“How old is your niece?”
“One—one and a half.”
“And she ate a piece of chalk?”
“Yeah. Sidewalk chalk. It’s, um, blue.” I let out another shuddery breath. I’m sure she doesn’t need this last piece of information, but I feel compelled to add it.
“Fortunately, a small amount of chalk is nontoxic,” Diane says.
“What exactly is a small amount?”
“Even if she ate an entire piece of it, she should be fine. Can you give her some water?”
“Um—” I didn’t bring any with me. “I can, yeah.”
“Great. Then what you want to do is watch her closely for any signs of lethargy or tummy troubles, like vomiting or diarrhea. If she exhibits any of those symptoms, you take her to the ER for further evaluation, okay?”
“God, I feel like such a fucking idiot. Sorry. Sorry for swearing.”
“It’s okay. I’ve heard worse. And this happens more often than you might think. Little kids are incredibly good at getting into things they’re not supposed to. Your niece is going to be okay, Sophie.”
“Thank you. Thank you so much.”
I practically sprint home, tugging Luna alongside me. I watch her drink an entire sippy cup full of water. Then she grabs her favorite picture book and holds it up for me to read.
We settle into a living room armchair with the book. I’ll only call my sister if she starts showing any of the symptoms Diane mentioned. If Luna’s completely fine, there’s no sense in worrying her. She deserves a night off.
“Again,” Luna says when we finish the book for the third time. She doesn’t mind my slow reading, and by this point I’ve nearly got it memorized. She’s obsessed with this one; one night Tabby read it to her twelve times. But my voice is trembling, and I can’t stop staring at her, as though something disastrous is about to happen.
It’s only been twenty minutes. How long did Diane want me to wait? Why didn’t I ask? God, I’m not sure I can handle this on my own. With shaking fingers, I call the only person who could calm my nerves.
“Hey. Are you home?” I ask, peering out our front window at his house. The shades in his room are drawn.
“Yeah, why?”
“Can you come over? It’s kind of an emergency.”
He must hear the panic in my voice. “I’ll be right there.”
And just like that, he is, in his REI jacket and thermal T-shirt and constancy.
It’s strange, sometimes, that we still ring each other’s doorbells, but I guess it’s more out of habit than anything else. When Peter and I first started going to each other’s houses, our parents would say, “Make sure you ask if Peter wants something to drink!” or “Did you ask if Sophie wants a snack?” Training us to be polite, even though we’d been friends for so long. We grew out of that, eventually stopped asking because the other person knew they could grab a water glass or an apple and it didn’t matter.
“Did I interrupt you?” I ask, closing the front door behind him.
“I was just doing homework.”
“Fun homework?” I examine his face—there’s a brightness in his eyes I don’t entirely recognize. “You look happy.” I don’t mean it as an accusation, but somehow it sounds like one.
It’s been a couple weeks since the ice rink and the coffee shop and the awkward drop-off. A couple weeks of band practices and daylong weekend dates with Chase. This past week we saw each other only on morning rides to school.
I don’t dislike Chase. Really, I don’t. Jealousy—at least in the romantic sense—is part of it, of course. I can admit that. What’s worse, though, is the fear that I’m losing Peter to Chase, to the band, to a world that doesn’t have me in it. I’ve been slow to let Montana and Liz into my life, but Peter threw the door wide open for Chase and his band. He has been solely mine for so long, and now I am terrified he’ll realize there are far more interesting people out there than the girl across the street.
“Homework is always fun, Soph.” Without undoing the laces, he kicks off his shoes, then shrugs out of his jacket and hangs it on a hook in the hallway. He can’t possibly feel that comfortable at Chase’s house. I’m positive he wouldn’t stride into Chase’s kitchen and pour himself a glass of water. “What’s wrong? You said it was an emergency?”
I gesture to where Luna’s curled up in the armchair, focused on the pictures in her book. “Luna ate a piece of chalk, and I called Poison Control, and they told me she should be okay but that I should keep an eye on her. And I don’t know if I can sit here and quietly freak out alone.”
“You don’t want to call Tabby?”
Again I consider it, tangling my fingers in the chain of my Star of David necklace. Then I shake my head. “I can’t. This is my first time babysitting her, and I can’t have fucked up like this, and . . . I really need everything to be okay.”
He places his hands on my shoulders, the universal you-need-to-calm-down gesture. “I’ll wait with you. You don’t have to be alone.”
Peter heads over to Luna, scooping her up and placing her in his lap. Obviously he’s spent less time around her than I have, but there’s an ease to his interactions with her that I can’t help envying. Maybe he’s naturally good with kids and we’ve never been around enough kids for me to realize it. When he reads to her, he’s animated and all smiles, and I am putty on the couch next to them.
Eventually Luna’s eyelids start to flutter, and we take her upstairs.
“Thank you so much for doing this,” I whisper to Peter after we close the door to her room. We head down to the kitchen, where I place the baby monitor on the counter.
Peter leans against the counter next to the stove. “You don’t have to thank me. This is . . . This is what we do.”
“Do you want some pasta or something?”
“I could eat.”
The next few moments happen in perfect tandem: Peter filling a pot with water, me fumbling in the cabinet for which of four different varieties of noodles I want. I decide on bow ties. I know they don’t actually taste different from other pasta shapes, but they’ve always been my favorite.
There is something so effortless about him in my house like this, a time machine yanking me back a few years. When we attempted to make s’mores and we set off the smoke alarm. When the power went out and we ate organic knockoff SpaghettiOs out of a can and pretended it was a gourmet meal. When I got my first period and we were home alone and he was so terrified when I yelled from the bathroom that I was bleeding that he called 911.
Every space in my house has a Peter-memory attached to it, and I have ached for him in every one of those spaces.
“You’re sure you don’t have to get back to studying?” I ask, desperate for reassurance. What I’m hoping to hear: that he wants to be here with me, especially after the past few weeks have carved an odd distance between us.
“Eh, the excitement of it has worn off a little for me.”
I mock-gasp. “Wait, are you saying you’re not in love with school anymore? Are you realizing, like the rest of us, that it’s not the most fantastic place in the world?”
“Shut up,” he says, laughing. He flicks a salt granule at me.
Here we are: best friends bouncing back again.
It doesn’t feel like enough.
When the water starts boiling, I drop bow ties into the pot. “Things have been weird between us,” I say quietly, taking a chance. “It’s like—it’s almost like I’m not allowed to touch you anymore.”
“What?” His eyebrows furrow, and he bites down on his bottom lip for a second. “Why wouldn’t you be allowed?”
“Because of”—I wave my hand—“what . . . happened at the party. And because of—of Chase.”
“Just because I’m dating someone doesn’t mean we’re not allowed to touch. We’re best friends. Nothing can change that.” He softens even more. “Soph. All of that’s in the past. We’ve moved on.”
I glance between the cloudy pasta water
and his clear dark eyes.
“We’re still us, right? Because—I miss you. I really, really miss you.”
“I’m right here,” he says, and with that, he leans in so I can hug him. It’s such a relief to touch him that I nearly gasp as I place my head on his shoulder and press my nose into the softness of his sweater. I want to wrap it around me like a blanket so that all I see and breathe is Peter.
All of that’s in the past.
We’ve moved on.
If friendship is the only way I can have him, then I should take it.
He probably doesn’t know that he’s holding me up. It’s not just today with Luna that’s sunk me underwater. It’s realizing that this right here can’t always happen, that he can’t always be here for me. But today he is wholly mine. He wouldn’t have let me deal with this on my own.
It is a fearless kind of hug. My legs tangle with his, and my heart hammers in my chest. Though it’s probably been only a few weeks since we last hugged, I’ve missed this: our bodies pressed together like it doesn’t matter that underneath these layers of fabric there are parts of him I desperately want to know. Even though I told myself we’d be friends and it would be fine.
I don’t think I meant it.
“Maybe we can Terrible Twosome this weekend,” I say to his shoulder.
“Yeah,” he says. “Maybe.”
“You really do seem so happy today.” I drag my fingers along the back of his sweater. “I mean . . . I like it, I’m just . . . wondering if there’s any particular reason.”
I want him to tell me I make him happy. That he loves being here at my house doing something as basic as making pasta. That it’s not Chase or the band—it’s me.
“I’m alive,” he says. “Isn’t that the best reason?”
With my head on his chest, I close my eyes, satisfied with the answer for now. “It is,” I whisper, feeling his heart beating against my cheek. Tick, tick, tick.
Steady as a bomb because of how dangerous he is.
CHAPTER 26
PETER
MY WEEKENDS CHANGE. THEY USED to be Sophie Time: the Terrible Twosome, a movie, a board game. Talking about insignificant things until they felt significant.
Now weekends are for the band, for Chase. I turn seventeen, and the band throws me a party at Aziza’s house. Chase and I spend hours in used bookstores and coffee shops, and sometimes we find an all-ages show in the evening. We talk about music and about ourselves. We share secrets. We learn the geography of the back seat of his car.
Sophie and I talked about playing together, but I had band practice and she had dance team and we couldn’t figure out a time that worked for both of us. And with our first show since I joined scheduled for next month, I’m busier than ever.
For the longest time, I wondered how I’d ever be able to be in a relationship with someone who knew so little about me. But the newness is what makes it exciting. It feels like I’ll never stop learning about Chase, like how he’s broken his right arm twice and unashamedly loves Maroon 5 and has a ring of freckles around his navel.
“How do you feel about boats?” he asks on a Saturday morning at the end of January.
I step onto my front porch to meet him but don’t close the door behind me yet. “Good, I think?”
“There’s this music store on Bainbridge Island with an incredible selection of vintage guitars. We’d have to take a ferry to get there.”
I haven’t been on a ferry in years, so I nod my agreement. “Before we go. Um.” I peek into my house. “My parents want to meet you.”
“I would love to meet your parents,” he says, and they are suddenly at the door.
“This is Chase,” I say, hoping my face isn’t bright red. “Chase, my parents.”
“Great to meet you,” my dad says, enthusiastically pumping Chase’s hand up and down. I silently beg him not to make a dad joke.
“Do you want to come in?” my mom says. “Can we get you a cup of coffee?”
“Actually,” I say, “we were going to catch a ferry. So we should probably get going.”
My parents trade a knowing smile.
“It’s like you’re worried we’ll embarrass you,” my dad says.
“Please. Embarrass him,” Chases urges, eyes twinkling, and I groan.
“How long have you had your license?” my mom asks, and proceeds to ask a number of other questions about his driving record, despite the fact that I’ve been in a car with him before. I guess those times, he was a friend from school. Now he is my boyfriend.
Once Chase passes her test, we’re on our way.
Even though it’s cold, we climb up to the top deck of the ferry. The wind plays with our hair, and we tug our coats closer to our bodies before deciding tugging each other close is much better. Forty-five minutes later, we’re back on land. Bainbridge Island is green and quaint, with mountains towering in the distance. In other words, it looks a lot like everywhere in the Pacific Northwest, but there’s a comfort in that. There are always trees, always mountains, always water.
The music shop is at the end of the main drag.
Chase pauses in front of it. “My dad and I used to go here all the time,” he says, and suddenly I understand, even more deeply, the appeal of this seemingly unremarkable music shop on an island an hour outside of Seattle. “It’s where he got all his gear. And then, once I saved up, I got my first guitar here.” He grins. “And, hopefully, my second guitar.”
The Doors are playing inside, and it’s not very busy.
“This is the one,” Chase says, pointing at a stunning emerald-green Gibson Les Paul. “Gorgeous, right?”
“I’m almost afraid to touch it.”
“Me too. Don’t look at the price tag. It’ll depress you.”
We wander around the store for at least an hour, playing instruments we do and don’t know how to play, browsing the massive record collection, talking, as usual, about the bands we love and how much they changed our lives.
Before we leave, Chase stops by the guitar again, grazing its lacquered surface with a few fingertips. “I’m coming back for you,” he whispers to it.
We spend the rest of the afternoon exploring the island. The entire day feels like a page out of time. I want to bottle up these feelings, these carefree days with him. When was the last time I experienced anything like this, the pure bliss of not worrying about anything? There are no urgent doctor’s appointments, no exhaustion, no exchanges, no specter of sickness.
It’s then that I realize I’ve never felt anything like this, and so I tell him.
“You are a really great person to be around,” I say as we stand together on a dock, gazing out at our city. “You know that?”
He moves his hands from behind my back to the sides of my face. “That’s . . . wow. I think that’s the nicest thing anyone’s ever said to me.”
I laugh. “I’m serious. Can we do this every Saturday?”
“Absolutely,” he says, and kisses me.
On our drive back to Seattle, Chase drums on the steering wheel, humming along to the music.
During a lull in one of the songs, I tell him, “My parents went out with Sophie’s tonight. So . . . no one’s at my house.”
“Huh,” Chase says. “I’m not sure why I’d be interested in that.”
“Yeah, I figured you wouldn’t be.”
“The Forty-Fifth Street exit and then a left on Latona?”
“A left on Latona,” I echo.
His jaw drops when he sees the grand piano in the living room. “Fucking hell. It’s beautiful. Play something?”
I sit down and start “Clocks,” which makes him groan.
He sits down on the bench next to me facing the opposite direction. “I wanted to talk to you,” he says, drawing circles on my knee with a fingertip, “about the Sophie stuff.”
The Sophie stuff. It sounds almost trivial, the way he says it, and for a moment my stomach twists in annoyance.
“We don’t—”
“Oh—okay,” I say, but I’m glad he says it. “I . . . appreciate that. I told you I liked her once, but trust me, that’s completely over. I’m with you.”
“I believe you,” he says. “I know you’ve been friends forever. And I don’t want to feel like I’m competing with her. I probably just need to get to know her better.”
The annoyance fades. He doesn’t understand Sophie and me, it’s true—but I love that he wants to try.
“That means a lot,” I say quietly, pressing closer to him.
“You have always looked so good behind that thing.” He leans his head on my shoulder. “I don’t know if there’s anything hotter than a guy who plays piano.”
“A guy who plays guitar?”
He kisses my neck, and I have to adjust so that we’re facing each other on the bench. Then I get up, beckoning for him to follow me down the hall.
“Is that Mark?” Chase asks when we get inside my room, pointing to the chinchilla cage.
“That’s Mark. I always thought it would be funny to have a pet with, like, a super-basic white-guy name.”
“Mark,” Chase says again. “Mark the chinchilla.”
“You want to hold him?” I ask, already unlatching his cage.
His eyes get huge behind his glasses as I pass over the little mound of fur that is Mark. “I can’t believe how soft he is.” He runs a hand along Mark’s back. “Oh my God, I think I love him.”
I head over to my music collection and record player. “What do you want to listen to?” I ask.
“Something good.”
“I’m not sure I like the insinuation that I own anything bad.”
I help Chase return Mark to his cage, and he joins me in front of my record collection. Eyes wide, he pulls one out. “The Carpenters? You don’t strike me as a Carpenters fan.”
“They’re good,” I say. “And what does a Carpenters fan look like?”
Our Year of Maybe Page 19