What If

by A. J. Pine

  “She’s from Chicago. We dated while I was in Scotland. Our agreement was we’d keep things casual, stay in the moment rather than worry about the future, because what kind of future is there with someone you meet in a foreign country and who lives in another state?”

  She says nothing at first, only watches me, her top teeth dragging slowly over her bottom lip.

  “So that’s a bunch of bullshit, right?” she asks, an impassiveness to her tone, as if that could hide her judgment.

  “What? Maggie, you asked, and I told you.” Which was obviously a mistake, the reason I didn’t say anything in the first place.

  “It’s bullshit, Griffin.” Her voice stays calm but is peppered with anger. “We’re on our way to Chicago right now to see her, a trip that would be easy enough to make monthly, weekly if you really wanted to. It’s your stupid deflection—‘Hey look over here at these stupid reasons why we can’t be serious so I don’t let myself get invested.’ God. How happy you must be with all your casual relationships. It doesn’t sound like a lonely existence at all.”

  Her voice trembles on the last sentence, and I veer across the three lanes of traffic to the exit ramp on the right.

  “What are you doing?”

  I don’t answer, only watch the road, exiting the interstate and pulling into the first gas station I see.

  “Griffin. You’re freaking me out. What are you doing?”

  Once stopped, I throw the car into park and turn off the ignition. When I face her, the fear in her eyes dissipates when she sees what’s in mine—not anger, not sadness. Just regret. Her hand reaches for my face, cupping my cheek.

  “Did you fall in love with her anyway?”

  I nod, the first time I’ve admitted this to anyone, including myself. Not saying the word, not acknowledging how I felt, helped me get back to old habits. Safe habits. But I thought I was safe back then, and I wasn’t. With Maggie, I knew that first night the danger I was in, but I lied to myself anyway.

  “She was in love with someone else,” I tell her.

  She shakes her head. “The guy with her at the reunion.” I nod again. “I’m sorry, Griffin. It wasn’t my business, and I…I shouldn’t have gotten so angry. That had nothing to do with you.”

  My hand covers hers, holding it there, the heat from her palm warming me as the temperature in the car slowly drops.

  “It is bullshit,” I tell her. “But it’s all I’ve ever known, and it’s always been enough.”

  She keeps her eyes locked on mine when she asks the next question.

  “Do you still love her?”

  I shake my head without hesitation.

  “No. I don’t. It’s been two years already. But I remember what it was like, her kissing me when I knew she wanted to be with him. I’m the asshole for letting it go on as long as it did. I don’t want to be that asshole again.”

  She lowers her hand, and I loosen my grip.

  “So the anger that you said has nothing to do with me? Anything you want to tell me?”

  A long, slow breath exits her lips, and for several seconds she says nothing.

  “No,” she says, a finality in her tone. “We should probably get back on the road if we want to check in before the party.”

  With that she straightens in her seat, her head finding its resting spot on the cool glass of the passenger window.

  We’ve kept ourselves closed off enough since the day we met that I realize I know nothing more about her beyond what she’s let me see. Little by little she has cracked my resistance, slipped into the parts of me I tried to hide as well. And she’s still here. But for every space I let her fill, she bottles up another one of her own.

  She’s right. It’s bullshit. All of it. When it comes to Maggie, it’s no longer enough.

  Chapter Seventeen

  Maggie

  If there was a third person on the trip with us, her name would be Awkward Silence. And yes, she’d be a girl because, well, she’s me. We made it through the rest of the drive with ample small talk about tastes in music and playing the alphabet game with road signs and license plates. But that was simply noise to fill an ever-widening gap. One that I created, have been creating even as Griffin and I have been seeing each other more.

  Now I follow him in that same silence down a hotel corridor, wheeling my suitcase behind me to the room we’ll share tonight, wondering if we’ll really share anything more than the same space, the same pocket of time.

  When he unlocks the door, he holds it open, ushering me through first, and when he follows behind, we both stop short at what lies before us. Thirty-six stories above the street, a picture window looks out over Lake Michigan. Griffin whistles while I gasp, and our shared reaction brings laughter from him and from me, and somehow the distance lessens, if only by a fraction of space, but it lessens nonetheless.

  “Pretend you drew a WILD card,” I tell him, searching for a way to stitch the gap even tighter.

  “What?” he asks, his eyes abandoning the view for me.

  “The Uno deck,” I say. “A WILD card means you get to ask me anything. Pretend you drew a WILD.”

  Once the request is out there, I walk from the entrance across the elegant room to the window seat. The setting sun has the city ablaze in lights, their reflections dancing off the water. I sit, and wait, the promise—or maybe threat—of a question hanging in the air.

  I hear him move, his footsteps padding across the carpeted floor. In the reflection of the glass I watch him perch on the edge of the king-sized bed, listen to his exhales, sounds that denote thought. And I wait.

  “Tell me about someone you were in love with.”

  It’s not a question, but his request asks so much. I spin around on the bench, let my back rest against the tall window. My lips press together in a line, and I shake my head, giving him what he asks for—the truth.

  His brows rise in challenge before he reacts with words.

  “You’ve never been in love with anyone?”

  I laugh, though my expression feels like anything but a smile.

  Now his brows pinch together. “I don’t get it,” he says.

  I shrug, having answered his question. I don’t have to tell him that in high school I was too focused on AP classes, on earning a full-ride to college so I wouldn’t break my grandparents with loans. I don’t explain that once my grandfather passed away, I started working at the coffee shop, even before starting at the U, to help offset my living expenses. Anyone I’d met, anyone I could have fallen for, wasn’t enough of a distraction to warrant the time away from more important endeavors. I sure as hell don’t let him in on how I lost my scholarship after sophomore year, when I could no longer attend classes full-time…or at all for what would have technically been my junior year.

  And now—now there’s this guy who is more than a worthy distraction, and for weeks I’ve been keeping him at a distance, but the pull is stronger than my push. Because for weeks, I’ve also been falling, and all it would take is one more tug from him, and I’d have no push left.

  “Is that it?” I ask. “Because you can draw another card if you want.” He leans forward, his elbows on his knees as he contemplates my invitation to ask more, to mend the ripping seam between us.

  He stands and makes his way to the bench next to me. He angles his head toward mine, and I suck in a breath, waiting for his lips to be his response, and they are. Just not on mine.

  Warm breath tickles my ear before I hear his voice.

  “That depends. If I had another, could I ask you if you could fall in love with…this?”

  His tongue flicks at my earlobe, and his teeth follow close behind, grazing and tugging, and a sigh of pleasure trickles off my lips.

  “Or this?” His tongue trails the length of my neck to my collarbone, and this time a word forms.

  “Oh.” In my head I scream my response. Yes! I could fall in love with…this. But the answer will not form. Nor will the mounting question of Why? and What does this mea
n? and How could you still want me when I keep doing everything in my power to push you away?

  As if he can hear inside my messed-up head, he answers my questioning thoughts.

  “For this weekend only, shut everything else out…except me.”

  His ragged voice, filled with need, only has to ask once because my answer is a resounding, “Yes.”

  I wriggle out of my coat and, without further pause, rise up on my knees as I face him, lifting my top over my head and unclasping my bra, needing his mouth on me. One quick glance to my left assures me, despite the wall of windows we’re up against, we are hidden in the privacy of our height above the city, nothing but the lapping waves of the lake to see us. I don’t hide my need. He obliges immediately, after he lets out a soft but hungry groan.

  His tongue tastes and then lips close around me, his hand making sure my other breast isn’t left out of the fun. My fingers tangle in his hair as he licks and pinches and devours, and in my head I hear myself say again, Yes! I could fall in love with this.

  Because of course it’s more than this. It’s always been more than this. But I can’t say it, can’t give him the three words I’ll take back once we leave this fairy tale. So I return to that night at his place, when I stopped him before the words were too much to reciprocate, and I think it.

  Griffin, I…

  I let the thought dangle, unfinished, unsaid. If saying it aloud makes it real, thinking it plants the seed of reality, and I don’t know how to make it grow.

  I can shut it all out for a night. That much is true. I can wrap my arms around his neck and climb forward, my legs straddling him as I lower myself to his lap, his lips dragging up my collarbone, my neck, my chin—until they meet mine. And then—fireworks.

  Chapter Eighteen

  Griffin

  Chicago winters, brutal as I hear they can get, are nothing compared to Minnesota, and certainly not in November. So we walk the two blocks to the Hancock, Michigan Avenue ablaze now in holiday lights.

  I check the time on my phone, a quarter after seven, and see a text I must have missed when Maggie distracted me on the window seat. Not that I’m complaining. She gave me an opening to ask her anything. Then she offered me more, which is exactly why I didn’t take it from her. All I needed to know was that she was willing to let me into her secrets, if only for a small peek. And to touch her. God, I needed to touch her. Just thinking about it stokes the need, so much I’m almost willing to say fuck it to this whole reunion thing. Then my phone buzzes again.

  It’s Jordan, as was the previous message. Though her texts have lost their effect on me since Maggie came into the picture, there’s a sort of twist in my gut, a knot in my throat, at the thought of seeing her again after so long.

  Jordan: You’re late! Did you get my other text? We have a surprise for you!

  We have a surprise for you. We have a surprise for you.

  “You okay?” Maggie’s voice cuts through the memories, reminding me it’s not Jordan I miss but the What if? What if someone like her could have fallen for someone like me? How different would I be now? Would Maggie trust me enough to let me all the way past her walls? Would I let her past mine?

  I look away from the screen and into Maggie’s green eyes and realize Jordan Brooks is not my What if? It’s this girl in front of me right now, nose red from the cold and fingertips poking out of the openings in her gloves to grab the lapels of my coat.

  I drop the phone back into my pocket, text message unanswered. We’re late. And I don’t give a shit. My hands cup Maggie’s cheeks, and I tilt my head down, forehead resting on hers.

  “What if?” I ask her, and she doesn’t respond with anything more than the warmth of her breath mingling with mine, the air between us the only source of heat on a Chicago winter night.

  “What if?” I ask it again, quieter this time, because maybe the question is only for me. Maybe this step is mine to take whether she’s with me or not, because either way the risk is huge, but I don’t want to walk into that building pretending. I don’t want to face the person who didn’t see me as a real option without proving to her—no, to myself—that I can be real. That I can want something fucking real more than my own self-preservation.

  “Griffin, I don’t understand…”

  She doesn’t finish because my lips are on hers, soft and questioning at first, until she answers by letting her mouth fall open, inviting me inside. And the hunger returns, not only for lips touching lips or the surrounding air warming with our exhalations. It’s the hunger for more. More with this girl who hitched a ride with a stranger and still hasn’t run for her life. That has to be something.

  We break apart, but only because of the whistling and clapping from some of the Michigan Avenue passersby.

  “Oops,” Maggie says through a giggle. “Guess we have an audience.”

  “Guess so,” I say, pressing a gentle kiss to her puppy-dog cold nose. I’m not ready for my lips to not be touching her skin.

  “Maybe that’s our cue to leave?”

  I want to kiss her all over again for making her words a question rather than a statement, which can only mean she doesn’t want to stop, either.

  “Maybe.” Her hand slips into mine, and she tugs me forward. Or maybe I lead her. Either way, we’re moving again, the Hancock right in front of us and, therefore, the Signature Lounge.

  “Quite the tourist location, huh?” I ask.

  “It’s beautiful,” she says, eying the skyscraper from head to toe, her gaze landing on the massive Christmas tree that stands outside the building’s exposed lower level.

  Her hand still in mine, I lead her down the steps to the base of the tree where tourists amass taking pictures with one of the city’s most popular holiday decorations.

  “Do you have your camera?”

  She takes it out of her bag, brandishing it as her answer. I pull her closer to the tree and tap a picture-snapping tourist on the shoulder, a man taking a photo of what must be his wife and kids in front of the tree.

  “Would you take one of us, and I’ll get one of you with your family?”

  He thanks me and hands me his camera. After getting a couple good shots of him and his family, we trade cameras so he has Maggie’s, and we position ourselves in front of the tree.

  “So…uh, this is awkward, huh?” she asks, and I understand. She’s taken a few photos of me, but we’ve never been in one together.

  “How about if we just smile?” I suggest.

  She nods, but it’s her next action that gets me. Standing on my side, she wraps both arms around my midsection, leaning her head on my chest. I wonder if she feels my heart hammering against her, an admission I’m still scared shitless to make.

  My head dips to kiss the top of hers before posing for the camera, and tourist dad yells, “That’s a great shot! How about one more?”

  Maggie’s shoulders shake with quiet laughter, and it’s contagious. Whatever our photographer captures now, it’s anything but posed.

  “Thank you,” I tell him when he hands Maggie’s camera back to me, his wife and two boys standing next to him.

  “You’re a beautiful couple,” she says, and then looks at her husband with a grin. “Remember when we were in love like that?”

  They both laugh and head back up the stairs. Maggie’s hand sits in mine, but for a long moment we avoid eye contact, letting the woman’s comment fade along with the flush of heat in my cheeks I know will give me away.

  When I think enough time has passed to allow us to look at each other again, I turn to face her, asking a question I can’t believe I haven’t asked yet. “Is this your first time in Chicago?”

  She nods. “Sort of.”

  My brows crease in question. Her smile fades, and her eyes do that far-off thing they did in the car, like she’s looking past me or through me. In seconds her focus returns, and she sighs.

  “My grandmother and I came for a girls’ weekend early spring of my freshman year. We took tons of se
lfies everywhere we went, not caring that we looked like tourists.”

  She pauses, taking a couple of slow breaths, and I wait because she’s gearing up for something.

  “The trip itself is hazy, but those selfies are my best memories of anything she and I have done together. Because I can see my happiness in those photos and try to relive it. Hers, too, even though it was after we lost my grandfather.” Another pause. “Griffin. I want to tell you something.”

  “Oi! Griffin, mate!”

  The voice comes from up the stairs, and though it’s been two years since I’ve heard it, I recognize it all the same. This is Jordan’s surprise.

  I let Maggie’s hand go and turn toward the voice. Duncan.

  He barrels down the stairs toward us, embracing me and Maggie at once.

  “For fuck’s sake, man. We’ve been upstairs in this bloody fancy place waiting for you and your Maggie.” He lets us go, backing up to look at us. “Jordan’s been going on about you bringing a girl. I think part of it is for Noah. He’s a little nervous. But she’s happy for you, mate. Really happy. Anyway, I wanted to come outside, see all the lights now that it’s totally dark, and here you are!”

  Maggie’s expression is wide-eyed, a mixture of shock and most likely delight because not smiling in Duncan’s presence is an impossibility.

  “Maggie, meet Duncan. We lived in the same dorm in Scotland.”

  “Neighbors, actually!” Duncan extends a hand toward Maggie even though he’s already full-on embraced her.

  As they shake, Maggie’s surprise morphs into a smile. She beams all the way to her eyes, and I have to catch my breath at the sight of it. Of course Duncan brings this out in her. He brings it out in everyone. But I want that power, to make her smile like that again.

  Duncan’s dark hair has grown from the buzz cut he sported a couple of years ago, though he still keeps it short. I laugh when I realize he’s not wearing a coat, only a navy sweater and dark jeans.

  “No coat?” I ask him, and he shrugs.

  “You’re lucky I’ve got jeans on. I’m only wearing ’em because Elaina said I couldn’t walk down Michigan Avenue in a kilt with this wind.” He leans in, lowering his voice. “I think she’s afraid the other lasses will see my legs and not be able to keep their hands off.”