Page 65 of The Beautiful Collision
I don’t need to know.
That’s not what this is about.
This is about being what she was for me that night after Chloe’s visit, when I was broken on the floor and she somehow knew exactly what I needed. Not solutions, not platitudes, just… presence. And maybe a party that neither of us could afford but somehow made everything bearable for a few hours.
But I don’t think a party can solve this.
Eventually, there’s a gradual slowing of her sobs, the way they shift from body-shaking waves to shuddering gasps to exhausted, hiccupping breaths. She doesn’t look at me the whole time—doesn’t even acknowledge I’m there—but I stay anyway as she starts to get back under control.
I expect her to pull herself together now. To rebuild those walls brick by brick, to stand up and pretend this never happened. To retreat to her room and emerge tomorrow with her armor fully restored and some cutting remark about how I could have at least given her some bottled water.
Instead, she looks up at me.
And fuck me, she looks wrecked.
Her eyes are swollen almost shut, red-rimmed and raw. Mascara has flowed in black rivers down her cheeks, mixing with the tears to create an abstract painting of grief on her beautiful face. Her nose is red and running, and there’s definitely some snot that she doesn’t even seem to notice or care about.
“You know,” she says, and her voice is destroyed, hoarse and thick with tears, “when you were slumped against the door likethis, I flashed my tits to get us enough booze to have a party and make you feel better, and all I get is tissues and a glass of water?”
The words are so unexpected, so perfectlyMayaeven in the midst of her breakdown, that I can’t help it—I bark out a laugh that’s probably too loud for the moment. She shakes her head in mock contempt, a watery attempt at her usual smirk pulling at her lips.
And then she’s laughing too. It’s that broken, hysterical kind of laughter that happens when you’re so emotionally wrung-out that your body doesn’t know what else to do. She’s sob-laughing, these hiccupping sounds that are equal parts humor and heartbreak.
Then she moves.
Not standing up, not pulling herself together with that supernatural composure she usually manages. She just… crawls. Literally crawls across the cold kitchen tiles that separate us, closing the distance with a vulnerability that takes my breath away.
She doesn’t say anything. Doesn’t need to. She just collapses against my side like her strings have been cut, burying her face in the crook of my neck. I can feel her tears soaking through my Pizza Plus shirt—the one that smells like garlic, although she doesn’t seem to care.
My arm comes up without conscious thought, wrapping around her shoulders, pulling her closer. She’s trembling, these little aftershocks of emotion rippling through her body. I can feel every shudder, every hitched breath, every moment of her complete and total surrender.
Her body fits against mine. Even broken, even falling apart, she fits.
I rest my chin on top of her head, breathing in the scent of her, and then she shifts slightly, pressing closer to me, and her hand comes up to grip my shirt like she’s afraid Imight disappear. Like I’m her anchor in whatever storm she’s weathering.
Her fingers tighten in my shirt, and I feel her lips move against my neck. For a second I think she’s going to say something, maybe even the words that would blow the top off the bet and my lies. But she doesn’t. She just breathes, these deep, shaky breaths, like she’s trying to remember how her lungs work.
I want to tell her everything. About the bet, about how I’m in love with her, about how every moment of our whatever-this-is has been both the best and worst thing that’s ever happened to me.
I want to confess that I see her—really see her—past all the walls and shields and performances. That I know she’s scared and hurt and trying so fucking hard to be perfect in a world that keeps telling her she’s not enough.
But I don’t say any of that. Because right now, she doesn’t need my confession. She doesn’t need my drama or my guilt or my own fucking problems. She needs exactly what she gave me—presence without judgment, support without strings.
So I just hold her tighter and kick that can down the road again.
Knowing that with each kick, the ultimate consequences only grow.
twenty-three
MAYA
The silenceof my room feels like its own kind of weight, pressing down on me at 2 a.m. as I lie here staring at the ceiling. My body is exhausted—that bone-deep kind of tired that comes after you’ve cried yourself empty—but my mind won’t shut the fuck up.
I should be mortified.
I completely lost it.
It wasn’t the controlled, pretty kind of crying you see in movies. No, I had a full-blown, snot-nosed, ugly-cry meltdown on my kitchen floor. The kind where your face gets blotchy and your nose runs and you make those horrible hiccupping sounds that no human should ever make in front of another human.
