Our Year of Maybe
I hate myself for thinking that, but I can’t make myself stop.
Liz gives me a ride home after I hug everyone in the school parking lot where the bus dropped us off, and they tell me for the hundredth time that my phone call was the funniest thing they’d ever seen. I’m not sure if that Sophie followed me home.
My phone lights up with a text from Peter while I’m kicking off my shoes.
Peter: Something happened last night. With Chase.
Peter: Are you home? Can you come over? I’ve been dying to tell you.
Not now. I want to linger in my weekend a while longer.
Sophie: I’m wiped. Tell me tomorrow on the way to school?
Peter: Sure. Okay.
A lamp is on in the living room, and my dad has his headphones on.
“Hey, kiddo,” he says quietly, so as not to wake anyone up. “How was your weekend?”
“Exhausting, but good. How’s the murder podcast?”
“Murdery.”
“Can I sit and listen with you again?” I’m not sure I’m ready to be fully alone, and I love that my dad and I can sit in silence.
“Of course.” He pats the couch next to him. “You’ve been with people all weekend. Was it too much?”
“Too much social. Sophie on overload,” I say robotically.
“We can just listen,” my dad says, as though understanding I don’t feel like talking right now.
But my mind wanders. Something happened with Chase. They declared their love for each other. They kissed, and it was much better than either of the two questionable-circumstance kisses Peter and I have shared. My kidney stopped working and Chase offered up one of his own.
Surely it was something good, something that made Peter happy. After my dad goes to sleep, I leave my still-packed bag on my bed and turn on my computer. My curiosity is stronger than my exhaustion.
Chase and I aren’t friends on any social media platforms, but most of his pages are public. There are photos with his family, a trio of sisters. They’re posed with their arms around each other, grinning, and it’s jarring partially because I can’t imagine Tabby and me posing like that. There are photos of him with friends at football games, concerts, school dances. There are photos of his band, a couple with Peter but most without, including a very dramatic photo of them on a playground. Chase is on a tire swing, one of the girls is on a rocking hippo, and the other girl and guy are perched on a slide. They all look extremely serious.
There’s a news article that comes up too—an obituary from years ago. His dad passed away, and oh God, I can’t imagine.
Then I find his YouTube channel, which is also public. There are a handful of poorly filmed concert videos, but most of the videos are Chase in his room playing guitar. It should be self-indulgent, but it isn’t. He’s charming and funny, a skilled musician, though these acoustic covers aren’t really my thing. None of the videos have more than forty-two views, which somehow makes me like him more.
It’s not that I’m cursing his existence, wondering what Peter sees in him.
It’s that I can tell exactly what Peter sees in him.
CHAPTER 24
PETER
“SOPHIE, CHASE. CHASE, SOPHIE. I guess you guys already sort of know each other?” The three of us stand at the ice rink entrance, hands jammed into our coat pockets as I make this awkward introduction. Chase beat us there; Tabby took the shared Orenstein car today, so Sophie and I bused it.
“In the way you know someone you’ve been in school with for a few years without actually having spoken, yes,” Chase says. “Hey, Sophie. I’ve heard a lot about you.”
She blushes. “Hi. I, um . . . same.”
In the week since our bookstore kiss, Chase and I have seen each other a few times outside of school, but we’ve stuck to our own friend groups during lunch. So this really is the first official meeting of my boyfriend and my best friend.
“The dance team is great this year,” Chase says. His mouth bends into an easy smile.