“Got it.” Maeve looks up into the branches as she swingsforward again. She sounds utterly unimpressed. And she isn’t even trying to get me to talk. She doesn’t say a thing. Not a word. Not one single...
“When you and Eliza...” I can’t stop myself. “Did you ever wonder if you were just still together out of habit?”
“Yeah, I’m afraid so.”
I gulp.
“Pretty shitty feeling, isn’t it?” Maeve lets the soles of her shoes scrape over the ground until the swing stops.
“Yeah.” Why’s my throat so dry?
“But I don’t think there’s anything wrong with thinking that kind of stuff.” Maeve looks at me. “It means you’re developing as a person.”
“Itfeelslike there’s something wrong with it.”
“Why?”
I could roll my eyes. Because that’s how she always asks. It forces me to be brutally honest with myself, which I’d normally prefer to avoid.
There’s a small, dishonestI don’t knowon the tip of my tongue. But I bite it back because I know we won’t get anywhere like that. So I just talk. No filters, no overthinking. Maeve’s the only person in the world I can do this with.
“Because we’ve grown apart from each other.”
“Why could that be?”
I think about Emma. I’m thinking about her and nothing else.
“What’s her name?” Maeve asks, and my first instinct is to deny everything. But suddenly I’m sick of it. Of lying to myself, lying to my friends. Lying to Emma. Because I don’t want to bejust friendswith her. I want more, I want everything, and I want it with her. “Or him?”
I shake my head. “Her.” My voice sounds suddenly rough. “Emma.”
“Is she new?”
I nod. “She’s German, just here for a year. We met at the airport when I changed in Frankfurt.”
Maeve smiles. “Cute, Henny.”
Henny...She’s the only person who still sometimes calls me that, from back when I couldn’t pronounce my name properly.
“Stop it, Maeve, it’s horrible, all of it.” I groan. “What am I even doing? None of this makes any sense...”
“You fancy her, of course it doesn’t.” Maeve says it like a totally self-explanatory fact.
But it’s not true. I know what a crush feels like. And this with Emma is more than that. It’s so much more than having a crush on her, and that scares me.
“I can’t do this. I can’t fall in love. I’m with Grace.” I swallow hard, and I don’t want to be this guy. Grace has always done everything right. She’s important to me, and I don’t want to lose her. If I listened to my feelings, instead of my mind, that would definitely happen.
“That’s true, but are you happy with her? Are you two happy together?” Maeve doesn’t take her eyes off me, and I just can’t speak.
I’m thinking about everything and nothing. About weekends with Grace and her family, about our conversations, talking whole nights away, laughing till we can’t breathe, knowingthere’s always someone there for me. But then I think about rows over tiny things and silence about the stuff that’s so crucial and so big that it scares me. About this feeling of having got used to Grace. It’s almost like indifference, and I’m the worst human being in the whole world, but it’s true. I like Grace, her presence, her sense of humor, our relationship. I respect her. I want the very best for her. But since that day a few weeks ago when I ran into this German girl at the airport and sat in an airplane feeling gray-blue eyes burning into the back of my neck, I haven’t been able to forget it. Because nothing with Emma is enough. Because I want more. And because I think I could have it with her.
I only remember Maeve’s question when I feel her eyes on me.
“We’re not unhappy,” I begin. “But... I think we’re not properly happy anymore either.”
“As happy as you are when you spend time with Emma?”
Why do I feel so guilty? I really wish it wasn’t this way, but whenever I’m with Emma, it seems like I feel everything twice as intensely. And that’s dangerous.
