Our Year of Maybe

I can’t have you, but I have dreams.

—Brandi Carlile

SOMETIMES

PETER AND THE PIANO BELONGED to each other the way I always wanted him to belong to me.

At the baby grand in his living room, he held his hands over the keys, fingers trembling as they waited to launch into a song. The anticipation was my favorite part. He drew his lower lip between his teeth and squinted at his scribbles on the sheet music.

I didn’t know how he kept his back so straight. As a dancer, I’d suffered countless teachers critiquing my posture. But Peter at the piano was flawless, as though he’d been carved from the same wood. He and the instrument understood each other, while I sometimes wondered if I tried too hard to make dance love me.

On the floor, I flexed and pointed my feet. My arches were killing me. They always were. We were in the middle of practicing a piece we’d probably never show anyone else. I started dance at the same time Peter started piano lessons, and as kids we performed for each other—showed off, really—which turned into this: I choreographed solo routines set to his original compositions. A long time ago my sister had jokingly called us the Terrible Twosome, and the name had stuck.

“Hey, Peter,” I say, trying to sound confident and casual and cool. We were alone in his house, a rarity, and I wouldn’t have dared ask this question if his parents were hanging around. I let out a deep breath. Eight counts. Sixteen. “Do you . . . ever think about it?”

Truthfully, it was something I’d wanted to ask Peter for a long time. I was fifteen and he was fourteen, and we’d been best friends since we were toddlers. We talked about his doctor’s appointments and his medications and even the catheter in his belly. But we never talked about this. And, well, I was curious. I couldn’t help myself.

Slowly his head spun in my direction. He needed a haircut. Peter with his hair a little too long was my favorite Peter. I wondered what it would feel like to drag my fingers through his dark locks. Maybe I’d trace my thumb along the shell of his ear, see if it made him shiver. Thinking about it almost made me shiver.

“Do you mean sex?” His voice cracked on the word “sex,” and I nodded. I would have laughed if I hadn’t been so serious about it all. Peter’s vocal cords were stuck in boyhood; it reminded me we weren’t as adult as I wished we were. “Yeah . . . I mean, sometimes.”

“Me too,” I rushed to say. “Sometimes.” An understatement. Lately it seemed like the only thing I thought about. This time I did laugh, as though to show him I was totally comfortable with the conversation. Ha-ha-ha, I think about sex too! But only sometimes!

I wondered if “sometimes” was an understatement for Peter, too.

He moved fluidly through some arpeggios, and I returned to my mission: to figure out if Peter’s “sometimes” somehow involved me.

“I’ve been thinking.” I tugged the elastic out of my ponytail, which stole a few strands of hair. “So many people talk about how they regret their first time. How they wish it had been with someone else.” Right. Like I knew so many people. “And I was thinking, um, as I said, that when we, you know, do it for the first time . . . that it should be with each other.”

His finger landed on a sour key.

“I mean,” I said to his shoulders, my cheeks burning, “you’re my best friend. You know me better than anyone else in the world. I can’t imagine it being with anyone but you.”

He’d liked me once—an embarrassing declaration when we were in middle school that went nowhere. At the time I’d been honest, told him I didn’t feel the same way, and after a few weeks of awkwardness, we were back to normal. But we were older now. My feelings had changed. Only I was going to be craftier about it than he had been.

Slowly he twisted on the bench, posture still perfect. “Me either. I guess it would be natural for us to—” He waved his hand in a horrifying motion that was maybe supposed to mimic sex. “In the future, though,” he added, like he was confirming that it wasn’t going to happen tonight.

“Right.” God, I hoped it wouldn’t be too far in the future. “Like . . . before we graduate from high school?”

A beat. Two. His face scrunched, like he was trying to calculate the possibility of either or both of us liking someone else enough to completely disrobe in front of them in the next three years. Then he nodded, apparently reaching a conclusion, and stuck out his hand like a freaking Boy Scout. “Sophie, I would be honored to lose my virginity to you.”

He was serious, too, but one corner of his mouth threatened to yank the whole thing into a smile. We shook on it.

“Maybe . . . ,” I said, feeling brave now, wondering how adventurous I could be. “Maybe we should seal it with a kiss?”

His Adam’s apple bobbed in his throat as he swallowed once, twice. “I . . . guess we could do that,” he whispered. He scooted over on the piano bench, making room for me. I slid in next to him, swatting his arm when he let out a nervous laugh.