Always Forever Maybe

by Anica Mrose Rissi

  My stomach lurched but there was nothing inside it to heave out. As soon as I’d stepped out of the car I had thrown away the breakfast Dad insisted I take with me. Eating was impossible. All of this was impossible. Aiden was on life support; I couldn’t chew and swallow cinnamon-sugar toast.

  I breathed in and tried to force the sounds of the accident out of my brain. He’s still alive, I reminded myself. He might wake up. He might forgive me. It was too many maybes, all followed by unanswerable then-whats.

  “Hey, Betts,” someone said. I kept walking. “Bee,” she called again. “That ring you wear—is it from Aiden?”

  I stopped. Turned. Stared.

  My fingers flew to the ring on my right hand, shielding it from Cicily’s gaze. I couldn’t believe she’d asked me that. I couldn’t believe she had the nerve to even speak his name.

  I would not give her the satisfaction of watching me disintegrate. “Mm-hmm,” I managed. The ring stayed on my finger but I felt it clenching my heart.

  “You guys seem really cute together,” Sharon/Shareen said. She tucked a lock of hair behind one ear. It hit me that she wasn’t trying to be cruel.

  Oh god. They don’t know.

  “Is he coming again after school today?” Cicily winked in case I missed her disgusting double entendre.

  My mouth tasted like stomach acid. I tried not to think about vomit. “No.”

  The third girl’s gold pendant gleamed against her brown skin. “Where did you even meet him? I need to find me a guy like that.” She elbowed Cicily. “Vroom, vroom.”

  I shook their laughter out of my head. I couldn’t have this conversation, couldn’t pretend it was okay. Couldn’t act like the ground was still solid beneath me.

  I turned around and fled, running blindly through the hallway, bag bouncing, eyes burning, until I slammed into the one person who didn’t have the sense to move out of my way.

  “Bee . . .” Eric wrapped his arms around me, and the thin glass walls that had been holding my heart together since last night splintered and shattered to the floor. I collapsed into the warmth of his strong, sturdy hug and soaked up the sympathy I didn’t deserve from the last person I should be allowing myself to embrace. “I didn’t think you’d be coming to school. Jo said—I’m glad to see you. I’m sorry, this is horrible. I don’t even know what to say.”

  I hid my face against his shoulder and we both said nothing, which was all that was left. He held on until I pulled back and saw the halls around us were almost emptied out. The bell must have rung, but somehow I’d missed it.

  “Does Jo know you’re here?” he asked.

  I shook my head. “I haven’t seen her. You should go. I’m making you late.”

  “Please. It’s only homeroom.” He took my bag and steered me toward my locker. For the millionth time in however many hours, it was easier to let someone else make the decisions. Eric didn’t ask questions or try to hurry me along; he just stood by patiently while I opened my locker, stared at my belongings, and tried to remember what I was doing there. Being in school at a moment like this seemed ludicrous, but this was my life. I was stuck in it.

  I took out the nearest notebook without caring which one it was, shut the locker, and followed Eric to my classroom. He paused with his hand on the doorknob. “You’ll get through this,” he said. “You’re going to be okay.”

  I didn’t know if by “this” he meant first period or the school day or Aiden being in the hospital, possibly paralyzed or already dead. I didn’t know if he was saying it to convince himself or me. It didn’t matter. I nodded.

  He opened the door and I stepped through it.

  Forty

  WHEN HOMEROOM ENDED A FEW MINUTES LATER, JO was outside the door, waiting for me. “I’m getting you out of here,” she said, and handed me my bag. “Let’s go.”

  It was a nice gesture, but useless. “I can’t skip. They’ll call my mom.” So far both my parents had given wide berth to the obvious fact of how much I’d disobeyed them, but of course that conversation was coming. I didn’t need to add any twigs to the bonfire. My future was already up in flames.

  “We’re not skipping,” she said. “I’m signing us out.”

  She needed to play rescuer and I needed to be saved, so I followed her to the office and watched, amazed, as she chatted with the secretary, accepted a pen and clipboard, and signed the checkout sheet with a flourish. No one else would get away with a stunt like that, but of course she could. Jo was magic. It probably never occurred to her the world might say no.

  It never occurred to her I might say no, either.

  We buckled into the Wildebeest. “Where to?” she said.

  “Will you take me to the hospital?” I knew the answer but I had to ask.

  “No way.” Her voice was firm but she looked at me gently. “Even if I brought you there, they wouldn’t let you see him,” she added.

  I leaned back.

  “Your choices are: my house, diner, coffee shop, or park.”

  “Your house,” I said. We drove there in silence.

  I loved her. I hated her. She was all I had.

  Stella mewled at us and wove her way between Jo’s legs, glaring at me as though she knew I was responsible for this change in her routine. It felt good to be openly blamed for something, even by a cat, even for just existing. I crouched and ran a hand along her surprisingly sharp spine. She arched her back into my palm, half purring, half hissing, to convey I was barely worthy to pet her. Jo shut the refrigerator door somewhat hard, and Stella started and dashed into the living room.

  Jo handed me a root beer. “Drink,” she ordered. I twisted off the cap, put the bottle to my lips, and forced myself to take a swig. The sweetness and spice hit my tongue with startling intensity, and I could almost feel my blood moving faster through my veins, encouraged by the presence of calories. I lowered myself onto a stool and put one hand on the counter, suddenly faint from how long it had been since I’d eaten. Saturday night? Yesterday morning? I couldn’t remember. Those moments seemed light-years away.

  I took another sip and closed my eyes as I swallowed. I hadn’t had root beer in ages, not since I had switched to coffee. It tasted like before. It tasted like who I used to be. The aftertaste lingered like a memory.

  I drank the whole thing in small, slow sips, not looking at Jo until I was done. “Thank you,” I said. She nodded.

  “I don’t know what to do.”

  “Me neither,” she admitted.

  I scraped the edges of the label from the bottle with my thumbnail, then destroyed the list of states that collected a five-cent deposit. The silence was punctured by the chime of Jo’s phone. She checked it, typed something back, and sank onto the stool beside me. “Eric. Checking to make sure you got out okay.”

  “He’s too nice.”

  “He loves you. We’re both extremely worried.”

  I flicked Michigan onto the counter. “If you had any sense you would both stay far away.”

  Jo lifted her eyebrows. “Not true.”

  “It is true. I’m toxic. Being near me is toxic. You should run and save yourselves.” I was just talking, it was nonsense, light-headed blabber, but the more I said, the more strongly I believed it.

  “You’re not toxic,” Jo said. She sounded exhausted by the topic already.

  “I am. Look at what I did to Aiden. He’s the best thing that ever happened to me, and I hurt him so badly he might never wake up.”

  Her glare razored through my self-pity. “No, look what Aiden did to you. Look what he did to himself. He is far from the best thing that’s happened to you. Come on. You know better than this.”

  Anger bubbled through me. Aiden was in a coma, he might die or be paralyzed or in other ways never recover, and Jo was talking shit about him. “You’re glad. You’re glad this happened. You want him to die.” I sounded petulant. I didn’t care. I almost wanted her to scream at me.

  Jo exhaled a long, heavy breath and spoke slowly. “If this i
s what it takes to get him away from you, then okay, sure, I’m glad. I’m glad he broke his own bones before he could break yours. I’m glad the injuries he caused this time are to himself instead of you. I don’t wish him dead, but I wish him out of your life for good, and if it will stop you from going back to him and letting him beat you again, I will go to that hospital and pull the plug myself. He’s not good to you, Betts. He’s jealous and possessive and abusive. You have bruises. I watched him hit you.”

  I blocked it out. “He loves me.”

  Her eyes went fierce. “I love you. Of all the humans in the world with whom I do not share DNA, I love you the most. You are my favorite. And I hate seeing you let him define who you are.”

  “As opposed to letting you define me?” I shot back.

  “No!” she said. “Or, you know what? Yes. Yes, as opposed to that. Our friendships define who we are. This friendship defines who I am. Being best friends with you brings out all the best and weirdest, most creative and interesting and worthwhile sides of me, and it challenges me to be better and makes it okay that I’m flawed, and I hope I do that for you, too. I am ten million times better and stronger because of it, because of us. So yes, this friendship defines me, and because of it, who and what I am is more. A good relationship should do that too, but all I see in this one is you being diminished. He treats you like his possession and that’s not the same thing at all. You’re too boxed in to thrive and grow and make mistakes and be all the brilliant things you are. He is trying to contain you, and I don’t know why you can’t see how much you deserve to fly free.”

  The words knocked at my heart but I wouldn’t let them in. I couldn’t let them in. I spoke as calmly as I could. “I don’t want to fly free. I want this. I want to be his. This is who I am now. I’m sorry if you don’t like it, but tough luck.”

  We both stayed quiet for several minutes, and it seemed possible we might never speak again. I had one more thing to say, though. “It’s your fault too,” I told her. “If you hadn’t threatened him, threatened us, I wouldn’t have sent him away.”

  I kept my focus on the shredded bits of label on the counter, but I could feel her not moving, barely breathing, beside me. She held still until I almost wondered if she was still there.

  When she spoke, the sound startled me. “Remember that song about the bears in the bed?”

  I looked at her.

  “Where the little bear complains and pushes all the other bears out, one by one, until she has the whole lonely bed to herself?” I nodded but she sang anyway, “Ten bears in the bed and the little one says, ‘I’m crowded! Roll over!’ So they all roll over and one falls out. Nine bears in the bed and the little one says—”

  I nodded harder to stop her. “Yes. I get it. I remember.”

  Her eyes narrowed to a glare. “Well, I’m done rolling over for you, Baby Bear. This is it. I won’t budge. You are stuck with me, we are getting you out of this, and I am not fucking letting you push me away.”

  I looked down but still heard her breath catch in her throat, a sound that was repeated in my own as the full force of what she was saying sank in, despite how hard I’d been trying to keep it all out. “Don’t cry,” I said to the floor.

  She laugh-sobbed, and I looked up to see her eyes streaming. “I’m crying,” she said. “Most definitely crying.”

  I choked out a laugh and a sob of my own. “Me too.”

  She hugged me. “I’m sorry he hurt you. I’m sorry I didn’t know.”

  I squeezed back and whispered, “I’m scared.”

  Forty-One

  “BETTS.” CICILY ENGULFED ME IN A SIDE HUG, HER hair invading my mouth, her perfume assailing my nostrils, an attack on my decision to not skip school again today. I stiffened and she pulled back. “I’m so sorry about Aiden. I had no idea. It’s so awful. Are you okay? If there’s anything I can do, I am completely here for you, just say the word. I can’t believe it. This is so unbearably tragic.”

  “Thanks.” I turned toward my open locker, hoping she would leave, but of course she didn’t take the hint. I didn’t need her faux-concern about his well-being added to the confusion and chaos inside me. I wished I could be as clear-headed about him as Jo, but with logic pushing me one way and my emotions hauling me the other, I was ripping myself apart in a brutal game of tug-of-war that would all be for naught if Aiden didn’t come out of his coma anyway. Until that happened, I had to hold out hope. I needed to give him something to wake up for.

  “I want you to know, I’m telling everyone it’s not true. The part about why he did it. Because it isn’t, right? I mean, you and Aiden, everyone could see you were so in love.”

  I flinched at the past tense. Thirty-nine hours since the accident and already Cicily was counting him dead. “I don’t know what you’re talking about.”

  Her mouth formed a glossy O. “Oh no, you haven’t heard. I mean, they’re just nasty rumors. You know how people love to gossip. Oh god, I’m so sorry. They’re saying Aiden tried to kill himself because you made out with Eric, and that’s why Eric broke up with Lexa on Sunday night, too. I heard she’s devastated. You know, she hasn’t come to school since. I’m sure she doesn’t believe that part if she’s heard it, though. You and she are friends, right? Have you talked?”

  Eric broke up with Lexa? No, nothing out of Cicily’s mouth could be trusted, even if part of it was almost, sort of true. Somebody must have seen me with Eric at the dance—although of course, I realized, everyone saw us dancing, and the rumors could also have sprung up from that, or even from our hug in the school hallway yesterday morning. It didn’t take truth to get the gossip machine going. I wondered how much of it Lexa believed, how badly she hated me, how mortified Eric was for that rumor to be making the rounds. No wonder it felt like everyone in my lit class had been staring at me.

  I squared my shoulders and looked her straight in the face. “Cee, I’m going to need you to fuck off.”

  Her eyes widened and narrowed in almost comic proportions. “What happened to you?” she asked softly.

  “What happened to me? My boyfriend is in a fucking coma. I watched him almost die, and now you’re standing here accosting me with stupid rumors and pretending that you care about the truth and my heart. What the fuck do you mean, what happened to me?”

  Cicily shook her head slowly, sadly. “No, I mean before this. Before him.”

  I stared at her.

  “We used to be friends.”

  “Yeah. Well. We grew apart, I guess,” I said.

  She nodded, like this brought new understanding she could finally comprehend. “I guess we did. I mean it, though—if you need anything from me, I’m here for you. I’m sorry.”

  She turned and walked past OJ, who’d been shifting from foot to foot, waiting for a turn at her own locker like it was the bathroom. She beelined for her combination lock and avoided looking in my direction. I appreciated that small dose of normalcy, and almost admired her ability to radiate discontent. The world didn’t allow much space for female rage.

  I closed my eyes and wondered if Aiden was still breathing.

  I made it through Latin and found Jo before lunchtime, intercepting her on her way to the cafeteria and guiding her out to a picnic bench in the courtyard. The sun was bright but it was too windy and cold to be outside. Jo didn’t complain. “Were you going to tell me about Eric and Lexa?” I asked.

  “Yes.” She rubbed her arms with both hands but shook her head when I offered my sweatshirt. “It didn’t seem all that pressing compared to everything else. And I didn’t want to add to your worries. Which it shouldn’t. I think this was a long time coming.”

  “Poor Lexa.”

  Jo shook her head. “It was mutual. He was going to break it off but she brought it up first. She’s not getting what she needs from him, or something. He claims they’re going to stay friends.”

  I felt some tension inside me relax. Being with Aiden had conditioned me to automatically take the blame for everyth
ing, but it rang true that maybe this one thing wasn’t about me. I may have kissed Eric, but he hadn’t exactly kissed me back. I just hoped Lexa knew that—or, better yet, didn’t know anything about it. “Is he doing okay?”

  “Yeah. He’s sad but I think worrying about you has eclipsed it.”

  We sat with that in silence until she grinned suddenly and waved at the glass doors to the cafeteria. Sydney pushed one open. “Are you guys getting lunch?” The wind whipped her hair around her face.

  “Yes!” Jo called back. “Save us a seat?”

  Sydney retreated inside and Jo looked at me. “Is that all right?” she asked.

  “Yeah,” I said. It was. I looked back at her, my best friend since second grade, the same girl I had loved, admired, teased, trusted, squabbled with, followed, supported, and leaned on all this time—yet also, of course, not the same girl at all. I’d been so afraid of how things between us were going to change, I’d nearly overlooked or forgotten that of course we’d both been changing all along. Our friendship had room for this change, too. There were so many uncertainties in my head and my heart, but Jo was not one of them.

  We stood and she smoothed down her skirt. “Anyway, you know my brother. He’ll be on to the next girl before we can blink. Though I told him, in my professional opinion, it might do him some good to be single for a while. Like maybe at least until the end of the week.”

  I half smiled as was expected but my gut twisted with a sharp pang, and I envied Jo’s sense of time. For me, each minute had been lasting for hours; an hour stretched to span years. The end of the week seemed a lifetime away, not knowing whether Aiden would be in it, or what I would do if he lived.

  I couldn’t let myself think of the future. I couldn’t let myself think of our past. I was spinning in the now, now, now of endless questions my brain didn’t want me to ask.

  I owed it to him to keep hoping. What I owed to myself would come last.