One 10 Minute “All Too Well” later, I stormed up my Union Square apartment walk-up, narrow wooden stairs creaking, and with each step, devastation gave way to a punch of anger. By the time I made it up the four flights and edged my shoulder past the door of my studio, I was give-me-back-my-scarf enraged. I flicked on the AC window unit and pushed my songwriter journal from the bed to the floor, plopped face-first down on my floral quilt—puffy red eyes smothered amid the smell of Garrett’s cologne in my hair—which only made me cry harder.
I heard a buzzing on the floor, and I stretched my upper body off the bed to grab my phone. Fuck. It was Summer. I had forgotten that there were a handful of humans still sitting on the Great Lawn because of my birth.
“Hi—” I barely got the word out before she cut me off.
“Did you seriously just ghost me on your birthday and leave me to fend for myself with Dave Matthews bros?”
It sounded like she was driving in a car, and no longer in a sea of cargo shorts.
“Sorry…I was too high to be a human,” I lied.
I couldn’t stomach reliving the earth-shattering news that I once again knew what Garrett’s body felt like pressed against mine; what his hands felt like in the back of my hair; what his tongue felt like inside my mouth. The answer was, unfortunately: still hot as fuck. I would tell Summer about it later, after I had a chance to let it ruin me, just like our first kiss had. The engagement, however, was eating my soul alive. I bit into my chipped nail, nervously wrestling with the words.
“Did you, umm…did you know Garrett’s engaged?” I asked.
There was silence on the other end of the line.
“He’s what?”
“Yeah.”
“No way. I mean I guess I’ve been a shitty friend, I haven’t seen them that much lately.”
“Like, not in the last six weeks?”
“Well, I saw them at that gallery opening last month. I didn’t notice a ring on her finger—obviously I would have told you if I did.”
“I know,” I said, my voice small, as I picked the gel polish off my thumb.
“Remember, I told you watching them together that night was like watching wet paper dry. They were so bored with each other. I was certain he was going to break up with her, honestly.”
“Well, he did the opposite.”
“Well…shit.” Summer’s voice turned unusually delicate. “Do I need to come over there? Are you okay?”
“I’m totally fine. Doesn’t affect my life,” said the totally unaffected woman wiping hot, angry tears off her cheeks.
“Maggie, I’m coming over right now—”
“No. Summer, I can’t go there, not yet. I need—I need to sit with it,” I said, tears enveloping my vocal cords.
“Okay, I’m here if you need me,” she said. “Oh, shit. I forgot to show you something earlier tonight—I saw it yesterday. Hold on…Okay, check your texts.”
I put Summer on speaker and clicked on a linked Deadline article.
“Isn’t that the book you made me read freshman year?” Summer asked.
My face went blank. I couldn’t even answer her.
There he was.
Olive skin that hadn’t seen a clogged pore in two decades, copper eyes that tugged at the world’s heartstrings, trademark chiseled jawline that threatened to break into a million-dollar smile. There. He. Was. It wasn’t the photo of the first guy I ever loved that sent my body into a tailspin—I had grown accustomed to seeing his image everywhere. It was the headline. I hovered over my phone; eyes unblinking on the article: “Asher Reyes Set to Adapt On the Other Side.”
The headline punched like closed fists on my heart. I hadn’t spoken to Asher since I was seventeen years old, yet my first thought was: How could he not have told me? How could Asher Reyes not have called me with this information?
All at once, I was flooded with a memory that had been tucked away—lost amid eighteen years of navigating a sea of men that never held me the way Asher Reyes did. Years of awkward first dates, forgettable one-night stands, intense short-lived relationships, and unrequited pining. Long before my complicated relationship with love, Asher Reyes made me a promise. Yes, we were only teenagers, but the way he and I said things to each other…Asher Reyes and Maggie Vine made blood oaths look casual.
He promised. But instead of finding me before midnight on my thirty-fifth birthday, he was dangling the glittery parts of my adolescence in front of my face.
“Maggie? You still there?” asked Summer on the other end of the line.
“Yeah, give me a second.”
I silently reread the last line of the article: “‘We’ve got our lead, and the next step before production is to go out to a few different producers and songwriters for music—which is obviously one of the most important parts of this beautiful story,’ says Reyes.”
Obviously. I sat up farther and scooted to the tower of books chaotically stacked next to my bed. I bypassed the IVF pamphlet taunting me on my nightstand—a reminder of the baby I couldn’t afford and the time I didn’t have left to try. My fingers found the weathered copy of a book, On the Other Side. I hesitated, then delicately opened it, wet eyes blinking back the inscription in messy black-ink cursive, “To My Maggie, Love Daddio.” My father bought this book at an indie bookstore in Boston—a recommendation from the bookseller whose favorite aunt had written the novel. He gave it to me for my eleventh birthday solely because the main character was a singer. But she became more than that for me. She became fictional proof that you can do what you love and be loved.
I leafed through the dog-eared and underlined pages—the glitter gel pen notes written in the margins. The only person who this story was “obvious” to was me…and maybe six other people. I loved it that way.
When I was a kid, The New Yorker did a write-up about my mom’s favorite neighborhood hole-in-the-wall restaurant. Overnight, our quiet dinner spot became overcrowded. The food tasted the same, but the atmosphere was different. Fury swirled inside me at the thought of Asher doing this to my favorite book. I was an artsy gatekeeper: the things I loved that the masses didn’t yet have their fingers on felt like they were made for me. It was a false sense of ownership, a defense mechanism—like sticking your nose in the air and telling people you sobbed to “All Too Well” in 2012, or you saw Hamilton off-Broadway.
The pain inside me morphed into a raw energy. It was as if I could glean a hint of sunlight under a closed door. And like a moth who kept coming back for more fire and pain, I asked Summer for a favor.
“Can you get me to Asher Reyes?”
If Asher Reyes wasn’t going to find me, I would go find him.
11
FOURTEEN
I WAS AN ADULT TRAPPED in a kid’s body, and everything was the end of the world. I was intense and serious about one thing: music. There was no point in frivolous pursuits—such as the pursuit of friends or an active social life. My peers were lawless creatures who wanted to scratch every hormonal itch. I was a scholarship kid who navigated the oak halls of my Upper West Side prep school with my lungs sucked in and headphones around my ears. I could only exhale once I was behind the closed doors of my tiny childhood bedroom—guitar slung around my freckled neck, eyes shut inside my own little fantasyland. I had no real friends, unless I counted my English teacher, Mrs. Churchill, or my guitar teacher, Mr. Cunningham. They were the ones I spent my lunch periods with, where I ate vending machine candy and word-vomited to adults who recognized that I did not belong to the age group I was forced to walk with. I was misunderstood, and I didn’t want to overextend myself so that people I couldn’t care less about might understand me.