His fingers running down my throat. My hand clenched in his thick hair. A complicated love song come to life. My willowy frame tangled up with his strong build. Twelve years of bad timing seemed to melt away over and under our tongues. It was tender and full of yearning. His fingerprints on my damp skin lit tiny fireworks on delicate places he’d only explored once before. All at once, I could feel wind where there had been fire—he was no longer touching me.
Garrett stepped back as quickly as he’d stepped forward. I couldn’t catch my breath, but by the looks of it, he was searching for more than air. Garrett’s gaze was fixed on his feet, with one hand pressed onto his reddened neck, as if trying to get confirmation that he was the owner of the body that just kissed me like it was the end of the world.
I went white, with my eyes widening under the visual of sunshine battling a storm. Garrett inhaled sharply, blinking back tears—tears which didn’t dare fall. But I’d never seen water gather at his eyelids, not in the twelve years I’d known him. Garrett’s insides were coming undone, even though his armor refused to split open.
“Garrett?”
Brows pressed together, I moved forward with my arm stretched out toward his cheek, but he gently grabbed my hand before it could find his jawline.
“I’m…I’m engaged,” he cracked, barely able to get the betrayal out.
The words wrapped around my brain, and I tugged my hand sharply out of his grip. His eyes darted away from mine, shame all over his face.
“I wanted to tell you when we had coffee, but you—you said what you said, and…” He trailed off, eyes frozen on the ground.
Shock opened my jaw and strangled my throat, until a current of anger pushed the words out of my mouth.
“Why did you kiss me?”
My heart pounded faster under the realization that I had just gotten something I desperately wanted, but under horrible circumstances. Garrett slowly met my damp eyes. I was aghast, my palms open toward him.
“Today, I kept looking at my door, Maggie. I kept staring at my door waiting for you to show up.” He kicked the dirt below him, as if the emotion punching his ocean eyes was the dirt’s fault. “I always thought that we’d”—he looked up to meet my eyes, so that the line would further delight and destroy me—“I always thought we’d end up together. I thought the cards would fall the right way. You didn’t show today, of course you didn’t. And it should have been an exhale. I’m with someone else. But staring at that door, it consumed me…until it felt like…like I couldn’t breathe. Like I was inhaling smoke or something. I left my apartment to get some air…I started walking…I walked the entire city to stop thinking about you, and I ended up at the very place I knew you’d be.”
His hands were limp at his sides, as if none of his thoughts or actions were his fault. As if I’d put a pistol against the back of his head, marched him here, tugged him onto my lips, and forced him to inflict emotional torture upon me. I hugged my shoulders, watching him stare helplessly at me through a puddle of hot liquid behind my lashes.
All at once, inhaling the wind was painful—shock turned to fury, insides tightening and boiling. I stepped in to his face, brows pointed together, anger showing. He froze, stunned by a version of Maggie Vine that he hadn’t yet seen. Few got to meet her.
“Are you bringing up my thirtieth birthday? Bringing up that promise?” I asked, my voice loud and mad. “We were sitting across from each other six weeks ago, and you failed to mention you were engaged. I poured my heart out to you, you hugged me—you fucking hugged me, and you left. And then, you iced me out. You couldn’t even text me back. And you’re bringing up a stupid promise we made five years ago?”
“It was more than that and you know it.”
“You put a ring on someone’s finger! If it meant more to you, if you wanted to start a life with me today, you wouldn’t be starting one with someone else,” I said, forcefully.
“Goddamnit Maggie, I thought you were turning me down on your thirtieth birthday,” he said, exasperated. His voice got quieter. “After that night, I thought that for you, the idea of me was always going to be better than the real thing. And then you told me—” He stopped for a moment, words stuck in his throat. “When I proposed to Cecily, I’d…I didn’t think I was a possibility for you. I’d put it out of my head. What am I supposed to do now, knowing that we should be together? You waited until after I’d put a ring on my girlfriend’s finger to tell me that for the last however many years, you were in love with me. And you knew I was in love with you.”
I couldn’t speak, tears were everywhere.
“I would have walked away from anyone for you. Anytime. Anyone,” he said, inches from my face, tears still holding tight in his eyes.
I let my lips part, knowing that the result might throw dirt on our coffin.
“And now?” I cracked, my voice quivering.
He swallowed hard and looked to the darkening sky before his eyes came back down to mine. His lips searched for words, even though it was clear he already had them. He just wasn’t sure how to make the delivery.
“I’m getting married.” He said it like an exhale that hurt.
I felt my chest caving in, my breathing turning rapid.
“That was always your answer, wasn’t it? She was your endgame when your feet led you to this park, when you saw me standing here, and you kissed me anyway.”
I was fully aware of what we had just done. The kiss would live inside me forever, filling me up and then bleeding me dry. From this day forward, “Crash Into Me” would land like tiny paper cuts all over my skin. Silent tears rolled down my chin as I stepped back from him.
Hope is The Unknown wrapped in a safety net. It’s wading through rough waters, clinging to the possibility that a big wave might push your shivering, tired body onto the balmy, sun-kissed shoreline, and ignoring the fact that a big wave might sneak up and drown you. When sparkly hope gives way to a cruel reality, when you can nearly taste the shoreline but you’re caught in the undertow, it’s heartbreak.
I felt my chest split in two. The possibility of Garrett was one of the things that I had allowed to pull me further away from reaching the shore, from finding the right man to start a family with. I believed no one else measured up to him, so I didn’t give myself a fair shot to test the hypothesis. There was a part of me that believed he’d show up on my thirty-fifth birthday and put it all on the line. He’d kiss me, and that kiss would be the beginning of the rest of our lives, just like I had promised. Instead, it was confirmation that Garrett and I fit perfectly, but we would never be. I was thirty-five, and the road less traveled was officially a dead end.
9
TWENTY-SEVEN
I SUCKED THE FRESH BLUE ink off my index finger, rereading the outro. It was beautiful, but thanks to the swaying tour bus, I was certain I wouldn’t be able to decipher my jittery handwriting come tomorrow.
Twisting tides breaking your fisherman’s bend
I like it when I’m afraid of how it ends
I grinned, steadied the open notebook on my bare thigh, and reinked the lyrics as the minor key danced in my brain. The tour bus’s bunk alley had become my favorite place to write. It was a warm cocoon: velvet blackout curtain around my twin-size bed, the lingering smell of frequent palo santo cleansings, and miles of blurry fields and crisp stars out my window. The road swayed my body like a hammock—ideal for focusing and sleeping, not so much for eligible penmanship.
I glanced up from the rewritten words, seeing my phone brighten under my notebook’s leather binding. My heart stayed neutral as I read Garrett’s name atop the lock screen.
When are you getting back here already? It’s peak NYC. Sheep Meadow awaits!