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“I’m not hungry.”
“You need to eat.”
I shake my head.
“Azalea, it’s like three bites and it would make me feel better if you ate something. You look like you’re about to be sick or pass out. Or both.” He places my half of the donut in my lap and turns the key in the ignition. “Just eat it.”
“Fine,” I say irritably, and take a small bite to appease him. With that first hit of sugar, I discover that Iamhungry. I don’t need any encouragement to scarf the rest down.
Back on the highway, I find myself stealing glances at Maverick. He was always clean-shaven before his mom went on hospice, but now he tends to go longer without shaving and often has a fine layer of stubble covering his jaw. It was scratchy on my neck when he hugged me the other night. There are bags under his eyes—probably because he was up late fielding my long-winded, anxious texts—and a small pimple near his hairline, the only spot he really gets acne.
It's in that moment—the exact moment I notice his pimple and spare his acne patterns a thought—that I realize I love him. I’min lovewith him.
The realization is breathtaking, but not exhilarating. It’s heart wrenching. Because if a random guy—a repeat DUI offender, as it turned out—hadn’t decided he needed another twelve-pack at eleven a.m. on a Wednesday, maybe Maverick and I would be together right now. Maybe we’d be happy.
But what happened, happened. In the aftermath, Maverick did what he did. And now, even though it makes me almost unbearably sad, the time for us to be together has passed.
I can’t—and won’t—sacrifice Maverick’s friendship, though. These past few months have shown me how badly I need it.
I recline my seat and let my eyes close. The knot in my stomach loosens as my mind somehow manages to quiet thoughts of the confrontation I’m heading toward and instead fills with sweet images of what could have been.
Throughahazeofsemiconsciousness, I hear my name, then feel my shoulder being shaken.
Blinking the sleep out of my eyes, I look around and realize that we are sitting at the bottom of an exit ramp. “Where are we?”
“Almost there, but I don’t know where to go from here.”
I fumble for my phone. “Hold on.” I pull up the GPS and select the address. We are less than three miles away. Just like that, the nausea is back. “Okay. Turn right.”
We take the right, another right, and then a left into a neighborhood. “Straight through the roundabout up here,” I tell Maverick, my heart pounding harder with every passing second. He follows my directions. The road we emerge on is curvy and slopes upward, large cookie-cutter houses with three-car garages rising on each side. I glance at my phone. “It’s up here on the right.”
“How far?”
“Another quarter mile.”
He slows, and I peer out the window, checking house numbers. Part of me hopes that we won’t find the house, that it will have somehow disappeared from the street, saving me from having to face whoever is inside.
But then the numbers jump out at me, stacked vertically on the paneling beside the garage door. I check and double-check them against the address that I entered into my phone.
This is it.
And there are cars in the driveway.
“Here,” I say, my voice sounding high-pitched to my own ears. “It’s here.”
Maverick pulls up to the curb. I stare at the house, making no move to get out of the car. The exterior is nondescript. A wreath on the door, a garden flag with a P on it, flower beds—not azaleas, I note.
“Nice house,” Maverick says finally, breaking the silence.
I take a deep, shaky breath. “Yeah.”
“Are you gonna go up there?”
“Yeah,” I say again. “We came all this way.”
Still, I stay in my seat.
I hear the low clicks of the car being put into park and then feel Maverick’s hand on my shoulder. I look over at him. He looks back at me, saying nothing. His thumb brushes against my nape, maybe on purpose, maybe not, and I feel myself flush.
