Page 11 of What Maple Heard

“Maple—“

“Do not contact me.” My hand was on the door. “Do not contact River. Do not show up at the studio. Do not send me texts that I will read and not answer.” I looked at him one last time. “Goodbye, Cade.”

“Listen to me, Maple. I won’t give up on you. I won’t give up on River. I’m going to make this right. That’s my promise to you.”

I went inside. I turned around to look at him one last time. There was just the frame of the door that was in between the two of us. He was looking at me with pure pleading in his eyes.

As if I cared anymore.

I gave him my best fake smile, raised my right hand and pushed out my middle finger right in front of his face.

“Fuck you, Cade.” I shut the door on his face. I stood on the inside of it with my back against the wood. There was a long pause. Then his voice, muffled through the door.

“I won’t give up on you, Maple.”

“I won’t give up on River.”

And then, quieter, slower, like he was saying it to himself as much as to me. “I won’t give up on us.”

I stood against the door and stared at the ceiling and listened to his footsteps on the porch steps and then on the path and then the click of his car door and the sound of him driving away.

***

Chapter 4

Cade

I’d heard the word heartbreak my whole life.

Songwriters made millions off that word. Movie studios built entire franchises on it. Every sad song on every radio station was basically a heartbreak delivery vehicle with a chorus attached. I had listened to those songs and watched those movies and thought: sure, okay, that sounds unpleasant.

I had no idea.

None.

When Maple shut that door in my face, I felt something happen in my chest that I had no prior reference for. A fast, shooting pain, followed by a heaviness that settled in behind it like it was planning to stay. My throat closed. My breathing went weird. I stood on her porch in the dark and stared at her front door and finally realized what that word really meant.

So that’s what they’ve all been writing about.

That was two weeks ago.

The heaviness hadn’t moved.

I’d tried everything. Sleep — useless. Whiskey — made it worse, which was new information I resented. I’d spent an entire Saturday on the Playstation, which had always been my guaranteed method for not thinking about anything, and I had died repeatedly on a level I’d cleared a hundred times because I kept losing focus. Nothing worked. Nothing came close.

The only thing that gave me any relief at all was texting her.

Which I did. Constantly. Every day, multiple times a day, because I was apparently now that person and I had made my peace with it. I apologized. I told her she deserved better. I told her I was sorry, then I was sorry again, then I found new and specific ways to be sorry because I had a lot of material to work with. And every time I hit send, I watched those two little ticks turn blue, and something in the heaviness in my chest would ease by about three percent for approximately four minutes.

She was reading them.

Every single one.

I had never in my life been as grateful for the invention of the mobile phone as I was right now. At least what I actually felt was getting through to her. At least the real thing was landing somewhere.

I needed to know exactly what she’d heard.

Not because I was looking for a loophole. There was no loophole. But I needed the full picture before I could figure out how to fix it, so I called Kyle and asked him what he remembered.