You always knew that, I remind myself.
I stare at the caller ID. It’s Maya calling. She almost always texts first, and after yesterday’s disaster, I can’t help but be nervous about what she’s going to say. No doubt she’s talked toTed by now.
Is she going to tell me it’s over, that we can’t even be friends?
“Hey,” I say when I answer. I don’t add my usual “gorgeous.” I’d always thought that was deniable before, but really, is it? Was it ever?
“Hey, Kevin,” Maya says. She sounds sad, and I’m sure, then. She andTed agreed. It’s over between us. “Ted and I broke up.”
It takes a moment for this to sink in.They . . . broke up? “I’m sorry,” I say, even though I’m not. I’m the opposite of sorry. I’m ready to throw a freaking parade. “Are you okay?”
“Yeah, I think so,” Maya says. “I mean, I know it was the right thing to do.”
“You broke up with him?” I ask, still stunned. Not sure what significance I dare to read into the fact that she broke up with him the very day after she told me about him.
“Yeah,” she says. “I just . . . wasn’t as into it as I should have been, you know?”
I did not know, but now that I do, I feel like crying. All those smart things I said yesterday about how we needed space and to be able to give our all to other relationships go flying out the window.
Maya’s single. And she’s here, talking to me. And right now, those two things are the only ones in the world that matter.
“I know you’re probably still mad I didn’t tell you,” Maya says. “It didn’t feel like a big deal, I guess. And it should have, if I’d been more committed to it. But I wasn’t, and I just didn’t want anything to change.”
I almost tell her I hope that’s not why she broke up with him, but that’s a bald-faced lie. I hope thatiswhy she broke up with him. I want her to want me and only me. I should tell her; I should confess everything right here, tell her I’m hopelessly in love with her and it broke my heart to know that there was someone else, and I don’t ever want to feel that way again.
“Yeah, okay,” is what I actually say. “You didn’t seem like you were that invested in what he thought.”
Maya groans. “I know, right? I am the worst. He was a nice guy, and I shouldn’t have done that to him.”
I can’t help asking. “Why did you?”
“I don’t know,” she says. “Maybe because it was easy.”
She probably doesn’t mean it this way, but that slaps me in the face. It was easy, because he was there. It was easy, because he was a normal guy, with a normal life.
It was easy, because he made it easy on her.
And here I am in this insane career, two days’ drive from her, making no effort to get back there to see her.
If I did, would it make a difference? If I made this easier on her, would she want me?
My heartbeat pounds in my ears.
And if so, would it matter? Is Shane right to worry? Would I quit the band for her?
I don’t know how to think about that, let alone talk about it. I nearly lost everything, and now I’ve got her back with me, and that feels fragile and precious, and I want to protect it.
Even if what I’m stupidly protecting is my own heart.
“Still,” I say. “Breakups suck, no matter the circumstances.”
“Yeah,” Maya says. “They do.”
“So what are you going to do now? Pick up guys at school?Try online dating?” What I want her to say is that she’s going to beg me to come out to Denver and console her. I can think of dozens of ways I’d like to do that, and only half of them involve both of us naked.
“God, no,” Maya says. “No online dating. I tried that once. Waaaaaay too many dick pics.”
“Ha. I can see how that would be a problem.”
