Page 116 of The Fallacy of True Love
I wanted to give him the answer he wanted to hear, but I couldn’t lead him on and I wouldn’t give a promise I couldn’t keep. So I settled for saying, “We’ll see.” I hoped he’d leave it at that.
Alonzo
Maya turned silent, and I found her staring out the window, cradling the canvas bag in her lap. Wearing one of her trademark tank tops, denim shorts, and flip flops, she had none of her city camouflage left. She looked just as she had the first time I saw her, that stranger with the bird tatt in a small beach town.
Only, she wasn’t a stranger anymore.
“There’s a grilled cheese sandwich in the bag,” I told her.
She looked at me, and it hit me again how beautiful she was. “Thank you, but I ate while waiting for you.”
“Later, then.” Hopefully, later meant when we were driving away together from the bus station. I had to get on with my convincing before our window for discussion closed. “I got you a shake too. I should have told you earlier.”
She opened the bag and drew out the tumbler I’d packed. “Must have been a fancy takeout place.”
“I brought the tumbler for them to put the shake in so it wouldn’t melt right away.”
“I’ll try to finish this now so you can bring the tumbler home.”
“Keep it,” I answered. “I have another one.” This was my favorite because it maintained the drink’s temperature longer. If Maya couldn’t stay here with me, I wanted her to have something of mine. It reassured me that she’d remember me and that I was taking care of her even in just a silly, little way.
“I was assaulted in my second year of college.”
My foot jerked on the pedal, and I nearly rear-ended the car in front of us. “Fuck.” My heart raced, and I prayed I’d heard her incorrectly. “I’m sorry, what?”
“It was one of my friends…a guy I trusted.”
I tightened my grip on the steering wheel, a dozen curses clamoring to leave my mouth. But I pressed it shut, not wanting to interrupt her.
“I’d had the biggest crush on him since we met, but I never thought anything would come of it because he was always dating some other girl. A month before Christmas, he broke up with his girlfriend. We went to the fair with our friends, had a couple of drinks. He said he wanted to talk to me, and I thought that was it—he was going to ask me out. He led me to a secluded area of the field, behind a tree. I still remember the exact spot. He started kissing me. I tried to push him away, but he just laughed, like he thought I was playing hard to get. Then he put his hand up my shirt.”
My mouth gaped and I struggled to keep my eyes on the road. “Shit. What the fuck?” I risked a glance at her. “Did he?—?”
Seeming lost in her memories, she stared straight ahead. “I kneed him in the balls and accidentally head-butted him. Then I ran back to our friends. The girls freaked out when they saw me, but when he got there, he said that I started it and got cold feet. They all knew I had a crush on him so they didn’t need much convincing to believe him.”
“What the fuck? The girls didn’t stand by you?”
“They did at first. My best friend brought me back to the dorm. I was mostly in a daze. The next day, they were looking at me differently. I heard people calling me a tease. It got to the point where I didn’t know who I could trust because I heard different versions of the story, and I started wondering if I’d overreacted or maybe even remembered it wrong.” She chuckled bitterly. “Can you believe that?”
“Fuck. I’m sorry that happened to you, Maya.”
She continued talking as though she couldn’t stop now that she’d started. “I told myself I was stupid for going along with him. That it was my fault for dressing the way I did and trusting a guy.” Her voice turned quiet. “But he was my friend. You know? If you can’t trust your friends…”
Then they weren’t your friends in the first place, I wanted to tell her.
“Soon, they also started mocking me for not having parents. They made fun of where I come from, how I looked. Everything was fair game, and other people joined in on it.” She took a shaky breath. “It destroyed me. I’d trusted my friends with the truth, and they used it against me. All because of something that hadn’t even been my fault.”
Names—I needed them, because those assholes had to be taught a lesson.
“I spent every minute I could studying so I could prove that I deserved to be there. It was the first time I qualified for the dean’s list. I only had to lose my friends to do it.” She scoffed. “I convinced myself I could stick it out for two more years. That they’d eventually get tired of fucking with me. But then someone sent me a screenshot of a Reddit thread about me. They were spreading rumors that I’d cheated, and that was the last straw. I filed for an honorable dismissal and left Manila the day I got the certificate.”
The details finally fell into place. Why she dropped out. Why she mistrusted people and preferred to keep a small circle of friends. Why she hated Manila. “Shit. Maya. I had no idea?—”
“How could you? No one walks around with a sign declaring their trauma. We just do our best to cope with it the way we know how.”
“For you, it was the sea?”
She hummed in agreement. “And my independence. For the longest time, I thought I would be better off completely on my own. I refused to let anyone in. If Nikki hadn’t given me that job, I don’t know where I would have ended up. But she taught me the meaning of true friendship. They all did.”
