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“He’s got some broody macho man shit going on. Like he has to bear the burden of protecting you from the monster inside him.” Dramatically, she lays the back of her hand across her forehead.
“But he doesn’t have to protect you from it?”
“He’s not in love withme.”
“He’s not—” I let out a hard exhale, thinking back to that heart-stopping moment in Maverick’s living room. “I could be wrong. He might have started to say something else.”
“I wasn’t there, but I’m still a thousand percent sure that’s exactly what he wanted to say.” Callie’s tone gentles. I cast my gaze down into my lap, trying not to show that I agree with her. I know in my heart that he was about to tell me he was in love with me. If he hadn’t stopped himself—if I hadn’t demanded that he not finish—I’m not sure what I would have said in response. “He’sbeenin love with you, Azalea. And you’ve been in love with him.”
Am I in love with Maverick? When I was with Drew, we used to say ‘I love you’ to each other. I fully believed it at the time, but in hindsight, I don’t think Iwastruly in love with him. I cried for a few days after we broke up, and then I just…moved on. I didn’t miss him. I barely even thought about him.
What I feel for Maverick far eclipses what I ever felt for Drew. Does that mean I’m in love with him?
I don’t know. I’m so exhausted, and I just don’t know.
“It’s probably good that we’re taking some time apart,” I tell Callie. “Clearly, we’re not ready to deal with whatever’s going on. I’m not sure what we were thinking in Chicago.”
Callie scoffs. “The poster children for mutual pining, alone in a hotel room? Yeah. Total mystery.Noidea what you were thinking.”
I grab the nearest pillow and throw it at her face. She catches it and then smacks me back with it. It feels good to mess around. To laugh.
Eventually the pillow falls over the back of the couch and neither of us bothers to retrieve it. We slouch down against the cushions, our bare feet on the coffee table. “You’ve never been in love, right?” I ask.
She shakes her head. “Nope. Not yet.”
There’s a part of me that doesn’t want to ask—doesn’t even want to know—but it loses out to the part of me that does. “I don’t want to put you in the middle—”
“Of you and Maverick?”
“Yeah.”
“Please. Hoes before bros, always.”
I breathe in. “What makes you think he loves me?”
“Well, he wanted to ask you out on the senior class trip,” she says, and my jaw drops. I remember his words to me in Chicago:I thought you were the prettiest girl I’d ever seen. Still haven’t seen anyone prettier.All that time…? “He told me while we were still in New York, but I think he never did it because you guys had hit it off and he wanted to be your friend.”
“How did younevertell me this?” I demand.
“Contrary to popular belief, Idohave the ability to keep some things to myself,” she snips. “Let’s see. He’salwayslooking at you, or for you. You guys are more handsy than any so-called ‘friends’ I’ve ever known. He calls you ‘baby’, which grosses me out, frankly, and he always hated Drew, whose only real issue was being sinfully boring. Well, until the jealousy stuff started,” she adds as an afterthought.
“Yeah,” I grumble.
“When his mom was dying, you were the person he wanted with him. I was basically chopped liver. And, oh, yeah.” Callie beams, an exaggerated smile stretching across her face as she prepares for her big reveal. “He told me.”
I whip my head around to look at her. “Hetoldyou?”
“Yeah. About a year and a half ago. He was completely shitfaced, doesn’t remember it at all.”
A year and a half ago. Before his mom relapsed. Before his leg was destroyed. Before I had even an inkling that my feelings for him were anything more than a passive attraction. “We can’t trust what he said when he was drunk.”
“People don’tliewhen they’re drunk, Azalea. They tell the truth. He was irritated because you were supposed to come out with us, but then you ditched us for Drew. So he drank like six beers and then he started talking.” She pats her ponytail, checking for loose hairs. “It was kind of a rant, and all over the place. I remember that part, though.”
“What part?”
“The part where he said, ‘I love her and I want her to be happy, even if it’s not with me.’”
I sit in silence for several seconds, absorbing this. In my head, I can so clearly hear those exact words in Maverick’s voice. “How drunk wereyouduring this?”
