“And yet, you were his longest relationship. And him, yours.”
“Longest, but I doubt the most meaningful. I can’t compete with Penelope Lynn,” I said, referring to Asher’s ex-girlfriend.
“Oh please, that was a PR relationship.”
“No way.”
Summer’s sideways look said otherwise.
“How do you know?”
“Because it’s my fucking job. They both had Oscar-worthy films to promote at the same time, and they looked good on each other’s arms. Conflict-free beginning and end.”
I shook my head, stunned people lived this way.
Summer stopped pacing to chew on the edge of her lip. She grinned, way too buzzy about the whole thing.
“You were always the ideal option for these two stupid boys, and now they have excuses to show up and make it real,” Summer said.
“Well, Garrett’s about to marry someone else.”
“Debatable,” she said.
I shook my head as my heart raced with the thought.
“And Asher?” Summer asked.
“My manager said I can’t touch Asher until after the work is done.”
My brain swirled in the other direction. The scruff on Asher’s cheek as it brushed my face when we said goodbye the other night. The crisp scent of wildflowers in my lungs. How he used to study every freckle on my skin. How he used to look me in the eyes as he came—naked and unafraid of how much he loved me.
“You’re thinking about him naked right now, aren’t you?” Summer asked, interrupting my ode to Asher’s torso.
“I’m not, not…”
“You are so, so fucked,” she said with a laugh.
I closed my eyes and exhaled, defeated.
“So fucked.”
“What about Garrett?”
I bitterly edged my heel into the soft grass.
“What about him?”
“Why did you ask him to marry you?”
I kept my lips together, unsure how to release the words.
“Oh, come on. Just spill it.”
“I was in a bad place,” I said slowly. “It was a couple weeks after—” There was a hitch in my throat, not letting me finish. Thankfully, I didn’t have to. Summer nodded, letting me move past the end of my sentence.
“I felt like I couldn’t begin my thirties that lost. When I’m with Garrett, I always feel like there’s no one else. It’s a cruel spell. Maggie Vine, doomed to let logic and rationale go out the window when faced with her—her…” I trailed off, terrified of what it would do to my body if I said the two words aloud.
“Your person?” Summer guessed.
I stood frozen with my palms open at my side. My person. There were years when I felt like Garrett was my person. A decade, even. If you’d asked me a month ago, with a gun to my head, I’d say Garrett Scholl was my person. But strangely, now, I wondered if Asher was my person. I thought my person would be the easiest definition in the dictionary, and Asher made falling feel like flying. Garrett made falling feel like crashing.
“If Garrett’s my person, then all the fairy tales have gotten it wrong.”
“What do you mean?”
“I thought our person was supposed to fit like a lost shoe. There’s not even a shoe with Garrett. Loving him is like walking barefoot on shards of glass.”
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.