Page 235 of Falling Backwards
He doesn’t wanna let me in on however his dad has upset him.He’s gonna hang out with Jayden tomorrow.
I can understand one and not the other, and each is its own kind of agonizing.
Noise from the front door cuts through the thick silence we’ve been standing in, snaps us out of our holding stare.It’s a key in the lock.One of my friends is home.
It spurs on the conclusion I was coming to moments ago.As I wipe at my wet eyes, I tell Luke, “I think you should go.”
Saying it is agonizing, too, though.
So is hearing him agree, “Yeah, that’s what I think,” and watching him turn and stride away, heading for the opening door.
All kinds of emotions bombard me as Joy comes into the apartment—she’s got no idea what she’s walking in on and it’s going to hurt in a new way to tell her about it.
Indeed, she greets Luke and then looks surprised by him grabbing his shoes from the front area in such a rush; she bumbles out of his way as he slips into the hall without another word to me, without even a look back.
In her own rush, she shuts and locks the door, her head turned this way so she can look at me.“Maggie?”she asks lightly, worriedly.
My attention shifts to the couch, where my and Luke’s dinner has been left lonely.And even with one of my best friends audibly hurrying over here to come to my aid, a terrible sense of loneliness slams intome.
I gracelessly sit back down.The shrieking pain in my knee doesn’t come anywhere close to the pain of what just happened.
With Joy landing next to me and her arm going around my shoulders, I put my face in my hands and finally give in to the urge to really cry.
L U K E
I feel like I’m on the edge of losing my mind.
In the car on the way home, I kept feeling Maggie in the passenger seat with her hand holding mine on her thigh.Just moments ago on the way up my stairs, the Christmas decorations we put on my front porch had me hearing the sweet ring of her laughter as I wrapped her up in the string of lights while wearing the reindeer headband we bought for me.Now I’m standing in my living room with the air still vibrating from me slamming the door behind me and I can see her on my couch, at my bar counter, walking towards my bedroom.
All the while, our fight has been on a blaring loop in my head.
I steeple my hands over my mouth, then rub at my temples, then start up a restless pace around the room.
My heart is pounding.
This isn’t how I…this isnothow I….
But what did I really expect to happen?Did I really think she’d be fine with me hanging out with Jayden after the part he played in all that shit?
Not that she has every detail of my and Jayden’s arrangement from when we were younger.She doesn’t even have half of them.All she has is the worst one: I only got to know her because of a bet he came up with.
That’s enough, though.That’s enough reason for her not to like him.
And for her to feel like me still being his friend is akin to spitting on everything she and I have built up.
“That’s not what I’m doing,” I say to the empty room.Shaking my head, I sniff hard.“I love what we have.I loveher.”
Something in me cracks apart at this being the first time I’ve admitted that out loud—here by myself, with me having stormed out of her apartment without even one last glance at her.It’s not right.It’s pathetic.
And it leads me to think of what I said about not trusting her with my pain over my dad.My pacing feet drag to a clumsy halt and I slap my hands to my face.The sting in my skin is nothing compared to the sting of the words I threw at her.
In my head, I see her eyes welling up with tears, see the wounded surprise splashed across her face.
In my chest, Ifeelit; when we were in the moment, I didn’t register my own shock that I’d said that to her, but I do now.
I made her cry and I hate it.I fucking hate it as much as I did eight years ago.
