Our Year of Maybe

by Rachel Lynn Solomon

  “This is good,” I say, and I swear he sighs in relief. “Sort of has a Neko Case vibe, but less depressing.” When Chase looks blank, I feign shock. “Neko Case? Really?” I lean over and find one of my favorite songs of hers, “This Tornado Loves You.”

  “I like this,” he says, and when the song’s over, he types something else into the search bar.

  We go back and forth like this for a while, trading songs, Dante nearly forgotten. When Sophie and I do this, we’re both judgmental, convinced our taste is better, frustrated when the other doesn’t get the brilliance of a particularly brilliant song.

  “You like good music,” he says, and at that word, “good,” a spark of pride runs up my spine. There’s nothing like being complimented on your music taste. It feels better than being told you’re smart or attractive or funny. “I’m, uh . . .” He blushes. “We only just started, so we’re not telling that many people yet, but I’m in a band. Somehow even my mom’s on board with it. Thinks it’ll look good on my college apps.”

  I picture Chase onstage, hair slicked back, singing into a microphone. “What do you play?”

  “Guitar, but my voice is shit so they won’t even let me sing backup. We mostly play covers right now. We’re kinda awful, but I love it.” There’s that smile again, the one at odds with the angle of his glasses.

  “You’re really selling it.” I check my phone. Kickoff is in an hour, and it’s an away game. “I didn’t realize it was so late. Do you know where the nearest bus stop is?”

  Chase raises his eyebrows. “Are you serious? I’ll drive you. We’re going to the same place.”

  “That would be great. Thank you.”

  He waves his hand like it’s no big deal. “Thank you,” he says, and it sounds genuine. He taps the book. “If I can ever repay you . . .”

  My stomach twists. Favors are dangerous, and I’m too indebted already. Especially since I still don’t know how—if—I can ever repay Sophie.

  “Don’t worry about it,” I say, gathering my books and laptop. “You don’t owe me anything.”

  CHAPTER 11

  SOPHIE

  GLITTER AND SPANDEX AND FALSE eyelashes—that’s what game nights are made of. I’m not naturally a rah-rah, school-spirit kind of person, but performing—performing, I love, whether it’s in Peter’s living room or in a studio or on a football field in the pouring rain.

  We’re up 14–7. The dance team and I are shivering in the first row of the bleachers in our warm-up jackets, and the Seattle drizzle that’s plagued the entire first half is threatening to become a downpour. One of my lashes is coming unglued. When I try to reattach it, it sticks to my finger, until finally I let the rain wash it away.

  “A few more minutes,” Montana says. She has a green ribbon wrapped around her ballet bun, which is slicked back so tight it must hurt. She paces in front of us, bouncing on the balls of her feet. “You all ready?” A chorus of yeses. “That’s what I like to hear!” Her gaze lands on mine. “Sophie? You ready? You look a little scared.”

  I clench my jaw. My teeth are chattering.

  “I’m ready,” I say. “Just cold.”

  At this point I’ve been to dozens of football games, and while I don’t actually like the sport, I love the anticipation I feel as I wait for us to perform at halftime. If the team isn’t doing well, we cheer people up. If they’re winning, we amp up the crowd’s energy even more.

  Peter is somewhere in the stands, but I can’t see him. I took extra painkillers before the game, though the doctors said the pain I experienced last week wasn’t extremely common but still within the realm of normal. They asked if I wanted to talk to a counselor. I had a psych evaluation beforehand, but what am I supposed to say to someone now? I gave my best friend a kidney, and now we’re not magically both in love the way a part of me secretly hoped?

  A whistle blows, and the guys hustle off the field, their cleats splashing in puddles of mud. Halftime.

  “The North Seattle High Dance Team!” the announcer yells as we rush onto the field, cheering and pumping our fists.

  The song’s bassline thumps through my feet. We’re all wearing baggy pants. We snap them off halfway into the dance, revealing silver sequined shorts. Rain soaks my hair and mud climbs up my legs, but the adrenaline keeps me going. Montana is right next to me, and she hits everything perfectly, as always. The dance is sexy; I know it is. I thrust my hips, pout my lips. The crowd whoops louder. I love that sound.

  I want to be sexy.

  I want Peter to think I’m sexy. That has to be the only thing between friendship and something more, right?

  The stands roar when we finish our routine. I strike my ending pose, my heart beating fast. I’m drenched and sweaty, and when I look up at the bleachers, despite the weather and the fact that everyone is basically wearing the same REI jacket . . . I spot him. His hood is up, but I’d know the shape of him anywhere. I wave a hand wildly, pushing my wet hair out of my face.

  “Amazing job, you guys!” Montana squeals as we head back to the sidelines. “Gabe, your energy was incredible. And, Kunjal, you finally nailed that turn!” Her gaze meets mine. “Sophie, your timing was perfect.”

  I’m still glowing when I sit back down on the bleachers, thinking about the dance and my perfect timing and Peter, Peter, Peter. I’m tired of waiting—I’m going to kiss him after the game. For real this time, not a kiss to seal a pact. Our perfect second kiss. I will throw my arms around his neck and our wet bodies will collide. Maybe the force of it will knock us both to the ground. We’ll get mud in our hair and on our clothes, and I won’t even care.

  The game goes into overtime, and we end up winning. I am sure it was very tense for everyone who actually cared about the game.

  I’m nearly frozen when everyone rushes the field after the final buzzer. I hang back for a second and wave my phone, searching for a signal.

  Then two hands land on my shoulders. “Hey! You guys were great!”

  I spin around to find Peter wiping rain out of his eyes. His jacket is soaked, but he’s grinning, a full Peter smile. He looks really, really hot all wet like this.

  “Thanks. I’m so glad you came!” I squeal, and push onto tiptoes to hug him.

  And then there’s this moment—a moment that could almost be our perfect second kiss. It’s raining, and his dark eyes are locked on mine, his arms around my waist, and it’s almost too cinematic to be a real thing that is happening to me.

  But then he pulls away, ending the hug. It would have been too perfect, that kiss. My arms are heavy as I drop them to my sides. I try not to think how whenever we hug, he is always the one to pull away first.

  In my head, I play out the rest of the fantasy, where I tackle him onto the football field. But . . . it’s pretty muddy. Dirt isn’t exactly sexy. And there are so many people around. That’s another thing I want my perfect second kiss with Peter to be: private.

  “Seriously,” he says. “That one part, with the jumping? I don’t even get how you did that.”

  “Yeah.” My voice is soft. I’m suddenly shy, aware of how cold I am. “Um, so the party.” I squeeze water from my ponytail. “Still feeling up to it?”

  He eyes me strangely, because of course we’re going to the party. That was the plan. “Absolutely. I’m kind of excited, actually.”

  “Right,” I say. Maybe part of me was hoping he’d say he’d rather be alone with me. But if Peter wants to go, we’ll go. Inside my shoes, my socks are wet. “Let’s go home first so I can change, and then we’ll go.”

  It takes us a while to get to my car because every few feet someone wants to scream in our faces and we have to scream back.

  Peter pumps his fist into the air. “Go Tigers!” he shouts, and around us, everyone growls it back, roaring like our mascot. It’s adorable, the way he’s enchanted by it all, by this perfect high school scene. I’ve experienced this a few times each season, but I have to keep reminding myself that it’s all brand-new to him. He grins at
me. “This is so great,” he says so that only I can hear.

  “Yeah,” I say, grinning back. Even in the glow of the stadium lights that make most people look slightly alien, Peter is beautiful. The familiar love-ache in my stomach intensifies, and I make a vow: I’ll tell him at the party how I feel about him, how I’ve felt for years. “It is.”

  CHAPTER 12

  PETER

  MY FIRST HIGH SCHOOL PARTY following my first high school football game isn’t exactly what I expected. First of all, the host’s parents are here, snatching everyone’s car keys at the door.

  The smell is overpowering. Beer and sweat and several dozen brands of perfume and cologne and body spray mingling together. An earthy sweetness that, having grown up in Seattle, I instantly recognize as weed. Then there’s the music, something heavy with bass and beeps and meaningless lyrics.

  “What do you think?” Sophie asks after she relinquishes her keys. She’s changed into a short black dress, and her hair, still damp from the rain, hangs in loose waves on her shoulders.

  I like your hair like that, I could tell her.

  The problem is, I don’t know what happens after that.

  I could find out.

  “It’s . . . a party,” I say.

  “Excellent observation.” Sophie’s standing very close to me, probably because the party intimidates her. It intimidates me a little too, so much that part of me wishes it were just the two of us alone in the comfort of my room. We could lie on my bed while a record softly plays in the background, her red hair spilling across my pillow.

  A bigger part of me demands I take advantage of being out of my house with a slightly extended curfew. Demands that I be brave.

  “Your hair,” I blurt out.

  Sophie’s eyes grow wide as she buries a hand in her waves. “What about it?” She sounds worried, which makes me realize my half compliment probably didn’t sound like one at all.

  Before I can respond, Montana, the host of the party and one of Sophie’s dance teammates, grabs Sophie’s arm. “You came!” she shouts. “Liz and I are playing flip cup in the basement.” And she tugs Sophie away and out of sight.

  At first I’m all set to follow her downstairs to the basement. See what exactly flip cup is and if I’m any good at it. This is what I wanted, right? A chance to be on my own, make some of my own friends?

  Or . . . I could try to navigate this party without my shadow, though a not insignificant part of me longs to be at home with a book instead. At the game, it took me only an instant to spot her when everyone rushed the field. Maybe you can sense someone’s presence after knowing them this long. You can glance at a crowd and immediately know where they are, like a special searchlight beamed straight from your heart to theirs. Or maybe the piece of her I now have somehow ties us together.

  I guess I’m wondering how tightly those knots are tied.

  After I get a cup of water, I peek inside each room, which (a) makes me look like I have a purpose and (b) gives me a chance to search for the few people I’ve been friendly with in class, like Chase Cabrera or Eleanor Kang. My self-guided tour occupies me for at least twenty minutes. In the kitchen, there are Costco-size bottles of vodka and cranberry juice, plus a cooler full of beer. In the living room, people are dancing or chatting on couches or chairs. In the game room, what I assume is beer pong is in full swing. No one waves me over, says hi, asks me to play.

  It hits me that everyone here has had years to cement bonds with their classmates. I’m a random new kid who showed up and expected—what? People to flock to me? Sophie’s been mine for so long that I’m not sure how to make friends. How to ask someone if they want to grab a bite to eat or come over and listen to records.

  I’m utterly alone in this house full of semi-strangers.

  “Hey! Nerd club president!” Chase Cabrera claps me on the back, causing me to splash water down the front of my shirt. “Oh—shit, I’m so sorry!”

  “It’s okay!” I say, too eager because, though my shirt is now soaked, I finally have someone to talk to.

  “I’ll get a paper towel.”

  “No! Really, it’s fine.” What I mean, though, is Please don’t leave. You’ve saved me from looking like a friendless loser. “It’s just water.”

  When we got to the game, I was certain he’d ditch me, but he invited me to sit with him and his friends, a guy named Noah and a girl named Trinity and her boyfriend, Hunter. I’ve seen Chase at lunch, and sometimes he sits with them and sometimes with other people. I get the sense he’s well liked but not attached to any singular group.

  “Water?” Alcohol, I imagine, has flushed his cheeks to match his red plastic cup, and his glasses are more crooked than usual. “We gotta get you a beer.”

  My stomach drops. “I can’t drink. Because of, uh, the medications I’m taking.” I’m very cool. It’s painful how cool I am.

  “Ahh, right. I’m sorry.” He stares at his own cup, as though wondering whether it would be a dick move to drink it in front of me, and a silence gapes between us.

  “You don’t have to—” I start, pointing to his cup as he raises it to his mouth. Heat rushes to my face. I’m not normally this awkward. Why am I acting so goddamn awkward? I can’t say a single right thing tonight.

  “What?”

  “Never mind,” I mutter, and he takes a swallow of whatever drink vodka and cranberry juice makes. Whatever it is, I’ll never know what it tastes like.

  It reminds me I haven’t been cured. That my health is still a delicate thing.

  Chase is staring at me as though unsure what I’m doing here, and, honestly, I don’t know either. God, what did I think we were going to talk about if I found him? Inferno? I shrink to the size of a red plastic cup.

  Music! We could talk about how bad this music is.

  But as soon as I open my mouth, someone calls his name.

  “Chase! Derek needs you to referee this game of beer pong!” someone yells.

  “Duty calls,” Chase says. “I’ll see you later, okay?”

  “Sure. Okay,” I say, and he disappears into the crowd.

  The next hour is a parade of awkward. I’m awkward in the living room, where I find myself on a couch between two couples making out. I’m awkward on the dance floor as I try to maneuver into the hallway. I’m awkward in the hallway as I wait in line for the bathroom. I’m awkward in the kitchen, where I deny alcohol again and again. I thought I could do this—be on my own. That’s why I don’t look for Sophie in the basement. I don’t want it to be so obvious that I need her.

  But when I ask a couple people whether they’ve seen her—to make sure she’s okay—one actually says, “Who?” even when I give her last name.

  The idea that other people don’t know this girl who’s been my entire life for so many years is mind-boggling. It’s become clear, though, since school started, that Sophie has been the kind of person who keeps to herself. Whether we sit with the dance team or occasionally with Josh and his friends, she focuses on her lunch or on me. No one asks her questions, invites her into the conversation, and she doesn’t make an attempt to join it.

  I’ve given up and am on my way to find the basement when she finally stumbles back to me. Into me, actually, when her heel catches on the carpet, and I have to grab her shoulders to prevent her from falling.

  “Having fun?” she asks as I help steady her. The rim of her cup is stained with her lipstick. I can’t tell what’s in it.

  “Oh yeah,” I say. “Giant buckets full of it.” She raises an eyebrow. “Is . . . it that obvious?”

  She links her arm through mine. “I have an idea,” she says, and tugs me out of the crowd, upstairs, and into an empty bedroom. She closes the door behind us but doesn’t lock it. “It’s just us.” She gestures for me to sit next to her on someone else’s bed. “We only need you and me to have a good time, right?”

  “Right,” I agree, my heart starting to pound. “What . . . do you want to do?”

  Now that she’s
here, I want to be able to relax. But I’m alone with Sophie in a stranger’s bedroom, my heart thumping in anticipation. The opposite of relaxed.

  She laughs too loudly. Shoves my arm. “Peter,” she says. Like my name is an admonishment. She claws her hands through her hair, her perennial nervous habit.

  “Sophie,” I say back, which makes her laugh again.

  When Sophie and I talked about losing our virginities together, which we’ve never discussed since, my feelings for her had dimmed back to friendship. This is what stops me every time I nearly compliment her, though: remembering how it felt in that music room in sixth grade after I confessed that I liked her. I don’t want to go back to that place. If anything’s going to happen, I can’t make the first move this time.

  “Do you know a guy named Chase?” I ask.

  “Chase Cabrera? Glasses?”

  I nod.

  “I had math with him last year. He was a little loud, but I don’t really know him. Anyway, why?”

  Loud. I guess it makes sense Sophie would find someone outgoing “a little loud.”

  “He’s in my AP Lit class. We’ve talked a few times.”

  “Aww, are you making friends?” With that, she reaches over and smudges my cheek with her thumb. “Baby Peter’s growing up.” She twirls a strand of her hair around one finger, then takes a sip of her drink. Twirl, sip, repeat.

  All of her is a little mesmerizing right now, the red of her hair and the pink of her cheeks and the black of her dress.

  “You guys were great out there,” I say for about the third time tonight. I’m close enough to count her freckles.

  She stares down at her ID bracelet, flicking the charms back and forth across her wrist, and blushes deeper. If I pressed my mouth to her cheeks, would they be warm against my lips? “Thanks.” Twirl. Sip. “Do . . . you remember when my mom took me bra shopping for the first time? And I was too embarrassed to tell what we were doing, just that we were going to the mall? But you begged and begged to go along with us because you wanted to go to the bookstore?”