Our Year of Maybe

by Rachel Lynn Solomon

  Peter is finally mine, and I’m not sure what that looks like. Will we kiss when we say hello the next time we see each other? When do we tell our parents?

  I don’t get a chance to find out—at least not today—because Peter texts that he’s going to be buried under homework all day. And that’s okay. Really, it is. Last night hasn’t sunk in, but maybe by tomorrow I can convince myself it finally happened.

  So I attempt some homework of my own before getting bored and texting Montana and Liz to see if they’re free before remembering the party last night, and that they’re probably still recovering. Sure enough, it’s ten a.m. when Liz replies that she’s still wiped, and a few minutes later Montana replies with the same thing.

  Tabby’s working the Sunday shift, so I drive down to the diner to see if I can get some free food.

  “I’m swamped,” Tabby says after I grab a stool at the counter, the only available seat. She’s balancing several plates of waffles on her arms. “You had to pick Sunday brunch to visit me?”

  “I’m sorry,” I say, but she’s already somehow across the restaurant, dropping off the plates.

  I had sex last night, I want to tell my sister. I’m like you now. A non-virgin. I’m in the club. Are there jackets? But despite whatever closeness we gained a couple weeks ago, I’m not about to announce this in a public setting. It’ll have to wait for the right time.

  Instead, I scarf down my free omelet and hash browns as quickly as I can. After I leave the diner, I stop at the outdoor mall, fight for a parking spot, and then spend thirty minutes in Sephora trying on forty-dollar lipsticks before deciding to buy none of them.

  Home again. Restless, I meander into our backyard. My dad’s wrapped up in a home-improvement project, cleaning out the old shed that’s become a place to chuck things we can’t bear to throw away but don’t exactly want, either.

  “You want to help me clean the shed?” he asks incredulously, and with a shrug, hands me a black trash bag.

  I lean against the side of the shed. With a gasp, I pull my hand away, staring down at the splinter in my palm. My dad shakes his head. It’s possible I’m not the home-improvement type.

  After I fish out the splinter, I flop down on the couch in the living room and check my phone. Somehow it’s only two p.m., and I have no idea how that’s possible, unless I stepped into a time warp in Sephora earlier.

  “Bored?” my mom asks, coming into the living room with Luna.

  “No . . .” I toss my phone down on the couch and groan. “Fine, a little.”

  “Is your homework done?”

  I groan louder.

  “I was going to set Luna up with a coloring book. You’re welcome to join us.”

  Because I haven’t colored in forever, I shrug and follow the two of them into the kitchen, where my mom unloads all the art supplies Tabby and I accumulated over the years. Hand-me-down crayons.

  It’s calming, actually, to scribble across a magical forest. When I glance over at my mom’s sheet, I drop my own crayon.

  “Mom. Are you serious? That’s, like, good.”

  She examines it, clearly proud. “I minored in art in college. I’ve always loved it.”

  “I didn’t know that,” I say, continuing to marvel at her creation.

  Tabby comes home and Josh comes over, and they’re as affectionate as they always are. We all have dinner together as a family, and it’s unremarkable and uneventful and yet still really, really nice.

  And later that evening I fall asleep easily this time, and with a smile on my face.

  We have three big assemblies each year. There’s the homecoming assembly in the fall, the winter spirit assembly, and the end-of-the-year assembly. This second one is mainly an excuse for shortened classes, to remind people they love their school and their sports teams, I guess.

  They feel different from performing on the field at football games. In the gym, the lights are bright and everyone is there because it’s mandatory, except for the kids who sneak joints behind the school.

  I had to get to school early to go over our routine, so I missed giving Peter a ride. His mom said he was still asleep, which is unusual for him. Unusual for this version of him, at least. The post-transplant version. All morning, though, I’ve been thinking about Peter, Peter, Peter. Peter Rosenthal-Porter, the boy I gave my virginity to because I always knew, deep down, that I would.

  The team’s talking about the sleepover I missed on Saturday, but that’s okay. I’ll go to the next one, and Peter and I will go to the next house party together, too. As a couple. Peter and I are a couple, and I cannot stop smiling.

  “Sophie, are you okay?” Montana says during a break.

  “I’m happy,” I call back.

  She and Liz exchange a glance. “Did something happen with Peter?”

  My face splits open, sunshine bursting through the clouds on a gloomy day. “Everything happened with Peter.” Thirty-six hours was too long to keep this secret. Suddenly I want to tell everyone.

  Liz clutches my arm. “I want to hear everything.”

  “She can keep it private if she wants to,” Montana says. “Sophie, I don’t need the details, but I’m really happy for you.”

  “After school?” I ask Liz, and she grins.

  When it’s time for the assembly, we paint Gs on one cheek and Os on the other, tie green ribbons in our hair. My piece is part of our repertoire now. We dance it first, starting out with the hand claps, alternating between the old and the new, the vintage and the modern.

  At the end, we rip the ribbons from our hair and stomp on them, and the crowd roars.

  After the assembly, Principal Martinez gives us the rest of the day off. Montana asks us to hang back for a quick dance team meeting, during which she mentions a couple changes in our practice schedule now that it’s basketball season. By the time we’re done, everyone’s cleared out of the gym.

  Everyone except Peter.

  He’s standing near the locker room entrance, waiting for me. I grin even bigger when I see him because his hair is all messy, like he’s been raking his hands through it. The light catches his bracelet, the one that matches mine.

  My teammates retreat to the locker room, leaving Peter and me alone with the janitor, cleaning up the bleachers where people left scraps of paper and chip bags and silver and green confetti.

  “Hi,” I say when I get close to him. I am suddenly so, so nervous. Saturday night plays through my mind in flashes: skin against skin, the determined desperation in his eyes. It almost makes me blush now.

  His smile is sheepish. “You guys were great. As always,” he adds, though it’s only the second time he’s seen us.

  “Thanks.”

  I expect him to reach for my hand, pull me in for a kiss. I let mine drop to my sides as though indicating to him that he can grab one at any time. But he seems as nervous as I am. Maybe he’s not ready for public displays of affection quite yet. That’s okay—we can learn that together.

  I shouldn’t be so anxious about touching him, so I inch closer. I reach my arms around his neck, which feels sort of awkward, like he wasn’t expecting it and isn’t sure how to make his body fit into mine. Then, as we hug, I brush my lips against his cheek, the corner of his mouth.

  “This . . . is all really new to me,” I say.

  He nods.

  “We can take this as slow as you want. Well. I guess it’s already gone kind of fast. . . .” I trail off, laughing a little. Peter blushes. God, I love it when he does that. “But we don’t have to tell our parents right away. I mean, I can’t imagine they’d be anything but happy for us, but . . .”

  He blinks at me a few times, like I am a piece of classic literature he is trying to interpret. A song he is trying to memorize. I have always admired Peter’s passions. He’s always had so many of them, and I wanted so badly to be one of them. Aren’t I now? What we did Saturday night—what was that if not passion?

  “Sophie,” he says quietly, unable to meet my eyes n
ow. “I—there are some things I need to say.”

  My sunshine smile slips right off my face. Slowly I back up, as though Peter is a wild, unpredictable animal. No. There’s no way. Not after all these years, not after I finally got what I wanted.

  “Say them, then.” My voice is not my voice. It’s chalky and shallow and belongs to someone whose heart is about to be broken.

  But he can’t. He glances between the floor and the banners of sports awards that hang from the ceiling, but not at me.

  “Is everything okay? With the kidney?” I’m grasping here. There’s something wrong with me that for a split second I hope that’s what this is. That it’s health-related, not heart-related.

  The kidney. As though, even after all these months, it doesn’t wholly belong to either of us.

  “Yeah,” he says quickly. “Yeah, I’m fine. The kidney . . . It’s fine. This . . . It’s obviously complicated. Especially after what happened on Saturday. I just—it kills me to say this, Soph, but we can’t be together. Not the way you want to be. And I’m so, so sorry. I wish it could be different. I wish—”

  We can’t be together.

  Except that’s not it, not quite. It’s that he can’t be with me.

  “You do?” I interrupt. “You really wish it could be different? We had a chance to make it different on Saturday night. We made it different. So don’t apologize to me when you’re the one, yet again, getting exactly what you want.”

  His face is pinched. Uncomfortable. He doesn’t have control over this conversation.

  Good.

  “I told you before,” he says, as though it’s my fault for misunderstanding, for misinterpreting the signal that was his body on top of mine. “If we break up—or frankly, when we break up, because I’m seventeen and you’re eighteen and let’s be realistic, okay? When we break up, you either regret the transplant, or I’m left with a reminder of you breaking my heart. Either way, one of us gets destroyed.” He wrings his hands. “There’s—I can’t see any good solution here.”

  I wouldn’t break up with you, I want to say, though logically, it’s not true. There’s no way I can know that.

  “God, I’m stupid,” I say.

  “Sophie, no,” he says, reaching for my arm, as though I am the one who’s in the wrong here and he needs to comfort me, reassure me that I made a mistake but it’s okay. “No, you’re not—”

  I yank my arm away from him. “I am. I thought what we did—having sex—would connect us even more, that . . . I’d be more important to you.”

  I was so positive sex would make me feel closer than ever to Peter. Didn’t he feel it too? That closeness? Our bodies were getting to know each other in a way they’d never known any others. It was something brand-new, and we would never experience it like this again.

  “You are important to me.”

  “I thought we’d go to college together, and—”

  “College?” Peter says. “Who said anything about college? Wait. Is that why you’re going to community college? So you can—so you can wait for me?” When I don’t reply, he has my answer. While I’ve never told him, I wasn’t exactly keeping it a secret. I always assumed winding up in the same place would be a happy coincidence. That he’d be excited. “Why would you do that? I’ve only just barely started to think about what happens after high school. You assume. You take me for granted, assume I’ll be there.”

  “Because I want you there.” I shake my head. “I’ve been so worried all year that you’d drop me when you found cooler, more interesting people. Like, I was the friend who was with you when shit was hard, but now you could upgrade.”

  His mouth falls open. “I’ve never thought that about you.”

  I run a hand through my hair, sliding the rubber band out of my ponytail. It occurs to me that I could agree with him. I could tell him whatever he needs to hear so we can go back to how we were before. I could tell him we’re better as friends and we can erase Saturday from our collective memory.

  But . . . I can’t go back to what we were. I cannot be where I’ve been for so many years: clinging to him, drawing him back to me, trying to keep him from leaving. Constant agony—that’s what it was.

  “I don’t get it,” he’s saying. “You have other friends too.”

  “I know, but—” But they’re not as important as you. They could never be.

  “Maybe we should both take some time to cool off.”

  I don’t need time. I’ve had enough of it. I need to say all of this now. “Do you regret what we did on Saturday?” I ask, willing my voice not to quake. It does anyway.

  He shakes his head, and when he speaks again, there’s a ribbon of frustration there. “No. I swear I don’t. You mean so much to me. You do. It wasn’t fair to you. I’m torn, and confused, and honestly, I still have feelings for Chase. We broke up because he thought I might still have feelings for you. Because of this codependent relationship we have, which probably isn’t normal. Or healthy.”

  “Interesting word choice. ‘Healthy.’ ”

  Our tiny voices echo in the gym, his words bouncing off the walls and hitting me in the stomach. I cross my arms over my chest, suddenly feeling like I’m not wearing nearly enough clothes. My uniform barely covers me up. I shiver, running my hands over the goose bumps on my skin. It was hot when I was dancing, but now it is just me and Peter and the janitor, and I am too cold.

  “There it is,” Peter says, a snap to his voice that wasn’t there a few minutes ago. He inches closer to me, dark brows slashed. “Is that what you want? To remind me that I owe you?”

  “You don’t—”

  “I don’t owe you? Then why do I feel that way all the fucking time?” He throws his hands up, the volume of his words shrinking me. Peter never yells, and definitely not at me. “It was your choice. I never asked you to do it. Is this why you did it, Sophie? So you’d have a reason to always keep me close to you?”

  The way he touched me on Saturday, he was so gentle. This cannot be the same person.

  I want to combat his words with harsh ones of my own, but my voice comes out meek. I wish it wouldn’t. “No,” I insist, putting more space between us, but deep down, in a place I’ve barely allowed myself to admit, he’s not entirely wrong. There were a hundred reasons I did it, and there’s no way it wasn’t one of those hundred reasons. Maybe it was number one hundred, but it was still there. “I—I did it because you’re the most important person in the world to me, Peter. You’re my best friend, and I—I love you.”

  “Do you understand how much pressure that is for me? I can’t love you the way you love me. I did once, when I was too young to know what it really meant. But now? I just . . . can’t.”

  It stings, salt rubbed into a gaping wound, alcohol poured over a gash in my skin. This hurt—I want to turn it into anger. I want to hurt him, too. Because beneath all this hurt, I am furious. Furious at all the times he brushed my knee with his thumb and hugged me so fearlessly and slept next to me and acted like it was nothing when to me it was everything. If we were so close, how did he not know what his body was saying to mine?

  There’s a closet off the gym that’s open, revealing a shelf of dodgeballs. I stalk toward it and snatch an orange one, bouncing it a few times on the floor.

  “What, are you going to throw it at me?” Peter asks, a sour sarcasm in his tone.

  I hurl the ball against the wall. “I have built my entire life around you,” I snarl at him. “You’ve been everything to me, and what you’re doing, breaking up with me before we even had a real chance? You make me feel like dirt.” I grab another ball. “You don’t text me back. Your new friends are more important than any of the traditions we ever had. You couldn’t bring yourself to come to another one of my games. How many of your piano recitals did I go to, Peter?”

  He mumbles something.

  “What was that?”

  “I said a lot.” He pulls a hand through his hair. “I’m sorry. Those friends—I felt like they unders
tood me in a different way. I wasn’t the sick kid with them.”

  “You weren’t the sick kid with me.”

  “But I was. That’s all you’ve ever known me as.”

  The janitor is still watching us.

  “Are we entertaining enough for you?” I ask him, and he turns around quickly, returns to dragging a broom across the gym floor. “Jesus fucking Christ.”

  Even as the words tumble out, I feel guilty for snapping at him, but this anger in my veins is too addictive. Peter looks stunned by it too. He is the one backing away from me now. I stare him down, this beautiful, tormented boy who let me convince myself he was the only one who mattered.

  “Our relationship has always been about you,” I say, trying to keep my voice level even as my eyes threaten to spill over. “And now I thought it could be about us.”

  “I’m not sure I understand.”

  I’ve never verbalized this before. But it’s how I’ve felt, isn’t it? “Growing up. It was always about what you wanted. We always played your games, watched your movies, listened to your music. You were the one with the shitty luck, so you deserved everything you wanted. I never had a say. I never complained.”

  He blinks at me like I’ve dug my fingers into his skin and ripped out what I gave him. “Of course you had a say.”

  “It didn’t feel like it.”

  “I’m sorry we didn’t get to listen to your fucking music, Sophie.” A bitter laugh. “Is that what this is about? You can’t possibly be that petty.” He walks toward the closet and grabs a ball too. In an alternate universe, Peter and I are playing dodgeball and having an absolute blast.

  “Oh yeah, that’s exactly it,” I tell him. I can lay on the sarcasm just as thickly. We’re circling each other now, each clutching a ball. I know we don’t actually mean to throw them at each other, but I can’t help wondering if Peter wishes he could. Because, God, I do. “If we’d only listened to less Rufus Wainwright, we wouldn’t be here right now!”