Me, I’m silent because I’m lost in my thoughts. Thinking about what my sister said, yes, but more than that, thinking about last night. About kissing Maeve. About holding Maeve. About sleeping next to Maeve. About filling my cabin with laughter with Maeve. Dammit, I even spend a solid ten minutes thinking about how Maeve hummed to herself as she did her skincare, pausing only to tell me her very honest and a little bit scathing opinion about the products I have.
Am I romantically attracted to Maeve?
I ask myself this and two very distinct and different answers jump out at me.
Yes. And Jessica is right. You’re falling in love with her.
And.
No. You’re aromantic. You don’t feel romantic attraction to people.
Sexual, yes. Platonic love, absolutely.
But what I feel for Maeve doesn’t fit into either of those boxes. Or rather, it spills out of those boxes. I’m starting to think it would spill out of any box I tried to force it in.
This last realization has me squeezing my eyes shut as I briefly wince.
What the fuck am I trying to do? Trying to fit my feelings, my experiences into too-small, too-damn-restrictive boxes. I should know better than this. I should know that boxes and binaries are only there to hurt us.
While the reflecting I do on our journey helps me realize how reductive I’m being when it comes to analyzing my feelings forMaeve, it doesn’t help me figure out what to do next. What to do after Maeve leaves today.
Do I want to ignore what I feel? Do I want to pretend those hour-long kisses weren’t atom-changing? Do I want to just go back to us slinging snarky DMs at each other across the Atlantic?
Would it not just be easier to let whatever this is fizzle out? To let Maeve go so she can find someone capable of the true romance she so deserves?
Wouldn’t it be easier for me to go back to the life I’ve crafted for myself with my work, my mentoring, my taking care of Jessica? Because the fact remains, Maeve lives on the other side of the world so even if my feelings for her are real, I can’t leave Vegas. I can’t leave Jessica.
“Just pull up in the driveway, yeah?” Maeve unclicks her seatbelt as I turn off the Strip.
“Okay,” I say and I tell myself this is a good thing. If we have to say goodbye here in a busy courtyard where I’m not allowed to park for more than a few minutes, it can’t get sad or heavy or emotional or unnecessarily drawn-out.
We can just say goodbye and both move on with our lives. I’ll forget about how her hair smells like candied apples. I’ll forget how perfect she looked dancing in my kitchen with my little sister. I’ll forget how much I want her to cover my body in glitter. And I’ll forget about that kiss.
I kill the engine.
“Loncey,” Maeve turns in her seat toward me, but she has a hand on the door, “thank you.”
I blink. “What for?”
“For a lot of things, but mostly for that kiss. And all of last night.” She looks down at her lap. “I didn’t know it was possible for me to share a night like that with someone.”
Share all your nights like that with me,a part of me yells, hollers, screams.
“You’re welcome, Maeve,” I say instead.
“I can,” she swallows, and it looks like her next words pain her to speak them, “I can understand why you’re so good at what you do. You make people feel very special when you’re with them.”
A boulder lands in my stomach, crashing straight through my diaphragm and making me feel very sick.
I reach out for the arm resting on her leg. “Last night,” I say, but now I don’t know what to say next. Maeve gifts me a few moments to gather the right words. “Last night was different for me too. It wasn’t like… like what I do with other partners.”
Maeve rolls her eyes but I notice her gaze returns to where my hand is holding her wrist. “Yeah, I know. No sex.”
I squeeze my grip. “No, Maeve. It wasn’t that. It was different because…”
And isn’t this when I should just admit everything to her, and to myself. Isn’t this the perfect moment to tell Maeve how I really feel? To tell her that the time I spend with her transcends any other interaction I’ve had with another human, intimate or otherwise. Isn’t this the perfect moment to tell her that I think I’m falling in love with her?
“It was different because it was you,” I say eventually.
