Sunday night stretched into an agony of waiting. I couldn’t focus on homework. I couldn’t eat. I just paced my room, my phone a dead weight in my hand. She was back in town. She had to have seen the message.
Silence.
The hope that had flickered when I sent the text was guttering out, drowned by the crushing certainty that I had ruined the best thing in my life. I’d had my chance, and I’d blown it for a fantasy.
Just after 10 p.m., my phone lit up. Not a text. A call. Maya’s name flashed on the screen.
My heart leaped into my throat. I fumbled to answer, pressing the phone to my ear.“Hello?”
There was a pause, then her voice, quiet and steady.“You’re at the bridge?”
My breath hitched.“Yeah.”
“Stay there.”
The line went dead. Twenty minutes that felt like a lifetime later, I saw the beam of a bike light weaving down the path. My heart hammered against my ribs as she emerged from the darkness, her face pale in the moonlight. She leaned her bike against a tree and walked toward me, stopping a few feet away, her arms crossed against the cool night air.
We just looked at each other. The silence was a living thing, full of every unsaid word from the last few weeks.
“You got my text,” I finally said, my voice rough.
“I got it.” Her gaze was unreadable.“I spent the whole retreat thinking about what you said. About being invisible.”
“Maya, I never meant—”
“I know you didn’t,” she interrupted, her voice soft but firm.“But you did. And it hurt, Leo. It hurt more than anything.”
“I know.” I took a step closer, my hands shoved in my pockets to keep from reaching for her.“And I will spend every day for the rest of my life being sorry for that. But what I said in the text… that was the truth. The only truth that matters.”
She looked away, out over the dark water.“Chloe?”
“Is a friend. Or she will be, I hope. But that’s all. It was always you, Maya. It just took me a spectacularly stupid amount of time to see it.”
A soft, broken sound escaped her, halfway between a laugh and a sob. She wiped at her eyes with the back of her hand.“You’re such an idiot.”
“I know,” I whispered, closing the distance between us.“But I’m your idiot. If you’ll still have me.”
She looked up at me then, and the wall in her eyes finally crumbled. The anger, the hurt, it was all still there, but underneath it was the same fierce, unwavering love that had always been there for me.
“I painted a lot this weekend,” she said, her voice thick.“Mostly angry, black and red stuff. But on the last day, I startedsomething new.” She reached into her jacket pocket and pulled out her phone, pulling up a photo. It was a painting of this very bridge, at dusk. The sky was a swirl of deep blues and violets, but in the center, where the sun had set, was a single, bold, brilliant stroke of gold, refusing to be extinguished by the coming night.
“It’s us,” she whispered, her eyes glistening with tears.“Or what I hope we can be.”
I couldn’t speak. I just reached out and cupped her face, my thumb stroking her cheek. She leaned into my touch, her eyes closing for a second.
“I love you, Maya,” I said, the words feeling more right than anything I had ever said.“I’m so in love with you it terrifies me.”
A real, tearful smile finally broke through.“It’s about time.”
And then she kissed me.
It wasn’t like the desperate, chaotic kiss with Chloe. This was a homecoming. It was gentle and deep and tasted of salt and hope and everything I had ever wanted without knowing I was searching for it. It was the answer to a question I had been asking my whole life.
When we finally broke apart, breathless and smiling, I rested my forehead against hers, our breaths mingling in the cool night air.
“So,” she said, her voice a happy murmur.“What’s the plan now, nerd?”
I laughed, a real, joyful sound I hadn’t heard from myself in weeks. I wrapped my arms around her, holding her close, the missing piece of my world finally clicking back into place.
