Our Year of Maybe

I never considered he’d be out. Without me. Without telling me.

I force my voice to sound less wrecked than I feel. “Oh . . . okay. Do you know when he’ll be back?”

“His curfew’s in a couple hours. He really didn’t tell you he was going out?”

I smile tightly. “No. I’m sure I’ll talk to him tomorrow. Thanks.”

“Sorry, sweetheart,” she says before closing the door.

Hi, you’ve reached Peter. Uh, Rosenthal-Porter. I guess you know that if you called me. So, uh, leave a message and I’ll call you back when I can. Or text me. Okay. Bye. BEEP.

I hang up without leaving a voice mail. Until tonight I didn’t know Peter had a voice-mail greeting, didn’t know it was so awkward and stilted and yet one-hundred-percent Peter. Every other time I’ve called, he’s always picked up.

“Still not answering?” Josh asks. He’s in the living room chair with Luna and a bottle. Tabby’s already asleep, but Luna is apparently on a little-kid sugar high because she wouldn’t go down right away. Not even the Mean Girls musical soundtrack, her current favorite, would do the trick. Tabby’s on a mission to turn her into a theater kid.

I drop my phone onto the couch as I sink into a cushion. “Nope.” Josh is still wearing Marko’s long jacket and yellow shirt, but the horns lie abandoned on the coffee table. “What was that weirdness with you and Tabby earlier?” I’m not trying to be forward, but I’m curious.

“Agh . . . that.” With a sigh, he adjusts Luna in his arms. “It’s so hard, you know? There are so many things we never anticipated.”

“Like people thinking Luna’s your sister.”

“Like that.”

A pain rips through my abdomen. I can’t help it—my face pinches, and Josh regards me strangely.

“You okay?”

“Yeah. Just cramps. I’m on my period.” It’s only half a lie.

But he looks at me a little longer than he should.

Truth is, the pain hasn’t gone away, not completely. The doctors said again that occasional pain is relatively normal for living donors, but chronic pain is rare. Living donor. That’s what they call me. When I think “donor,” I think of some rich person who gave tons of money to a museum. Even now I can’t replace that definition with what I did: giving a physical piece of myself to Peter.

I can’t understand, after what we’ve done, that he doesn’t feel the same undeniable tug toward me that I feel for him.

Why he still needs time.

“I’m sorry about that lady,” I tell Josh, returning to our original conversation topic.

“Thanks.” He strokes Luna’s hair. “We love this kid, of course. We’re head over heels for her. And I love your sister more than anything. But she’s exhausted all the time. I feel guilty that she’s exhausted all the time. I wish this were easier.” He laughs, a this-isn’t-actually-funny laugh. “What a shock—being teen parents is hard.”

“I could babysit for you guys sometime. If you wanted to go out on, like, a date night or something.”

Josh’s entire face changes. “Are you serious? Your parents watch her so much that we always feel guilty asking for time for ourselves. That would be incredible.”

I smile, though I’m a bit uneasy about it. I’ve never been alone with Luna, and she’s still so small. “Yeah,” I say. “Definitely. I should get to know my niece, right?”

He’s grinning now too. “Thank you, thank you. Tab’ll be so thrilled. I know you guys aren’t best friends or anything. But . . . it’s not too late. You two probably have more in common than you realize.”

I shake my head. “Parenting has made both of you way too deep.”

We sit in silence for a couple minutes, until he asks, “You want to watch Beetlejuice? You and Peter always do that on Halloween, right?”

I’m both touched that he remembered and shattered, once again, that Peter isn’t here to watch it with me. It’s amazing how many times a single thing can break your heart. “Sure,” I say. “That would be fun.”

We watch the movie and trade candy until Luna falls asleep and my parents gently urge us to do the same since it’s a school night.

But what he said sticks with me as I take off my sad cat makeup and steal a few of my favorite candies from Luna’s stash. I guess I’ve always thought my life had room for closeness with only one person.