by Emery Lord
“Okay,” I said evenly. My jaw wavered, my entire body about to shake from holding back sobs. “I think we just need to cool down and sleep on it.”
“Yeah,” he said. “Sure. Let me know what you come up with.”
My lips parted, ready to tell him that he could stop being jealous about Hunter. He could stop getting frustrated with me when I acted differently than he expected me to. He could fight with me and not shut down every time it got hard.
For the first time, I couldn’t look away from the truth: this might be a broken thing. Damaged by, as Tessa so delicately put it, my hypotheticals and hesitation.
“I’ll text you tomorrow?” I hadn’t meant to whisper it. But I didn’t have enough air left for much more.
He nodded, unable to look at me.
After I walked inside, I waited by the door. Hoping that he’d charge out of the car, past the jumble of the words and feelings we’d tried to exchange, and straight to me. But when I got the nerve to look out the window, I saw only taillights.
We stood like two distant hearts on a too big map. The dotted line between us grew ever farther, a distance no longer easy to walk. My hands ached to grab us both, to push us together where we belonged. But it didn’t work like that.
I stood there for minutes or hours, crying noiselessly. Absorbing the sound into my chest as I leaned against the door.
“Paige?” I barely heard my sister’s voice.
When I turned, she was frozen on the stairs, watching me like she’d spotted a ghost. And maybe I was, stuck in purgatory between love and whatever comes next.
“What happened?” she asked, hurrying down.
“I don’t know.” I hung my head, pressing both hands to my eyes. God, hearing myself say the words made it hurt even worse. “Max and me—I don’t know.”
The hug surprised me, the jolt of touch as my sister squeezed me tight. I recovered fast, relaxing into a full-on snivel against her shoulder.
“Okay,” Cameron said after a minute. “C’mon. I have cookies.”
CHAPTER TWENTY-FIVE
When I arrived at Alcott’s the next afternoon, Max was sitting in the back, fingers laced together. I felt ridiculous showing up here, my personal haven, to conduct a relationship forum. But it was neutral territory, away from eavesdropping parents.
I’d rehearsed my opening statement on the drive here in my dad’s car. Cameron had stayed up late with me, asking probing questions and repeating Mm-hmm, mm-hmm until I wanted to flick her. But finally, she amassed all my responses to inform me I struggled with vulnerability. That bridling emotions was a form of control for me. Additionally, last night, I learned that my sister listened to quite the array of self-help podcasts.
So I’d tell Max, mortifying as it was, that people joking about us getting married had derailed me. That hearing “dream girl” became this pressure, this commitment I hadn’t meant to make. But first, I’d say sorry for bumbling along the way.
Max looked up, noticing me. His hair was rumpled from—I knew—his hand passing through it, fidgeting. He looked exhausted, lilac beneath his eyes. “Hey.”
“Hi.” I sat down with nice posture, like I was on a job interview. “Max, I’m really sorry about last night.”
“Me too. I’ve gone over it and over it in my mind. I barely slept.” He spun one finger, signaling an endless circle. It was easy to imagine him awake and at his desk, scribbling equations into a notebook. If Paige = x and Max = y …
“Same here.”
“Paige.” He wet his lips, like his mouth was too dry to speak. “I think I’ve gotta let you go for a little bit.”
He said it fast, like he had to get it out, and I couldn’t quite register what he’d said. The world tilted on its axis. I braced my hands on the edge of the table, like I’d go flying from my chair. “What?”
“Hear me out.” He had his hands raised, and I stared at his palms, at his love lines like shallow topography, etched rivers. “Paige?”
“Yeah,” I said, to acknowledge I could still hear him. My body had gone clammy and cold, the café around us suspended in a blur.
“You don’t want me to factor you into my college decision,” he said. “And I’m trying not to. But if I’m being totally honest, it’s hard to tell if I am.”
“I know,” I said, eyes filling. And I did know, because it was hard for me, too. I’d been thinking of IU so fondly since I visited with Morgan. But subconsciously, was that simply a desire to stay near my friends? And if so, was that even a bad thing? “So, you’re ending our relationship over that?”
“No. Well, sort of. I think we should step things back until one or both of us make a decision about school. That way, I can’t factor you in because I won’t know where you’ll be anyway. And you won’t feel any kind of pressure. It’ll be like a gap year.”
“A gap year,” I repeated.
“Not a year, obviously. A month or two?” he said. I felt like I’d dunked my head beneath water, words gone garbled. I stared at the nearby coffee display, bags of beans in rows like squat soldiers. “Because I can feel myself making it worse for you. I’m not sure how, and I’m not sure what else to do about it.”
My eyes filled with tears again. Hadn’t my body rocketed into panic, tears, heaving when the college discussion came up? I’d wanted, so badly, to stop it. But here we were.
“We could just agree not to talk about college, right?” I said pitifully. But our friends were always in our business, with their little jokes. The heat of it, the pressure.
“We could, but …” He studied me. Under the table, his hand covered mine, resting on my knee. “What you said, that you’d rather have our friendship for life. That’s how I feel, too, Janie. This needs a step back. Doesn’t it?”
He said it so sincerely that a tear slipped over the rim of my eye. I’d tried to make him see me as Summer Paige, the girlfriend—fun, witty, someone he thought about happily. Not his friend Paige, who made basic interactions into emotional disaster zones and worried herself sick.
“So, do you think the gap year idea would help? Honest reaction.” Max’s voice was almost begging. “You can tell me no.”
Wasn’t this what I’d been asking for? To make separate decisions so I could breathe, focus on my own murky path forward? I dabbed the corner of my eye.
“You know, it’s funny,” I said, voice oddly calm. “Just last night, Cameron got me thinking about how I go straight to binary outcomes. This or that. Extremes.”
Life or death. Together forever or painful divorce.
“Okay …,” Max said. He’d pulled his hand back. Now, one finger circled the face of his watch.
“And this gap year idea, it’s an in-between,” I said, nodding. Deciding at the moment I spoke the words. “It’s not us ending things entirely or spinning our wheels trying to stay together. It’s good. It’s a good idea.”
I had absolutely no idea if I meant it or if my brain was trying to save face on my behalf.
“It is,” Max said, hesitant—nearly a question. Like he hadn’t thought so until now.
“I think so.” Finally, I could meet his eyes, pale green as hydrangea. “What would the rules be?”
“The rules?”
“Do we see each other? Talk at all?” He looked utterly mired, like he hadn’t gotten this far into the thought process.
“Maybe not one-on-one. With friends.”
“Do you …” I bit the inside of my lip hard enough to leave tooth marks. I clasped my hands, damp as they pressed into each other. “Do you want to go out with other people?”
“No.” He leaned away, taken aback. “Do you?”
“No!” I swiped my hands out, an umpire’s signal for safe. Hunter had taught me that, and I dropped my arms guiltily. “No.”
“But …” His eyes slid to the ceiling as he thought. “Oh God, I’m about to puke saying this. But if we don’t put the ‘go out with whoever’ option on the table, I think I’m always going to wonder.”<
br />
About other girls? Who?! I went wide-eyed, surely nearer to puking than he was. But no. He meant wondering if I was secretly harboring feelings for Hunter.
“Max, I would tell you,” I said, and I meant it. I’d cry as I spoke, but I wouldn’t lie.
He held the eye contact across the table, and I wanted to think he believed me. Or maybe he believed I was in denial, as I had been about him for much of last year.
“So, um …,” he said, “let me know, I guess, when you’re closer to a college decision. I’ll do the same. Then we’ll reconvene and see where we are?”
Reconvene. Max. My arms ached to push the table between us aside. The idea of not texting him before bed, of not catching his hand in mine between classes.
“Okay. But.” I swallowed, hard, fighting the wobbly pressure against my tear ducts. “What do we tell everyone? That we’re cooling things off for a bit? And we’ll leave it at that?”
“Yeah. We tell them we’re fine, but not together. That we can both hang out with them.”
“Okay,” I said once more.
“Okay.” He sat back, hands out like he was steadying himself. “So, um, I’m gonna go, then.”
That couldn’t just be it. Max and me and this love that felt written, as destined as anything I’d ever found. But he stood to walk away and, on his way past, paused. He took my hand, kissing it quick, as he said, “Hey. It’ll be okay.”
“I know,” I lied.
It might have been the mildest, most loving way to part in the history of temporary breakups. So why did the divide between us feel like a canyon that could swallow up every good thing on earth?
We’d pulled the emergency brake, I told myself. That had to be better than flying off the edge, crashing something so precious in the rift below. But, if that was true, why did my heart feel totaled, smashed inside my chest?
I put my head down on the table and, not for the first time, cried into my arms on the back table at Alcott’s, feeling completely tossed at sea.
CHAPTER TWENTY-SIX
The news hit our friend group like a stone hits water. Max and I suffered the impact most, but it rippled out wide. In some ways, their sadness and surprise comforted me. You guys just need a breather, Morgan said. It’s not a breakup breakup, right? Kayleigh asked. Tessa stayed quiet mostly. She’d known the discord was building, felt the change like a drop in barometric pressure.
At work, I found relief in drudgery. In busyness and especially in the no-phone rule, which kept me from waiting for texts or obsessing over Max’s social media. But I flinched at the sight of every teenage guy, tall with dark hair. I wished I could reprogram my entire nervous system, which felt automatic excitement at the possible sight of Max.
He’d been out of school at the end of the week, visiting colleges with his mom. He posted a picture of himself with a friend from his private school days, now a freshman at Notre Dame. He looked happy.
I looked like hell. Sleepless, defeated. I had no idea what Max was doing tonight, tomorrow night, or ever, and I hated it.
Hunter tried his best to cheer me up, which I noticed, appreciated, and also had no patience for.
“So, between the three actors on that poster,” he said, pointing, “who would you screw, marry, and kill?”
I gave him a look. “That’s crass.”
“Oh, come on.”
“Screw …,” I said, pretending to think, “this question.”
“Okay, Sad Face, that’s it,” Hunter said, in a tone that suggested an announcement would follow. “My parents are out of town this weekend. I’m having a few people over tomorrow, and you’re coming.”
I stared at him, waiting for the stupidity of this idea to become apparent to him. When his expression remained confidently decisive, I gestured at myself. “Yes. Because what a great energy I’d bring to a party right now.”
“That’s the point!” He laughed. “Look, you need to ride it out—I get it. I know you’ll be back to sad on Sunday morning. But take one night off this.”
He waved his hand at my face, at my entire essence as a person. That’s how it felt, anyway. I worried strangers could see sadness like a gray-blue aura all around me, like gloaming. Really, I should get extra credit on the Wuthering Heights unit for personifying both the moors and the angst.
But Hunter’s friends hardly knew me, and they didn’t know Max. I could pretend to be fine, and no one would remind me. No one would look at me with pity.
“I have no way of getting there.”
“Bring your friends. Or I’ll pick you up and drop you off myself.” Before I could ask, he added, “Yes. I will stay fully sober at my own party to drive you home if it means you’ll come.”
I smiled at the offer, tempted.
“Come on,” he said. “You can see my embarrassing childhood stuff. I had huge glasses in third grade. Huge. There are pictures.”
“Okay.”
“Okay?” he repeated, jubilant.
“Yeah, sure.” I squinted one eye. “Why not?”
Hunter’s condo reminded me of my own house—not big and not fancy, but care in every folded throw, in every framed photo. As he gave me a quick tour, I felt like I’d been there before. Like we’d known each other as kids but drifted apart.
I felt the same way about his friends, who let me slide into their dynamic without a moment of awkwardness. They poured cheap vodka, razzed each other, demanded details about Lane’s recent second date with a girl she’d met at the theater. They were completely cool when I declined a drink. After an hour or two of slow sipping and hanging out, Lane said, “Oh, hey! Let’s show Paige our Twister!”
Their Twister, it turned out, was homemade—primary color circles drawn on a white vinyl shower curtain. Each spot meant a drink or a challenge. They let me observe the first round, and I tried to sit out the second, but the peer pressure became heckling.
“Paige!” Lane, last round’s winner and therefore presiding Gamemaster, spun the dial. “Left foot blue.”
I stretched to reach, my legs now bridged uncomfortably. I hadn’t put my arms down yet. Lane read from the blue circle stack. “ ‘Player must wear underwear on the outside of clothes for duration of the game.’ ”
Fortunately, I’d been prepared for this one, as a guy named Riley had been required to do this last round. He’d emerged with boxer briefs stretched over his jeans. I had a cute bra on anyway, so I chose to include that in the definition of underwear. In the bathroom, I fastened it over my T-shirt and tugged the straps back up my shoulders. I returned to the board with totally feigned confidence.
“Hunter,” Lane said. “Right hand red.”
Hunter looked down at the board. “Shit. How?”
There was only one way, and it involved Hunter being in a crab pose between my legs.
“Just do it,” I said, hoping the command would cover up my embarrassment.
“He’s gonna fall,” one of their friends—Gabe—said, gleeful.
“I’m sober, dummy. I’m untouchable.”
Sure enough, Hunter managed to twist himself between me and the dot he needed.
“Oh my God,” Lane said, laughing. “Have we ever had this many hands and feet on the board without a fall? This is a record.”
“Spin again!” Gabe yelled. “What’s taking so long?”
“No yelling at the Gamemaster! Booty shake penalty!”
There was some movement near me as Riley groaned, “Oh, God, no. So close to my face.”
The game broke up after Gabe dropped hard, taking half of us with him. They opted to play quarters, and I went to the kitchen for some water. On my way back, I poked my head into Hunter’s room—he’d taken me in during the tour, so I figured it was okay. Unsurprisingly, Hunter’s walls were papered in photos—friends squeezed close together, his brother and sister as middle-schoolers holding baby Hunter and recreating that photo at a recent wedding, a photo of a beautiful older woman in a cheongsam. Hunter and Lane, grinning and goofy in su
its at a recent formal. I wondered if any of the pretty, smiling girls were Julia, the one who got away. I’d only been looking at the shelves for a minute when a gasp came from the doorway. “Trespasser!”
“I was promised the goods,” I said, gaze sliding to Hunter. “And I’ve found them.”
“Did you now?”
“Never, in all of our shifts together,” I began, reaching for the trophy, “in all those hours, through every teasing comment …”
He covered his face with one hand.
I presented the trophy to him as if he didn’t know its inscription. “Linwood Elementary Spelling Bee Champion.”
“My first and only nerd achievement.”
Dramatics, I knew. He did fine in school. “What word did you win on?”
“Elegy.”
“I love that word,” I said.
Hunter smiled. “Yeah? What other words do you love?”
Was he collecting intel—things he could tease me about later? Or did he really want to know? I didn’t care. “Whimsy. It sounds like what it is. Smithereens. Sonnet. I love a lot of words.”
He sat down on the edge of his bed as I put the trophy back on its shelf. “You feel any better?”
“I do.” I sat beside him, the mattress dipping.
“No, you don’t.” He said it pleasantly, like he enjoyed my effort to fib.
I tipped my head back, and I realized, with some surprise, that my hair nearly reached my shoulder blades. “I keep trying to pinpoint where Max and I started going in different directions, and I just can’t find the spot where our path forked.”
I separated two fingers into a peace sign, trying to demonstrate a path forking, but it was too late. Hunter looked delighted. “Oh. This is about forking?”
“Shut up.” I shoved his shoulder with mine. “God. No. It’s everything else. I probably shouldn’t even be here, for starters.”
“Here?”
Normally, my thoughts made ten pit stops in my brain before exiting my mouth. Tonight, they bypassed all of the usual checkpoints and flew into the air. “Kinda drove Max nuts, us hanging out. Isn’t that ridiculous?”
