Miles drapes his arms over my shoulders from behind, his chin resting on my head.
“Are you sure he’s not for me?” he asks, though there’s no authenticity in his teasing, not now that he knows the extent of my week since meeting Griffin. A pang of guilt settles in my chest at the realization that Miles now knows more about me and Griffin than Griffin does. Because he knows me. All of me.
“Maggie.” My name comes out as a sigh, and I don’t respond, knowing he’ll continue. “You know the reason we never would have worked isn’t because of this, right?”
He steps back, gesturing toward the bulletin board that takes up most of the large wall in my room. Like his analysis of “Swan Song,” he’s right on the money with what I’m thinking now. He sits on the edge of my bed, eyes still trained on my photographic memory. I perch next to him and exhale, long and slow.
“I know,” I say with as much conviction as I can muster. Miles knew me before, and he knows me now, and everything about us has always screamed friends instead of more than. Sleeping with him had been wonderful, but we both felt the same when it was over. We were just sharing loneliness. That wasn’t where our relationship was supposed to go. But a tiny part of me, the only part I’ve never shared with him, still thinks about What if? What if I was still the girl in that Intro to Psych class? What if I didn’t have to worry about what I eat or drink, about getting enough sleep, about anything that could be a new trigger, that could turn a good day into one that ends with my head on a cold, tile floor begging for the throbbing to stop? What if I didn’t live in fear that all of it would happen again, that if it does, I might not be so lucky?
Lucky. What a subjective word.
Miles nudges my shoulder with his own.
“Now say it like you mean it,” he says, and I laugh.
“Did you know that ten to fifteen percent of people with diagnosed aneurysms will have more than one?”
This is our thing. When Miles has to talk me off a ledge, I throw statistics at him. He’s relentless with his hope for me, but I keep a wall full of reminders that say otherwise. Tonight, though, as I spout off my anxieties, I realize my fear isn’t for me alone. It’s for him—Griffin. When I think of what I put Gran through, of how much she lost before she almost lost me—how could I set someone else up for that possibility? Wanting him feels too selfish, too soon. I owe Griffin more than that.
“I’m proud of you,” he continues, and I peel my eyes from the vision in front of us, questioning him with raised brows.
“For what?” I add.
He kisses my forehead.
“For trying out this living thing. It looks good on you, sweetie.”
I sigh. “I feel good. But for how long? How long can I keep this at bay?”
I motion back to the wall, but Miles keeps his eyes on me.
“Why do you have to?” he asks. “The guy is crazy about you. And this is only a piece of you. It doesn’t define you, not if you don’t let it.”
“Yeah, well…”
But he doesn’t give me a chance to argue. Miles pulls me in for a hug. I think about tonight, about what attracts bad-boy Jess to straight-laced Rory, and vice versa. He’s broken, and she wants to fix him. But in the end, Jess is the one to fix himself. Because he’s not fixable until he wants it.
What happens when both parties are a little bit broken, though? Griffin has to want to fix himself. I can’t do that for him. And me? No one wants fixing more than me, but part of me may be beyond repair. How do I offer that to someone else to take on, someone who hasn’t taken on himself yet?
I don’t ask Miles this because he’ll find a way to argue against me. Mr. Sunshine, the guy with the positive spin on everything, he’d try to convince me that two wrongs actually do make a right, that somehow broken plus broken can equal fixed. But I don’t want to argue. I don’t want to prove what I know is true. I want to sail as far as I can get before the boat rocks me hard enough to throw me overboard.
“So Paige, huh?” I ask, perfecting the art of subject change, and Miles releases me from our embrace. Leave it to me to call Griffin out on his talent for deflection only to use it to my advantage. Hello, pot. Meet kettle. “No more Andrew?” I add.
“I don’t know,” he says. “Andrew wanted to get serious. And, well, you know me. Paige, though. She’s funny. And smart. Do you know she’s not only a bartender? She manages the place she works at. She has a degree in restaurant management and hospitality services.”
I didn’t know that. Paige and I have the perfect neighborly relationship. She locks my door when I forget, comes over for coffee every now and then, and never asks what I do beyond work and school. Simple. Easy. And, at the same time, not at all a friendship. But it could be. Tonight it was clear Paige is a great ally to have in my corner, for more than merely swapping keys in case of emergency.
“You got all that from walking her five feet down the hall.”