Our Year of Maybe

Seattle?”

“No . . . in San Francisco.”

I watch his face closely, trying to gauge his reaction. Our server swaps our empty chip basket for a new one. Peter’s brow furrows. He doesn’t even grab a chip.

“Wow. You should do it. You think you want to do that, like, professionally?”

“Maybe? If I’m any good at it.”

“You clearly are.”

I smile, but his reaction has thrown me. It’s not that I was hoping for him to cling to my legs and beg me to stay, but I expected he’d say he’d miss me, at least. I was hoping for more than Wow and You should do it.

I shake these feelings off. “Tell me your news.”

He grins. “I. Uh. Sort of joined a band?”

“Wait . . . what?”

“You know I’ve been hanging out with Chase Cabrera? He’s in a band, Diamonds Are for Never—”

“Diamonds Are for what?”

“Never,” he finishes, and a flush creeps onto his cheeks. “It’s cheesy, I know, and they just started out, so they’re not amazing or anything, but . . .” He trails off. He’s trying to downplay this, trying to make it seem like he isn’t bubbling over with excitement. “They wanted a keyboard, and, well . . .”

“That’s you.”

“That’s me.”

Peter is in a band called Diamonds Are for Never. I should be happy for him, but my features feel frozen.

“Tabby said you were at her diner yesterday,” I say slowly. I found it odd when she told me last night after her shift, but I was too distracted by my impending dance practice to mention it. “You were with them—the band?”

He nods. “Sophie,” he says. “Are you . . . okay about this?”

“Why wouldn’t I be?” My voice is too high-pitched, too very-clearly-not-okay-about-it. “It’s not like music was our thing or anything.”

He picks up a chip but doesn’t eat it, just crushes it to yellow crumbs on his napkin. “So . . . I can’t play music with anyone else because of some dumb thing we did as kids?”

Some. Dumb. Thing.

The chips aren’t sitting right in my stomach.

He must realize this affects me because he reaches across the table and, ever so lightly, grazes my wrist with his fingertip. This touch—because he initiates it, it’s okay somehow. It’s a touch that communicates his apology but nothing else. It doesn’t linger long, as though he’s worried I’ll misinterpret it. As though a real gesture of affection would be too much.

“I—I’m sorry,” he says. “The Terrible Twosome wasn’t dumb. I didn’t mean that. I just meant it was something we did as kids, you know?”

Past tense. The Terrible Twosome was.

“I know.”

“And you have dance team,” he says. “That’s music.”

I’ve always had that, though. I’ve had dance team and dance class and I don’t know why it feels different that Peter’s off doing something without me when I’ve been doing this without him—but Peter was never going to join dance team. And Peter and I already have a band.

“I know,” I say again. I yank out my ponytail, wincing when the elastic pulls out a few hairs. As best I can, I wrangle it into a bun. It’ll never look as sleek as Montana’s.

“I mean, the Terrible Twosome couldn’t exactly play shows or anything.”