Our Year of Maybe

So I dig my fingernails into the wire.

And I rip them off the bracelet, the ballet slipper and the music note.

I need to be away from all this, figure out who I am on my own. I’m hoping the workshop will help. No one will know me in San Francisco. I won’t be quiet Sophie or Peter’s best friend Sophie or kidney donor Sophie. I won’t be Sophie, hopelessly in love with someone who does not love her back. I can be anyone, and I like the sound of that.

I gave Peter a piece of me—but maybe I also gave him the freedom to figure out who he was without me. And I should have realized much sooner that I’d given myself the exact same thing.

As I’m taking the last trash bag outside, I freeze when I see him across the street. He and his parents are getting out of the car. When he spots me, he pauses too, lingering in the driveway while his parents go inside.

I lift my hand in a wave. He watches me for moment, like he’s weighing what he wants to do.

Then he waves back. It’s not even a full wave; he just lifts his hand and then brings it back down.

He didn’t owe me his love, and I didn’t deserve it because of the sacrifices I made. Truthfully, Peter and I were unbalanced for a long time.

A friendship breakup has got to be worse than a relationship breakup. With a relationship, you can go back to being friends. There’s at least the possibility of it. But after a friendship ends, what do you go back to? Do you simply become nothing to each other? Fade away until you barely recognize each other anymore?

He shuts himself inside his house, and I return to mine, a sense of calm spreading through me. I thought the fight and fallout would turn my love for him to ashes. The flame is still there, though, a soft flicker. Every day I love him less, and one day I will love only our memories.

CHAPTER 36

PETER

MY FIRST PRACTICE BACK WITH diamonds are for Never is awkward, but by my third, everything feels almost normal.

“I wrote a song for us,” I announce during my fourth practice.

Everyone turns to face me. Over the past few weeks

, Chase and I have started sitting together at lunch again, and he gave me a ride to practice today.

“You did?” Dylan says.

“Yeah—I mean, I’ve always kind of written music.” I pause. It’s hard to think about the Terrible Twosome without my chest aching just a little. “But I wrote this one with the band in mind.”

“The floor is yours,” Aziza says, motioning with a drumstick.

I adjust the mic in front of me, the one I’ve used to sing backup until now. My lyrics have hopefully improved significantly since “Dancing through My Heart.” The song isn’t about Chase or Sophie, not explicitly. I love subtext too much for that. But my emotions from this past year are all over it. It’s a mix of melancholy and hopeful, quiet until the final, crashing chorus.

“I love your voice,” Kat says when I finish. “What were those lyrics in the second verse? ‘At night the stars are jealous of/the wishes people make on us’?”

Staring at the keys, I nod. My lyrics in someone else’s voice—that’s trippy.

“That’s fucking beautiful.”

“You want to sing backup for me?” I ask.

“Absolutely.”

“Can you play that opening again?” Chase asks. I’ve been most anxious to hear his reaction, but his tone is hard to interpret. “I want to try something.”

“Sure,” I say, gliding my fingers back into position.

Chase plays some harmonics, and combined with my soft piano notes, it sounds wistful and bright and amazing all at once.

“Keep going,” I say as we slide into the chorus.

Together, we play the rest of the song. He experiments with chords, and I sing around a smile, and the rest of the band watches us.