Page 247 of Falling Backwards
Such a quiet and small knock that I might’ve imagined it, what with all my hoping to hear from Maggie.
As likely as that is to be true, I get up and go over, reach to unlock the door—
—and nearly jump out of my skin as a real knock comes.
All at once, I wonder who it belongs to and I don’t want to bother with looking out the peephole and I believe Iknowwho it belongs to because it was light and even, not heavy or commanding or chill or musical as if from Jayden, my dad, Paxton, my mom.
And as I get the door out of my way, I see with a rush of wild heartbeats that I’m right.
Maggie stands there in my porch light, her breaths thick and white in the cold air, her eyes wide like she can’t believe she’s here any more than I can.Arms crossed tightly over the front of her sweater.Hair hanging more limply than it usually does, like she’s been in bed all day.
I look at her and want so much to drag her into a kiss that it makes my mouth water.
I also look at her and want to cross my own arms to shield myself from her that little bit.
All I do, though, is step back so there’s room for her to come through the doorway.
She does, and I notice how gingerly she moves, and I want to ask how her knee is, and I don’t do that either.
God, it’s insane how much her presence affects the way my apartment feels.Shutting her into it with me instantly changes the weight of the air, the ring of the silence.Things settle and sigh around her somehow.‘Maggie’s home,’they seem to know.‘All is well again.’
These things happen even though this time, all isnotwell—she’s setting her purse on the skinny table against the wall, but she’s not here to watch TV in the big chair with me or cook awesome mac and cheese in my kitchen or wrap me in her arms in my bed.
I’ll take the bad with the good,I remember quietly.
“You don’t trust me?”
Maggie’s question is soft, scratchy.I can tell she hasn’t talked much today, can tell she’s spent a lot of time crying.It makes my insides ache.
Then I comprehend what she’s asking.Why she’s asking it.
She faces me and folds her arms across her chest again.“You don’t trust me,” she states now.
Swallowing suddenly feels uncomfortable.
I want to assure her that I do and that I think what I said yesterday about my dad was mostly out of the heat of the moment because she was right, Ihadbeen upset about things I was keeping from her, and then I got even more upset about her reaction to me going for a drink with Jayden—not because she pissed me off but because some part of me knew she was making sense and I was being an idiot yet again.
Yet there’s the fine print: what I said about my dadmostlycame out in the heat of the moment.I trust her, but the fact remains that the way I felt about her retaliation back then hasn’t gone anywhere.
Right now, the latter turns out to be the bigger thing in my mind.
I wet my dry lips and ask her, “Why did you choose to get back at me…like that?When we were sixteen?”
Her pretty, tired, already-newly-dampening green eyes churn with sadness—and disbelief.“What do you mean?”
My eyebrows fly up, and just like that, my tone hardens.“What do you think I mean?”
“No,what do you meanwhen you ask why I chose totryto embarrass you after youcompletely and utterlyembarrassed me?”Her tone is losing its softness, too, and already growing a little breathless the way it always does when she’s mad at me.“Is it really hard for you to understand?”
“Actually, it is,” I have to say.“I fucked up big by going along with Jayden’s stupid and terrible bet idea, but at least it was just between us.You posting those flyers all around school involved everyone else.People we knew, people we didn’t—I can’t tell you how many times Ijust happenedto be near a random pair of friends or a group of people who didn’t even see me and were still making fun of‘that guy Luke’because of the rumors you started about me.People talked about them on social media, not just in person.And it didn’t ease up after a week or a month or after summer break.It kept on until we graduated, and every now and then I noticed whispers and weird looks afterthat.”
Maggie doesn’t say anything.She just…keeps looking at me.
It sets my blood to a simmer.
“What?”I ask.“You said yesterday that you haven’t forgotten what you did, but have you?Let me remind you.Thanks to the rumors you spread, I spent the last year-and-some-change of my life in high school being a running joke about things bully-happy teenagers latch onto and don’t let go of.They believed what you said and theyneverlet it go.People avoided being close to me ’cause of your lie that I didn’t brush my teeth or wear deodorant or wash my socks and underwear.They thought I was a freak ’cause you made up that I had a crush on one of my cousins.Do you remember the rolls of toilet paper people threw at me ’cause of your rumor that I preferred peeing myself to going in public bathrooms?And the—”
“You don’t have to remind me of any of that!”she snaps now.“There’s no need for you to list any more of it!I wasn’t lying when I said I haven’t forgotten!I know what I did!”
