by Becky Monson
“Loved it,” he says. “I think the Crack was my favorite, though.”
“If it wasn’t for the cold water.”
“I kept you warm,” he says. I feel his head turn to look at me; there’s a flirty tone to his voice and I feel my stomach do a flipflop.
The conversation is light as we travel the hour back to my place, where he’d picked me up earlier today. We talk about all the things he has to do to get ready for his trip, and, surprisingly, he’s yet to do many of them. He’s usually so prepared for things.
“I guess I won’t see much of you next week,” I say, my tone conveying my disappointment.
“What makes you say that?”
“You’ve got to get ready.”
“You can always come over and help,” he says.
“I do want to get my fill of my boyfriend, Oscar, before you leave.”
“Exactly,” he says.
We pull into the parking lot of my apartment, Chase taking a space next to my Jeep. The lot is fairly empty, as most of us living in this complex are single and out doing things on a Saturday night.
He puts the car in park and sits back in his seat. He turns his head toward me and then reaches over and grabs my hand, holding it.
“For our official last adventure before I leave,” he says, “I just wanted to say thanks for coming with me and keeping me company. I appreciate it, more than you know.”
“I’ll be there tomorrow too,” I say. Tomorrow is Chase’s big jump. What all this has led up to.
He has to attend an hour training since he’s going tandem for his first time. But I told him I would come and sit with him while he waited to go up. Sometimes the wait can be long. Then I’ll be on the ground when he lands.
“I’ve had a lot of fun,” I say. “More than I’ve had in a long time.”
“Do you—” he says at the same time I say, “I was thinking—”
He chuckles. “You go.”
This is it. I reach up to grab on to my necklace but then remember I didn’t wear it tonight. “I was thinking that … I could come visit you, in London.”
It’s hard to see Chase’s expression with only the dashboard lights of the car and the streetlamp giving us light. He looks … surprised.
“Yeah,” he says, his voice emphatic. “I’d love that.”
“I’m going to miss you,” I say.
He squeezes my hand. “I’ll miss you too.”
I take a breath. “I know how we met is strange. But don’t you kind of feel like it was supposed to happen?”
I see the corner of his mouth lift up as he nods his head. “Yeah, I’ve had that same thought.”
“I don’t want you to go to London and forget me.”
His eyes shoot to mine. “I could never. You … you’re …” I will him to keep going with his line of thinking. “We’ll still text, and you can come see me.”
That wasn’t exactly what I was hoping for, but I forge on, ignoring the not-quite-pleasant feeling swarming inside me.
“I just need you to know, before you go, that you’ve become more to me … than just a friend. I … I want you in my life, Chase.”
I keep my eyes on him and watch as his gaze moves from my eyes down to my lips and then to our adjoined hands.
“I know you’re leaving, but I need you to know how I’ve been feeling lately.”
I wait for him to say something, to tell me to continue. He doesn’t, though—he just keeps his focus on our hands. How much more is he going to make me spell this out for him? And if I have to, does that mean he doesn’t feel the same? My stomach does a sinking thing.
Chase’s eyes jerk up to mine and I feel something like hope wash over me. This is it. “Jump with me tomorrow.”
“What?” I say, confused. I try to pull my hand away from his, but he tightens his grip.
He changed the subject. He just did to me what he does when I bring up his mom. An unwelcome feeling starts to swirl in my belly. He doesn’t feel the same.
“Come with me and do the jump tomorrow.” His words have a desperate sound to them. Like he’s pleading.
I shake my head, slowly. “Chase, I … I can’t.”
He lets go of my hand and angles his body so he’s looking forward. “Why?” He wipes a hand down his face.
“Why?” I can’t help my frustrated tone. “You know why.”
“Because you’re scared?”
“Yeah, I’m still scared.” I’m also super pissed right now. I think I’d have rather him just say he didn’t feel the same than change the subject so abruptly.
He turns his body to me again. “I don’t get it. I just watched you do a bunch of adventurous things.” He throws out his hand toward the window. “I know how brave you are, Maggie.”
I roll my lips and close my eyes. “None of that was like jumping out of a plane,” I say. “You’ll see when you go.”
He turns his head back toward the window, toward the lit-up dashboard.
“I’m not going with you tomorrow. I can’t. I’m hoping I have one jump left in me, and I have to use that next Saturday with my family.” I’m getting that feeling—the one where tears aren’t far away. I close my eyes, trying to push it all back.
“You realize how silly that all sounds, right?”
“I’m sorry?” The teary feeling is growing. I’m angry, and disappointed, and sad.
He looks at me. “Do you think … maybe it’s not the jump?”
“What?”
He looks away from me again. “I don’t know … maybe it’s more than that. Maybe you’re avoiding something. Avoiding feelings or something.”
I turn my head to the side, away from him. My mind is absolutely swimming with thoughts right now. “Are you seriously asking me if I’m avoiding feelings?” I turn back to him. “Me?” I point to myself, jabbing a finger into my chest.
“I don’t know.” He lifts a shoulder and lets it fall. “Maybe?” he says.
I can’t help myself. I let out a sardonic laugh. “This is so rich, coming from you.” I reach for my necklace, remembering again that it’s not there. “How could you even ask that? I’ve been a freaking open book to you since the beginning. I don’t hide my feelings … that’s what you do.”
He doesn’t say anything. So I keep going. “I’ve just followed you around for weeks, Chase. Helping you avoid your feelings.”
“That’s not what that was,” he says.
“That’s exactly what that was. And I didn’t say anything because I thought you just needed time or something.”
He’s silent again. I’ve never seen Chase mad. I’m learning that he’s the quiet type when he’s angry. It’s my least favorite kind of anger from people. I’d much rather them be loud and say what they’re feeling. But that’s par for the course with Chase.
“You don’t know what you’re saying,” he finally says, his eyes on the dashboard.
I slap my hands on my thighs. “You’re right. How would I know? It’s not like I’ve recently lost my mom too.”
“I didn’t mean that.”
“And how could I know? You don’t talk about it.”
He doesn’t say anything again. He just sits there.
“You’re just going to sit there? Tell me what you’re feeling right now, Chase. Anything.”
No words. His eyes stay on the dashboard.
I let out a breath, shaking my head. “You know what? I’m—” I stop myself from saying what I want to say. I’m hurt, and I’m angry, and I’ll say something I’ll regret—I know I will. I may already have. Instead, I go for passive aggressive: “Have fun in London, Chase. I wish you all the best.” I open the door and get out of the car.
“Maggie.”
I hear him say my name, but I don’t care. I slam the door shut and I race up the stairs to my apartment, taking two at a time. I use my keys to get in and open the door to find an empty, dark apartment. It’s probably for the best; I don’t know if I want to talk to Hannah right now.<
br />
I don’t bother turning on lights. I just go to my bed, where I fall face-first and cry.
Chapter 29
“I take it last night didn’t go well,” Hannah says, standing over me. I’m lying on the bed, my face focused on the ceiling.
“What gave it away?”
“Your face looks like you’ve been crying all night. Unless I’ve got it wrong and they were tears of joy?”
I scoot over on the bed and she lies next to me. “Not good,” I say, my voice breaking up.
“What happened?”
“He … rejected me.”
“What? I’ll kill him,” she says, exasperated. “What did he say?”
I take a ragged breath, tears falling down the sides of my face. “It’s what he didn’t say.”
“Talk to me.”
I tell her the conversation, the one that’s been playing over and over again in my head, on repeat, like a broken record. He doesn’t want me. He only used me.
That’s what it feels like. All the texts we sent back and forth. All that time together. That was just him distracting himself from his loss, him trying not to feel.
“Wow, he’s got a lot of nerve,” she says.
“Yeah,” I say.
My phone, which is down by the end of my bed where I threw it, beeps. I just lie there, ignoring it.
“Do you want to see who that is?”
“Not really,” I say.
She sits up and grabs my phone, then looks at it and lies back down. “It’s Chase.”
“Yep,” I say. I knew it was him. Like some stupid sixth sense. It’s not the first text I’ve gotten from him since I heartbrokenly left his car last night.
Chase: Please call me
Chase: Can we talk?
Chase: Please talk to me
Chase: Please, Maggie
I’m sure the one he sent just now is just a repeat. Or maybe he’s at the jump, telling me he wishes I were there with him. To hold his hand, or whatever he needed from me, like the safety net that I was to him. I could help him not feel his feelings there too.
It doesn’t feel like me to not text him back. It feels weird. Like an itch I refuse to scratch. But I’m not ready to talk yet.
I sniffle, needing a tissue. “The part that hurts the most was his rejection.”
“Did he actually reject you?”
“Not with his words. He … changed the subject.”
“Oh, gosh.”
“I know.”
“I’m sorry, Mags. I’m honestly surprised.”
“I am too. I guess I shouldn’t be.”
“Maybe …” Hannah says.
“Maybe what?”
She lets out a breath through her nose. “If he was doing all that to avoid his feelings, then maybe he’s avoiding how he feels about you too?”
I sigh. “I don’t know. I want to think that, but I think it would just give me hope. And I need to not hope right now.”
“I’m sorry, Mags,” she says again. She reaches over and taps me twice on the arm. All the comfort I’ll get from her. I’m grateful for it.
We lie in silence. My eyes find the heart on my ceiling and it doesn’t bring me any peace. I see it for what it is: an accidental shape made by a texture gun. That’s all it’s ever been. Maybe I should stop with all this fanciful thinking that Chase was meant to have my mom’s number or that all this was some sign or something. I need to grow up. I need to get real.
“I think he’s just not that into me,” I say finally. My words sound weak with a dash of pathetic.
“Guys don’t spend that much time with girls that they aren’t into,” Hannah says.
“I don’t know if I believe that. Anyway, he’s going to London next week. He’ll be gone, and I can just … do … I don’t know.”
“Dawson?” Hannah says, and then lets out a giggle.
“Right. Dawson. Too bad I told him no last week.”
“That was dumb of you. You should have kept him around just in case.”
“That sounds like a sweet thing to do,” I say, with an eye roll, my voice full of sarcasm. “Anyway, now that I’ve had all these feelings for Chase, I realize that all it ever was with Dawson was lust.”
“He’s easy to lust after.”
I snort laugh.
“Ready for a hard question?” Hannah asks.
“No.”
“If you knew it wasn’t lust with Chase … was it … love?”
“I said I didn’t want the hard question.”
“How long have you known me?”
“Too long.”
I let my body feel heavy, sagging into my bed. Tears spring at the corners of my eyes and I feel them roll down the sides of my face and into my hair and ears. “I don’t know what love feels like.”
“Well, I fancied myself in love with the Cheating Douchewaffle, but I’m not so sure about that now. So, I can’t help you there.”
I think about it for a few seconds. “I don’t know. It’s definitely the most heartbroken I’ve ever felt. At least compared to other relationships.”
I’ve felt a lot of heartbreak this past year … watching my mom fade away, watching her take her last breath. This feels different than that. It’s like a different part of my heart this time.
“What’s the saying?” Hannah asks. “The bigger the jump, the harder the fall?”
I side-eye her. “Pretty sure it’s ‘the bigger they are, the harder they fall.’ Not sure that’s what you were going for.”
She sighs. “I was trying to make it a jumping-out-of-a-plane metaphor. Like, bringing it all together.”
I reach over and give her a couple of her signature impersonal pats on the arm. “Good try.”
She turns her body to the side so she’s facing me. “What are you going to do?”
“Nothing,” I say. “I’m going to go to work tomorrow and just live my life.”
“That sounds so boring.”
“It sure does.”
Chapter 30
I haven’t heard from Chase again. Not since Sunday morning when all he said was “Please call me.” I never texted him back. I just need more time.
It’s Tuesday now and I’m at work, trying to focus. It’s been hard to do that. I feel kind of lost right now. The irony is that the person I would have texted right now, to tell him how lost I feel, is the same person who’s causing that feeling.
Life feels hard right now. It feels like too many things coming at me at once. I feel like I’ve lost so much in the past six months. My mom, texting my mom, and now I feel like I’ve lost Chase.
Maybe I shouldn’t have said anything. Maybe I could have just kept things the way they were.
I keep thinking about what Hannah asked … her hard question. Is this love? Is what I feel for Chase … love? It kind of feels like it. Hannah’s quote she used—the wrong one about the bigger the jump, the harder the fall—kind of works in a different context. Like the bigger the feelings, the harder the heartbreak. It feels like that. My feelings were big, and now my heartbreak is equally big. Or bigger.
I feel tears prick in my eyes and I do that rapid blinking thing to get them to stop.
“Are you going to be ready for Saturday?”
I look up to see Devon standing in my doorway. He’s got on dark jeans and a Cooper’s polo. “What?” I say, as I reach up and dab the corners of my eyes with my fingers.
“Saturday? You’re not going to chicken out again?”
“Did Chelsea send you?”
“Of course.” He comes in and takes a seat in the chair opposite my desk.
“Of course,” I echo. “Well, I hope I don’t.”
“I can’t report back with that answer. I need a firm yes.”
“Go away, Devon.”
He smiles. “What’s wrong with you?” He gestures with a hand toward me.
“Nothing.”
“Your eyes look all watery or something.”
“Just … having a rough day
.”
“Right,” he says. “Mom?”
I give him a sad smile. “Not Mom this time. Surprisingly enough.”
“Then what?”
I already know that Devon will not offer me anything I need right now. This is our MO. I’ve tried to talk to him about feelings, and he’s never been a source of advice or comfort.
“Boy troubles,” I say, hoping that will get him off it.
“Try me. I’m a boy.” He points to himself.
“You’re also my brother.” I should have gone with lady problems. Devon has no ability to deal with that.
“What are your boy problems, Mags?”
“Okay, fine,” I say, expecting little from this conversation. “I have feelings for Chase.”
His brow crinkles. “The guy that I gave a ride to? The one with Mom’s number?”
“The very one.”
“I knew it,” he says.
“What? You know nothing.”
“I could tell when you told us at Dad’s. There was something going on.”
“Joke’s on you, because nothing was going on then. These are … newer developments.”
At least, I’m pretty sure they are. I try to think back to that night, the night I’d busted out this info like I was confessing a crime or something.
Were the feelings starting then? We’d already been ATVing, race car driving, zip-lining, and spelunking. I remember sitting on his couch, with Oscar in my lap, feeling like myself … a feeling I hadn’t had in so long. Had I been feeling this way for a while and just didn’t recognize it?
“And?” Devon asks, his voice carrying notes of impatience.
“He does not reciprocate.”
“Ah,” he says. “Well, he’s a jackass.”
I might have been wrong about Devon. That actually makes me feel a little lighter. Just that one sentence.
“What did he do?”
“It’s kind of a long story.”
“I’ve got too much ADD for a long story. Give me the shortened version,” he says.
I chuckle. “I thought he liked me. We spent a lot of time together, but I told him how I felt the other night, and he did not feel the same.”
“Did he say that?”
“Pretty much.”
“Can I punch him?”
This time I laugh. “Sure,” I say. “He’s leaving for London on Friday for six months, so you’d better act fast.”