I shake my head without hesitation.
“No. I don’t. It’s been two years already. But I remember what it was like, her kissing me when I knew she wanted to be with him. I’m the asshole for letting it go on as long as it did. I don’t want to be that asshole again.”
She lowers her hand, and I loosen my grip.
“So the anger that you said has nothing to do with me? Anything you want to tell me?”
A long, slow breath exits her lips, and for several seconds she says nothing.
“No,” she says, a finality in her tone. “We should probably get back on the road if we want to check in before the party.”
With that she straightens in her seat, her head finding its resting spot on the cool glass of the passenger window.
We’ve kept ourselves closed off enough since the day we met that I realize I know nothing more about her beyond what she’s let me see. Little by little she has cracked my resistance, slipped into the parts of me I tried to hide as well. And she’s still here. But for every space I let her fill, she bottles up another one of her own.
She’s right. It’s bullshit. All of it. When it comes to Maggie, it’s no longer enough.
Chapter Seventeen
Maggie
If there was a third person on the trip with us, her name would be Awkward Silence. And yes, she’d be a girl because, well, she’s me. We made it through the rest of the drive with ample small talk about tastes in music and playing the alphabet game with road signs and license plates. But that was simply noise to fill an ever-widening gap. One that I created, have been creating even as Griffin and I have been seeing each other more.
Now I follow him in that same silence down a hotel corridor, wheeling my suitcase behind me to the room we’ll share tonight, wondering if we’ll really share anything more than the same space, the same pocket of time.
When he unlocks the door, he holds it open, ushering me through first, and when he follows behind, we both stop short at what lies before us. Thirty-six stories above the street, a picture window looks out over Lake Michigan. Griffin whistles while I gasp, and our shared reaction brings laughter from him and from me, and somehow the distance lessens, if only by a fraction of space, but it lessens nonetheless.
“Pretend you drew a WILD card,” I tell him, searching for a way to stitch the gap even tighter.
“What?” he asks, his eyes abandoning the view for me.
“The Uno deck,” I say. “A WILD card means you get to ask me anything. Pretend you drew a WILD.”
Once the request is out there, I walk from the entrance across the elegant room to the window seat. The setting sun has the city ablaze in lights, their reflections dancing off the water. I sit, and wait, the promise—or maybe threat—of a question hanging in the air.
I hear him move, his footsteps padding across the carpeted floor. In the reflection of the glass I watch him perch on the edge of the king-sized bed, listen to his exhales, sounds that denote thought. And I wait.
“Tell me about someone you were in love with.”
It’s not a question, but his request asks so much. I spin around on the bench, let my back rest against the tall window. My lips press together in a line, and I shake my head, giving him what he asks for—the truth.
His brows rise in challenge before he reacts with words.
“You’ve never been in love with anyone?”
I laugh, though my expression feels like anything but a smile.
Now his brows pinch together. “I don’t get it,” he says.
I shrug, having answered his question. I don’t have to tell him that in high school I was too focused on AP classes, on earning a full-ride to college so I wouldn’t break my grandparents with loans. I don’t explain that once my grandfather passed away, I started working at the coffee shop, even before starting at the U, to help offset my living expenses. Anyone I’d met, anyone I could have fallen for, wasn’t enough of a distraction to warrant the time away from more important endeavors. I sure as hell don’t let him in on how I lost my scholarship after sophomore year, when I could no longer attend classes full-time…or at all for what would have technically been my junior year.
And now—now there’s this guy who is more than a worthy distraction, and for weeks I’ve been keeping him at a distance, but the pull is stronger than my push. Because for weeks, I’ve also been falling, and all it would take is one more tug from him, and I’d have no push left.
“Is that it?” I ask. “Because you can draw another card if you want.” He leans forward, his elbows on his knees as he contemplates my invitation to ask more, to mend the ripping seam between us.
He stands and makes his way to the bench next to me. He angles his head toward mine, and I suck in a breath, waiting for his lips to be his response, and they are. Just not on mine.
Warm breath tickles my ear before I hear his voice.