Our Year of Maybe

by Rachel Lynn Solomon

  We’re not fantastic, but we’re getting better, and we are a we. I’m part of a we that doesn’t include Sophie, and I’m not going to feel guilty about that anymore.

  The sun hasn’t set quite yet when practice is over. It’s the end of April, the weather teasing us with a summer that won’t arrive for a few more months.

  “My parents are letting me take driver’s ed this summer,” I say when Chase and I get in his car. We’ve started therapy, too. “So you won’t have to chauffeur me everywhere.”

  “And if I like chauffeuring you everywhere?”

  “I mean . . .” That’s not the response I was expecting. “I guess . . . you could still do that from time to time.”

  The sun catches the gold in his hair. The Ramones are playing, but neither of us is singing along.

  “I feel like we should enjoy the weather before the next sixty-five days of gloom,” he says, taking an exit that leads to neither of our houses.

  “You’re such a Seattleite. Everyone here always feels guilty for not enjoying the sun when it’s out.”

  “Because we get so little of it!”

  I’m teasing, but my heart is racing. We should enjoy it, he said. “What did you have in mind?” I ask.

  We wind up at a park overlooking the lake, and even after we get out of the car, I’m not entirely sure what Chase’s motivation is. If this means he’s forgiven me.

  “The band . . . really missed you,” Chase says as we walk through the trees. Spring blooms are just beginning to come to life.

  “Oh, did they?”

  He stops in his tracks and taps my shoe with his. “Yeah. And—I did too. I missed you. Not just in the band. And playing that song with you today . . . I felt something incredible?”

  “I did too.” I try to disguise the hopefulness in my voice and fail. Slowly I inch closer to him.

  With a deep breath, he rakes a hand through his hair. “Nothing feels as good as when I’m around you,” he blurts. “Not playing music, not listening to music, not doing English homework. When I’m alone, listening in my car, I’m imagining you with some snarky comment or cool fact, or admitting you haven’t heard a certain artist, and I’d tell you all about it. Or you’d find something new for me.”

  My heart is in my throat now. “I have a whole collection of songs saved up,” I admit. “For if-slash-when you’d want to, you know . . . Be friends again.”

  “That’s not what I want,” he says, linking his fingers through mine. He tugs me close to him, and his other hand tilts my face until we’re a breath apart.

  “Oh” is all I have time to say before our lips meet.

  CHAPTER 37

  SOPHIE

  WHEN THEY FIND OUT I made it into the workshop, Montana and Liz take me to their favorite café and insist on buying me a gooey piece of chocolate cake to celebrate. I might adore them.

  “You’re going to love it,” Montana gushes. “And it’ll be good for you to get away from everything here.”

  They know what happened with Peter, though I haven’t talked about him as much I did with my sister. In an ideal world, I would’ve run to them and mourned the breakup. They would’ve watched bad movies with me, eaten ice cream. But I’m still trying to figure out this whole friendship thing.

  “Yeah,” I say. “I think it will be.” Something tugs at my chest. High school and dance team—they’re both almost over. “I’m going to miss you both next year.”

  “You’ll have to come visit us,” Montana says. “If you want to visit any colleges in NYC, you could totally stay with us.”

  A pressure builds behind my eyes. “I would love that.”

  “Don’t cry!” Liz says, and they leap out of their chairs to squeeze me into a hug, which makes me really lose it.

  “I just—I feel like you guys are kind of my people?” I say. “Is that weird?”

  “Liz, we’re people,” Montana says, and I hug them tighter.

  The closer it gets, the harder it is for me to believe this workshop is actually happening. I’ve gotten a roommate assignment and a packing list, along with a few choreographers to study before I go.

  I browse Seattle Central’s course catalog and I take my finals and I make it through graduation. I’m no longer planning to transfer wherever Peter goes, but I missed all the application deadlines, so for now, I’m a Seattle Central student. I’m already researching universities with good dance programs, though, and hopefully I’ll be at one of them next fall. At first I’m not sure how I get through everything without Peter. But I have more than Peter now: I have my sister, and Montana, and Liz, and a closeness with my parents, even, that I didn’t have before.

  But I still don’t want to feel like I’ve lost him completely. We’ve been tied together for so long that it doesn’t feel right to leave for the summer without saying good-bye.

  Sophie

  5:12 p.m.

  I got into the workshop.

  Peter

  5:17 p.m.

  That’s amazing!!! Congratulations!

  5:19 p.m.

  Thanks. I’m terrified and excited.

  5:20 p.m.

  When do you leave?

  5:24 p.m.

  In three days.

  5:30 p.m.

  Wow.

  5:48 p.m.

  So . . . I was hoping we could talk before then.

  Before I go.

  5:50 p.m.

  I’d like that.

  5:55 p.m.

  Okay. Me too.

  We agree to meet that night in the woods behind Peter’s house. We don’t walk there together, and he gets there first.

  He turns when he hears me approaching, lifts his hand in a wave. We wave now, like our parents used to do after they drifted apart the first time.

  “I’m glad you texted,” he says. “It would have been weird for you to leave and for us not to . . . talk. Just talking. No yelling this time.”

  “Thank God,” I say, laughing a little, though it’s not exactly funny.

  “Congratulations again. About the workshop.”

  “Thanks.”

  “And you’ve been feeling okay?”

  “For the most part.” Which is true.

  “Good.”

  More silence.

  The wind plays with Peter’s hair, and I shiver when the breeze hits my arms. Another gray-skied June.

  He scuffs his shoe in the dirt. “Is this—what we did—is it the kind of thing we can never come back from? The kind of thing that ruins people like us?”

  “I’ve sort of been hoping not.” I let my shoulders sag. “What actually happened. The, um, act itself. It wasn’t terrible for you, was it?”

  He flushes. Laughs. “In the moment, no. Definitely not terrible.”

  I laugh too, nervously. “I’m glad my first time was with you. I think I would have always wondered, always wished it had been you. You don’t—you don’t wish we hadn’t?”

  “No. No. It was . . . nice. Being that close to you.” He’s entirely red now, focused on fiddling with the bracelet on his wrist.

  “Good,” I say, exhaling deeper than I expected to.

  “It wasn’t just sex, though. That . . . changed us, I mean.”

  “No. It wasn’t. It was a lot of things.”

  “You were completely right about this friendship revolving around me,” he says, “and that was not fair at all.”

  I nod. “And I can’t do that anymore.”

  “I get it. You shouldn’t have to.”

  He drags his hand through the leaves of a nearby tree, and I remember a time when we were convinced the sound of the wind rustling through the branches was actually the trees communicating with each other. This spot—this entire city—has too many memories.

  “It’s strange,” I start. “I—I don’t know what our friendship looks like if I’m not always giving in to you. And that’s really hard to admit.”

  He tugs some pine needles off the tree, lets them flutter to the ground. His e
yes are wide, deep, sad. “I’m so sorry, Soph.”

  Bravery compels me forward. I am not done yet. “I’ve always been kind of defined by you. And for a while that seemed good—like, I was so in love with you that it didn’t matter. But I have to figure out who I am on my own. And now that I’m about to really go out and do that, with the workshop . . . God. I am so fucking nervous.” Anxiety turns my breaths shaky. “There will be so many new people, so many strangers . . .”

  “They’ll get to know you,” he says, and it strikes me that in the past, whenever he reassured me, he’d touch me, even in some small way. “And once they do, they’ll love you. And your big brain, too.”

  My heart swells at that old joke. Maybe I thought we were past jokes now, that whatever our new relationship is, inside jokes couldn’t be part of it. Hearing one again is bittersweet.

  We stand there in silence for a while. Our silences never used to be like this. Silences between real friends are supposed to be comfortable. My dad told me that once, that that’s how you know your friendship is true: You can be quiet together. But this one is charged, not peaceful. Like even a cough or a breath could disturb it.

  “I’m always going to be grateful,” he says, puncturing the quiet between us. “You know that, right? I could say thank you a million times and it wouldn’t be enough. I could utter it once a minute every day for the rest of my life, and it wouldn’t be enough.”

  “I—I know.” I sigh. “And I want you to know that you don’t owe me anything. This was my choice. And I’ve never regretted it.”

  There’s so much space between us, our bodies unsure how to navigate this distance. We are crossed arms and shifted weight, elbow scratches and hand-wringing. “I really wanted to love you in that way at the same time you did,” he says. “I hope you can believe that.”

  “But you didn’t.”

  “No. I’m sorry.” His brows knit together, and he looks pained for a moment. “We’ve had a lot of good times, though, right? It wasn’t always horrible, being my friend? Was it?” His voice cracks, and it nearly breaks me in half.

  “No!” I say quickly. “God, no. Most of the time, our friendship was the best thing in my life.”

  “That’s what I’ve been worried about. Like somehow this fight canceled out every good moment between us.”

  “It didn’t. I swear.”

  He fidgets with his bracelet again. He hasn’t said anything about my missing charms, but when we first got here, his gaze lingered on my wrist for a few moments before I tugged down my sleeve.

  “You and the dance team, you’ve been getting closer, right? I see you in the cafeteria. You look . . . different with them than you used to.”

  “Yeah. We are. Montana and Liz are pretty great.”

  “I’m so glad.”

  “How’s Chase?”

  He gets this sunny expression on his face. “Good. Really good. We’re back together, and it’s going well. Slow, but good.”

  I echo him: “I’m glad.”

  We’re all small talk now.

  “Do you . . . have anywhere to be?” he asks.

  I shake my head. “Why? Eager to leave already?”

  “No”—and he looks a little shocked that I would assume this, even as a joke—“I—I have something for you.” With that, he pulls out his phone.

  “I already have a phone, but . . . thanks?”

  A roll of his eyes. “Listen.”

  He taps the screen a few times, amps the volume. The piano notes are familiar at first, but I can’t place them—

  Until, suddenly, I do.

  The song Peter wrote for me all those years ago.

  When he loved me but I wasn’t there yet.

  The first time we fucked up the timing.

  “Peter,” I say, my voice breaking his name into three pieces. “You didn’t have to do this.”

  “Shhh,” he says, shushing me so we can hear the adorably juvenile lyrics he rerecorded just for me. “This is where it gets good. And when I say ‘good,’ I mean mortifying beyond words.”

  I’m crying now; I can’t help it, and I’m not sure if I’m sad or happy or both.

  Without worrying about what it means, I lean in and hug him tightly, his phone mashed between us, the song still pouring out of it. I inhale that good Peter scent like always, but it does not destroy me. It only aches a little, being this close to him. And when his arms come around me to pull me closer, I don’t have to beg my heart to slow down.

  I’m not sure who we’ll be when I get back from San Francisco. I’m not sure if he’ll still be half of Peter-and-Chase, or a fifth of his band. I’m not sure if I’ll be able to hug him with this kind of ease or if he’ll still want rides from me. I’m not sure if he’ll text me in the middle of the night because he needs to play me a song he just discovered, or if I’ll hear his melodies when I’m dancing.

  But he will always be Peter and I will always be Sophie, and no matter who else we become, our history and our scars will always connect us.

  “It’s not that bad of a song,” he says into my ear. “Is it?”

  “No,” I agree. “It really isn’t.”

  And then I let go of him first, this boy who never belonged to me.

  I

  let

  go

  first.

  ACKNOWLEDGMENTS

  My deepest gratitude to Jennifer Ung, who somehow did not run away screaming when I sent her my first draft. I’m perpetually awed by your brilliant insight and boundless enthusiasm. Thank you for helping me see what this book could be, for loving Sophie and Peter as much as I do. I could not be happier with this final product.

  Sarah Creech: thank you, thank you for this stunning cover. You captured the book’s wistfulness so perfectly! A million thanks too to Mara Anastas, Jodie Hockensmith, and the rest of the team at Simon Pulse. I’m forever grateful to my agent, Laura Bradford, for making all of this possible.

  Thank you to everyone who read this book and offered feedback at various stages: Kelsey Rodkey, Kit Frick, Marisa Kanter, Sonia Hartl, Carlyn Greenwald, Gloria Chao, Rachel Griffin, Rachel Simon, Jennifer Hawkins, Jeanmarie Anaya, and Jonathan Goldhirsch. My dear Electric Eighteens and Class 2K18: thank you for helping make the debut experience (and beyond) such a positive one. I’m honored to know you all!

  Thank you to the University of Washington Medical Center and in particular, Dr. Nicolae Leca, who so patiently answered my transplant questions.

  As always, thank you to my parents for their excitement about every step of this process. As a kid, I asked them if it was okay if I added a swear word to one of the “books” I was writing. They told me I could even include two if I really wanted. I’m sorry to report this book has a few more than that. Ivan, my love and best friend, thank you for making me laugh every single day.

  Finally, I’m so grateful for the booksellers, librarians, educators, bloggers, and fellow authors who championed my first book, You’ll Miss Me When I’m Gone. Your support has meant the world to me. Thank you, thank you, thank you.

  ABOUT THE AUTHOR

  Author photograph by Sabreen Lakhani

  Rachel Lynn Solomon lives, writes, and tap-dances in Seattle, Washington. She is the author of two young adult novels, You’ll Miss Me When I’m Gone and Our Year of Maybe. Once she helped set a Guinness World Record for the most natural redheads in one place. You can find her online at rachelsolomonbooks.com and on Twitter and Instagram @rlynn_solomon.

  Visit us at simonandschuster.com/teen

  Authors.SimonandSchuster.com/Rachel-Lynn-Solomon

  Simon Pulse

  Simon & Schuster, New York

  ALSO BY

  RACHEL LYNN SOLOMON

  You’ll Miss Me When I’m Gone

  We hope you enjoyed reading this Simon & Schuster ebook.

  * * *

  Get a FREE ebook when you join our mailing list. Plus, get updates on new releases, deals, recommended reads, and more from Simon & Schuster. Click below to
sign up and see terms and conditions.

  CLICK HERE TO SIGN UP

  Already a subscriber? Provide your email again so we can register this ebook and send you more of what you like to read. You will continue to receive exclusive offers in your inbox.

  This book is a work of fiction. Any references to historical events, real people, or real places are used fictitiously. Other names, characters, places, and events are products of the author’s imagination, and any resemblance to actual events or places or persons, living or dead, is entirely coincidental.

  SIMON PULSE

  An imprint of Simon & Schuster Children’s Publishing Division

  1230 Avenue of the Americas, New York, New York 10020

  www.SimonandSchuster.com

  First Simon Pulse hardcover edition January 2019

  Text copyright © 2019 by Rachel Lynn Solomon

  Jacket design and illustration by Sarah Creech copyright © 2019 by Simon & Schuster, Inc.

  All rights reserved, including the right of reproduction in whole or in part in any form.

  SIMON PULSE and colophon are registered trademarks of Simon & Schuster, Inc.

  For information about special discounts for bulk purchases, please contact Simon & Schuster Special Sales at 1-866-506-1949 or business@simonandschuster.com.

  The Simon & Schuster Speakers Bureau can bring authors to your live event.

  For more information or to book an event contact the Simon & Schuster Speakers Bureau at 1-866-248-3049 or visit our website at www.simonspeakers.com.

  Interior designed by Tom Daly

  Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data

  Names: Solomon, Rachel Lynn, author.

  Title: Our year of maybe / by Rachel Lynn Solomon.

  Description: First Simon Pulse hardcover edition. | New York : Simon Pulse, 2019. | Summary: Aspiring choreographer Sophie Orenstein, eighteen, wonders if seventeen-year-old Peter Rosenthal-Porter, gifted pianist, best friend, and secret crush, will love her back after receiving her kidney.