Page 70 of Maverick
“Yeah,” she says. “I guess so.”
But I know that it is. Because even when I had what looked like a happy ending, I’m not sure that I was actually living it. There was magic in it. But it wasn’t quite magic. Because I’m still me.
And I always was.
I am even now. All imperfect and fucked up in my thinking. But she doesn’t seem to care.
I’ll never know if Sadie would have cared. If she had accepted me or judged me. Because I never had the courage to say that to her.
And that feels like a betrayal of a totally different kind.
“You know, having thoughts like that doesn’t actually make you a villain,” she says.
I look at her, something inside me sharp and painful. “Then what does?”
“You’re just complicated. People are allowed to be, you know. Maybe you never learned that because you had to spend your whole life taking care of yourself. Maybe you didn’t learn it because you were so focused on your survival. And anything that you got after that must’ve seemed like a gift. If your own mom ignores you all the time, they must feel like there’s something wrong. Something broken.”
“Your parents didn’t give you any space to be complicated.”
She shakes her head. “No. But I am. No matter what they do or say, I am. I’m never going to fit into the mold that they set out for me, and believe me, if I could, I would. Who doesn’t want tolive an easier life? I know I do. But I can’t seem to. Nothing about it feels easy. Nothing about it feels right.”
“Is it the dressage?”
She shakes her head. “No. Because I’m loving it right now. But I’m trying to love it without expectation. Without making the prize the only reason I’m doing it. I think that’s the thing that doesn’t work for me. Or at least, it’s one of them. I also think maybe I’m not meant to only do one thing. I like learning new things. I like trying all the different things. And I think the way that my family is, the way they’re singularly focused, it doesn’t allow me to be all the things that I am. Which is complicated. But you know, you’re not all good or all bad just because you feel bad things sometimes. And I can certainly handle it.”
“Why?” I want to understand. Because there’s no reason this little rich girl from the background she’s from should be able to understand me better than I do.
I don’t understand where it comes from. Her empathy. Her interest in me.
“Because I wish even one person in my life could give me some space to be all the things that I am. To feel… Things that aren’t easy. But they couldn’t. And I’m not special. So I figure maybe you need that too.”
I wrap my hand around her head, and lean in to kiss her. My heart is pounding hard. And everything feels… More intense. Here in this place, where I used to hide out. This place that represented the dark and difficult things in my life, I feel the sun beginning to break through.
She’s beginning to get through to me, and it’s like some miracle I didn’t even know could occur. Like a miracle I didn’t realize I was waiting for.
Her mouth is sweet. Like everything around me right now.
And I’m caught up in her.
Not in the idea of who she might need me to be, but in the reality of who she is. Such an interesting, sweet, insightful person, who is managing to teach me to think about myself in different ways, in spite of the fact that I’m older, and supposed to be wiser. In spite of the fact that I am the one who was supposed to teach her.
She’s teaching me.
She’s such an interesting girl.
A special one.
I try to put that into the kiss. But I don’t really know how. Because one thing I’ve never been all that good at is digging deep and sharing my actual feelings. I got pretty good at showing Sadie what I thought she wanted to see. And sometimes that would slip. Sometimes I couldn’t maintain that. That was when we would have problems.
But I never got good at sharing the depth of myself. Because I was always afraid of it.
Or at least, I thought she would be.
When we part, her face is red, and I’m sure that mine is too. My breathing is heavy.
My heart rate is spiraling out of control. It’s the thing that she does to me. It’s everything that she is.
“Are we actually going to eat this picnic?”
