Our Year of Maybe

Good.

“I told you before,” he says, as though it’s my fault for misunderstanding, for misinterpreting the signal that was his body on top of mine. “If we break up—or frankly, when we break up, because I’m seventeen and you’re eighteen and let’s be realistic, okay? When we break up, you either regret the transplant, or I’m left with a reminder of you breaking my heart. Either way, one of us gets destroyed.” He wrings his hands. “There’s—I can’t see any good solution here.”

I wouldn’t break up with you, I want to say, though logically, it’s not true. There’s no way I can know that.

“God, I’m stupid,” I say.

“Sophie, no,” he says, reaching for my arm, as though I am the one who’s in the wrong here and he needs to comfort me, reassure me that I made a mistake but it’s okay. “No, you’re not—”

I yank my arm away from him. “I am. I thought what we did—having sex—would connect us even more, that . . . I’d be more important to you.”

I was so positive sex would make me feel closer than ever to Peter. Didn’t he feel it too? That closeness? Our bodies were getting to know each other in a way they’d never known any others. It was something brand-new, and we would never experience it like this again.

“You are important to me.”

“I thought we’d go to college together, and—”

“College?” Peter says. “Who said anything about college? Wait. Is that why you’re going to community college? So you can—so you can wait for me?” When I don’t reply, he has my answer. While I’ve never told him, I wasn’t exactly keeping it a secret. I always assumed winding up in the same place would be a happy coincidence. That he’d be excited. “Why would you do that? I’ve only just barely started to think about what happens after high school. You assume. You take me for granted, assume I’ll be there.”

“Because I want you there.” I shake my head. “I’ve been so worried all year that you’d drop me when you found cooler, more interesting people. Like, I was the friend who was with you when shit was hard, but now you could upgrade.”

His mouth falls open. “I’ve never thought that about you.”

I run a hand through my hair, sliding the rubber band out of my ponytail. It occurs to me that I could agree with him. I could tell him whatever he needs to hear so we can go back to how we were before. I could tell him we’re better as friends and we can erase Saturday from our collective memory.

But . . . I can’t go back to what we were. I cannot be where I’ve been for so many years: clinging to him, drawing him back to me, trying to keep him from leaving. Constant agony—that’s what it was.

“I don’t get it,” he’s saying. “You have other friends too.”

“I know, but—” But they’re not as important as you. They could never be.

“Maybe we should both take some time to cool off.”

I don’t need time. I’ve had enough of it. I need to say all of this now. “Do you regret what we did on Saturday?” I ask, willing my voice not to quake. It does anyway.

He shakes his head, and when he speaks again, there’s a ribbon of frustration there. “No. I swear I don’t. You mean so much to me. You do. It wasn’t fair to you. I’m torn, and confused, and honestly, I still have feelings for Chase. We broke up because he thought I might still have feelings for you. Because of this codependent relationship we have, which probably isn’t normal. Or healthy.”

“Interesting word choice. ‘Healthy.’?”

Our tiny voices echo in the gym, his words bouncing off the walls and hitting me in the stomach. I cross my arms over my chest, suddenly feeling like I’m not wearing nearly enough clothes. My uniform barely covers me up. I shiver, running my hands over the goose bumps on my skin. It was hot when I was dancing, but now it is just me and Peter and the janitor, and I am too cold.

“There it is,” Peter says, a snap to his voice that wasn’t there a few minutes ago. He inches closer to me, dark brows slashed. “Is that what you want? To remind me that I owe you?”

“You don’t—”

“I don’t owe you? Then why do I feel that way all the fucking time?” He throws his hands up, the volume of his words shrinking me. Peter never yells, and definitely not at me. “It was your choice. I never asked you to do it. Is this why you did it, Sophie? So you’d have a reason to always keep me close to you?”

The way he touched me on Saturday, he was so gentle. This cannot be the same person.

I want to combat his words with harsh ones of my own, but my voice comes out meek. I wish it wouldn’t. “No,” I insist, putting more space between us, but deep down, in a place I’ve barely allowed myself to admit, he’s not entirely wrong. There were a hundred reasons I did it, and there’s no way it wasn’t one of those hundred reasons. Maybe it was number one hundred, but it was still there. “I—I did it because you’re the most important person in the world to me, Peter. You’re my best friend, and I—I love you.”

“Do you understand how much pressure that is for me? I can’t love you the way you love me. I did once, when I was too young to know what it really meant. But now? I just . . . can’t.”

It stings, salt rubbed into a gaping wound, alcohol poured over a gash in my skin. This hurt—I want to turn it into anger. I want to hurt him, too. Because beneath all this hurt, I am furious. Furious at all the times he brushed my knee with his thumb and hugged me so fearlessly and slept next to me and acted like it was nothing when to me it was everything. If we were so close, how did he not know what his body was saying to mine?

There’s a closet off the gym that’s open, revealing a shelf of dodgeballs. I stalk toward it and snatch an orange one, bouncing it a few times on the floor.

“What, are you going to throw it at me?” Peter asks, a sour sarcasm in his tone.