for more than air. Garrett’s gaze was fixed on his feet, with one hand pressed onto his reddened neck, as if trying to get confirmation that he was the owner of the body that just kissed me like it was the end of the world.
I went white, with my eyes widening under the visual of sunshine battling a storm. Garrett inhaled sharply, blinking back tears—tears which didn’t dare fall. But I’d never seen water gather at his eyelids, not in the twelve years I’d known him. Garrett’s insides were coming undone, even though his armor refused to split open.
“Garrett?”
Brows pressed together, I moved forward with my arm stretched out toward his cheek, but he gently grabbed my hand before it could find his jawline.
“I’m…I’m engaged,” he cracked, barely able to get the betrayal out.
The words wrapped around my brain, and I tugged my hand sharply out of his grip. His eyes darted away from mine, shame all over his face.
“I wanted to tell you when we had coffee, but you—you said what you said, and…” He trailed off, eyes frozen on the ground.
Shock opened my jaw and strangled my throat, until a current of anger pushed the words out of my mouth.
“Why did you kiss me?”
My heart pounded faster under the realization that I had just gotten something I desperately wanted, but under horrible circumstances. Garrett slowly met my damp eyes. I was aghast, my palms open toward him.
“Today, I kept looking at my door, Maggie. I kept staring at my door waiting for you to show up.” He kicked the dirt below him, as if the emotion punching his ocean eyes was the dirt’s fault. “I always thought that we’d”—he looked up to meet my eyes, so that the line would further delight and destroy me—“I always thought we’d end up together. I thought the cards would fall the right way. You didn’t show today, of course you didn’t. And it should have been an exhale. I’m with someone else. But staring at that door, it consumed me…until it felt like…like I couldn’t breathe. Like I was inhaling smoke or something. I left my apartment to get some air…I started walking…I walked the entire city to stop thinking about you, and I ended up at the very place I knew you’d be.”
His hands were limp at his sides, as if none of his thoughts or actions were his fault. As if I’d put a pistol against the back of his head, marched him here, tugged him onto my lips, and forced him to inflict emotional torture upon me. I hugged my shoulders, watching him stare helplessly at me through a puddle of hot liquid behind my lashes.
All at once, inhaling the wind was painful—shock turned to fury, insides tightening and boiling. I stepped in to his face, brows pointed together, anger showing. He froze, stunned by a version of Maggie Vine that he hadn’t yet seen. Few got to meet her.
“Are you bringing up my thirtieth birthday? Bringing up that promise?” I asked, my voice loud and mad. “We were sitting across from each other six weeks ago, and you failed to mention you were engaged. I poured my heart out to you, you hugged me—you fucking hugged me, and you left. And then, you iced me out. You couldn’t even text me back. And you’re bringing up a stupid promise we made five years ago?”
“It was more than that and you know it.”