Our Year of Maybe

Liz clutches my arm. “I want to hear everything.”

“She can keep it private if she wants to,” Montana says. “Sophie, I don’t need the details, but I’m really happy for you.”

“After school?” I ask Liz, and she grins.

When it’s time for the assembly, we paint Gs on one cheek and Os on the other, tie green ribbons in our hair. My piece is part of our repertoire now. We dance it first, starting out with the hand claps, alternating between the old and the new, the vintage and the modern.

At the end, we rip the ribbons from our hair and stomp on them, and the crowd roars.

After the assembly, Principal Martinez gives us the rest of the day off. Montana asks us to hang back for a quick dance team meeting, during which she mentions a couple changes in our practice schedule now that it’s basketball season. By the time we’re done, everyone’s cleared out of the gym.

Everyone except Peter.

He’s standing near the locker room entrance, waiting for me. I grin even bigger when I see him because his hair is all messy, like he’s been raking his hands through it. The light catches his bracelet, the one that matches mine.

My teammates retreat to the locker room, leaving Peter and me alone with the janitor, cleaning up the bleachers where people left scraps of paper and chip bags and silver and green confetti.

“Hi,” I say when I get close to him. I am suddenly so, so nervous. Saturday night plays through my mind in flashes: skin against skin, the determined desperation in his eyes. It almost makes me blush now.

His smile is sheepish. “You guys were great. As always,” he adds, though it’s only the second time he’s seen us.

“Thanks.”

I expect him to reach for my hand, pull me in for a kiss. I let mine drop to my sides as though indicating to him that he can grab one at any time. But he seems as nervous as I am. Maybe he’s not ready for public displays of affection quite yet. That’s okay—we can learn that together.

I shouldn’t be so anxious about touching him, so I inch closer. I reach my arms around his neck, which feels sort of awkward, like he wasn’t expecting it and isn’t sure how to make his body fit into mine. Then, as we hug, I brush my lips against his cheek, the corner of his mouth.

“This . . . is all really new to me,” I say.

He nods.

“We can take this as slow as you want. Well. I guess it’s already gone kind of fast. . . .” I trail off, laughing a little. Peter blushes. God, I love it when he does that. “But we don’t have to tell our parents right away. I mean, I can’t imagine they’d be anything but happy for us, but . . .”

He blinks at me a few times, like I am a piece of classic literature he is trying to interpret. A song he is trying to memorize. I have always admired Peter’s passions. He’s always had so many of them, and I wanted so badly to be one of them. Aren’t I now? What we did Saturday night—what was that if not passion?

“Sophie,” he says quietly, unable to meet my eyes n

ow. “I—there are some things I need to say.”

My sunshine smile slips right off my face. Slowly I back up, as though Peter is a wild, unpredictable animal. No. There’s no way. Not after all these years, not after I finally got what I wanted.

“Say them, then.” My voice is not my voice. It’s chalky and shallow and belongs to someone whose heart is about to be broken.

But he can’t. He glances between the floor and the banners of sports awards that hang from the ceiling, but not at me.

“Is everything okay? With the kidney?” I’m grasping here. There’s something wrong with me that for a split second I hope that’s what this is. That it’s health-related, not heart-related.

The kidney. As though, even after all these months, it doesn’t wholly belong to either of us.

“Yeah,” he says quickly. “Yeah, I’m fine. The kidney . . . It’s fine. This . . . It’s obviously complicated. Especially after what happened on Saturday. I just—it kills me to say this, Soph, but we can’t be together. Not the way you want to be. And I’m so, so sorry. I wish it could be different. I wish—”

We can’t be together.

Except that’s not it, not quite. It’s that he can’t be with me.

“You do?” I interrupt. “You really wish it could be different? We had a chance to make it different on Saturday night. We made it different. So don’t apologize to me when you’re the one, yet again, getting exactly what you want.”

His face is pinched. Uncomfortable. He doesn’t have control over this conversation.