Maybe once maybe twice, p.9
Maybe Once, Maybe Twice, page 9
I made it to the elevator banks and lay my back flat on the cool brick wall. Sweat ran down the back of my neck as my chest pounded against my ribs. A part of me had come undone. A part of me had come back to life. Maybe it was the best part of me. She was worthy. His smile mattered the most.
Fuck me. I was fifteen again.
16
FIFTEEN
I CLUTCHED THE THIN SILVER chain around my neck, rubbing the metal guitar pick charm between my fingers—a present from my dad. It was beautiful, and it had arrived a few months ago in the mail instead of in person. He was now a music theory professor at a Boston community college, and it was even more difficult for him to get into the city with this full-time job. Even though I should have gotten used to him not showing up, it stung every time. And that feeling—the anxiety of my dad’s rejection—it was currently invading my body. Unfortunately, this had nothing to do with my father. This circumstance was new. But my mouth was dry, my stomach churning, my throat constricting all the same.
I ran my hand along the neck of my guitar, sweat dripping down my temples, eyes blinking back the direct sun and the fuzzy faces in the crowd. The small stone amphitheater stood in the middle of an open field adjacent to the animal farm, and it was used primarily for drama camp to run their lines or try out new material. This mini-Colosseum and sun magnet was now being used for Asher Reyes’s girlfriend to overcome her stage fright. A dozen theater kids were scattered on the concrete steps above me, waiting for me to disappoint them.
We were three weeks into the summer, and the goal of taking the next step in my relationship with Asher had been replaced with the goal of telling my stage fright to kindly fuck off, forever. I had signed up for Talent Night with the intention of ripping off the Band-Aid. Performing at Talent Night meant that I would play in front of my largest audience—the entire camp—roughly three hundred people. I had asked Asher if he would help me overcome stage fright, since he was born to be onstage. Like everything thrown at Asher, he took my request seriously. Some (me) might say, too seriously.
He jumped down from the stone steps and walked over to me, his kind eyes trying to offer reprieve in a sea of nerves.
“This is your fault,” I said through gritted teeth. I clenched my trembling hand around my guitar. “I can’t believe you audience-bombed me.”
“You’re mad I didn’t tell you they’d be here?” he said, searching my face for the usual smile that his closeness brought out of me.
Being with Asher was my safe space, and he had yanked the safety net out from under my feet with his own two hands, without warning, which felt like a special kind of betrayal. He had asked a dozen theater kids to show up here so that I could have my first crowd to sing to.
Anger swirled in my chest as I saw him fight a grin. Truthfully, he’d been breathing down my neck all day. I knew I only had a day left to overcome stage fright before Talent Night, but he had barely let me think about anything else since this morning. I needed an exhale, and he was refusing to give me one. And not only that, but some part of him was enjoying pushing me outside of my comfort zone. Maybe that’s because it was my usual role. I was the first one to kiss him, the first one to suggest we sneak out of our cabins at night—I was the only one who gave him permission to embrace his wildness. To have fire in his belly instead of being so careful. And here he was, lighting a fire under me.
“What’s so funny?” I asked, taking in his grin. I tugged at my throat, which felt as dry as the hot concrete under my feet.
“Would you have come if I told you I had gathered an audience for you?”
I stared at him with steely eyes, confirming whatever point he was trying to make. Asher set a hand on my chin and raised it to his.
“Look at me,” he demanded.
His eyes swallowed the sun, and I watched him breathe in and out, deeply. I echoed his breathing, still mad at him, but also less mad because when he looked at me this way—unflinching—I wanted to fall onto his lips.
Last summer was spent working with different camp directors to polish my songwriting skills and vocal techniques. I learned the fundamentals—from developing my vocal sounds, to understanding different rhyming patterns. I was relaxed when singing and playing guitar in front of a paid professional—because I knew they wouldn’t tear me to shreds. Singing in front of my peers was a different story. I was at a sleepaway liberal arts camp—every camper here thought they were The Next Big Thing. It didn’t help that my mother believed singing and songwriting was a cute hobby that I’d one day outgrow. What if I was just mediocre, and singing in front of everyone proved her right?
“I’m not ready.”
“You know the song backward and forward. Mags, you have nothing to be scared of when you’re this great.”
He placed both his hands on my shoulders and tilted them back.
“Your confidence goes the way of your spine.”
I let my shoulders fall back into their protective place. “Did Mr. Greenway teach you that?” I asked, rolling my eyes.
Mr. Greenway was his high school drama teacher—a man who I gathered was more important to Asher than Asher’s parents. Asher talked about him more than his mom or dad, which was odd, because when Asher described his parents, it was always with such warmth. One would think he’d have more stories to share about his family, but it was always, Mr. Greenway THIS. And Mr. Greenway THAT.
“Wanna know my secret?”
“If you say, ‘picture everyone in their underwear,’ I’m going to physically harm you.”
“Find one person in the audience who loves you no matter what. No matter if you’re great or good or just okay.” He pointed to himself. “Sing to the person that feels like home. Everyone else will disappear.”
“You must think very highly of yourself.”
He tilted back on his heels. “‘Your eyes look like the stars I couldn’t see out my childhood window’ was quite the ego boost,” Asher said, quoting my lyrics.
“That might be the last nice thing I write about you,” I hissed.
“Somehow, I doubt that.”
Asher grinned and backed away from me, his eyes still on mine. He took a seat toward the right side of the terraced steps, purposefully next to a lanky kid named Peter, whose fingers were twisted around a worn yo-yo string. My insides softened as I watched Peter smile up at Asher. Asher became a theater god the second he opened his mouth onstage last year. He had that thing you can’t teach—and while theater was competitive, he was so great that everyone wanted to learn from him, rather than wallow in the fact that they couldn’t measure up. Asher first noticed Peter last summer—he was the kind of kid who walked around camp like he had an invisible friend. After Peter bombed an audition for My Fair Lady and cried onstage, Asher ran after him and asked Peter if he wanted to be his understudy. Asher used his quick camp celebrity not to boost his own profile, but to fill in the lonely space of a kid without a friend.
Watching Asher trade smiles with Peter, my angry insides gave way to gratefulness. My eyes locked on the guy I loved—the kind of guy who went to the ends of the earth to make sure others would thrive—the guy who was bringing me out of my comfort zone just so I would succeed. I inhaled deeply from my diaphragm, opened my quivering lips, and let my first love song, “Invisible Skies,” find new sets of ears. It was the song I had started writing the very first night I met Asher. Adrenaline beat through my chest as the folksy, soft love song echoed against the stone wall behind me.
I had never seen Asher smile this wide. I felt the warmth of the sun on my cheekbones as my eyes moved from Asher onto the other faces that were glued to me. I watched as the booming bridge made each jaw in the crowd go slack. The last note left my lips, followed by the longest second of my life: dead silence. All at once, they rose from the stone steps and effusively clapped and whistled. I pursed my lips together, trying to keep from screaming. This adrenaline was new. It was big. It had pulled my spine upright so I could touch the sun. My voice made strangers come alive. I wouldn’t ever let another person convince me that I was meant to do anything else but this. I wouldn’t let another stage intimidate me.
Asher mouthed, “Told you,” in my direction with a proud smile stuck on his face.
The theater crowd jumped off the steps and onto the field quickly, shooting me effusive compliments as they passed. Wide-eyed, I watched them disappear down the grassy hill. My heart was pounding in my eardrums, my entire body shaking as I set my guitar down into its hard case.
Asher walked forward with a big grin.
“So, will I ever be the subject of another Maggie Vine original, or are you done with me?”
I stood in front of him and clasped my hands around his neck, scrunching my nose up to his.
“You get like…all of the songs, forever.”
“Forever, huh?”
I nodded. “Thank you for today,” I said.
“You’re welcome.”
I grinned and tugged him onto my mouth. My hand curled around the nape of his neck, his hand went under the back of my T-shirt, and I felt him harden against me, sending a new kind of shiver all over my body. My fingers moved from his neck to his warm torso, slowly inching downward, stopping at the elastic of his mesh athletic shorts—when a loud gong sounded over the speakers.
I slid my hand back up to his hard stomach, raising myself up on my tiptoes. “Dinner,” I whispered, with my forehead pressed against his.
He held me tight against his body. “Let’s skip it and watch the sun set somewhere.”
“Skip dinner?”
“I have the good canteen snacks,” he said, patting the JanSport backpack slung around his shoulder. I let my heels fall flat on the ground and took a step back, grabbing my guitar case.
“I’m pretty sure my counselor will go searching for me when I don’t show up at head count.”
“Okay.” He adjusted his shorts and combed a hand over his tousled hair.
“Shall we?” I asked.
Asher smiled quickly and grabbed my hand as the sun started to dip below the trees.
We walked silently, hand in hand, my body skipping with energy. The crowd poured in from every angle of camp as the dining hall came into view. I noticed that Asher was moving slower, tugging me back toward him as hungry bodies shoved around us to get into the door.
“Um—meet by the lake tonight?” he asked, his tone unusually nervous.
I took in his searching expression, as if my answer could make or break him. We met by either the gazebo or the lake every night after curfew.
“Yeah, of course.”
“Cool,” he said, exhaling as he studied the gravel road below our feet.
I squeezed Asher’s hand in mine and playfully brought it up to my mouth, biting his knuckle. He could barely manage a grin, his expression still fixed on the scuffed rubber of his shoes. An unease settled in my gut. Asher was someone who kept his eyes on you, or who studied the road ahead. He made up stories about the people passing by or the stars in the sky. He rarely looked down.
“Hey,” I said, gently dropping his hand. “Are you okay?”
Asher’s eyes searched mine, and he flashed me a quick smile and pulled his shoulders back.
“Yeah. Why wouldn’t I be?”
It was a good question. One I wanted the answer to.
“I don’t know. You’ve been acting kind of weird all day.”
And he had been. Ever since breakfast, he’d exhibited some sort of puppy dog separation anxiety from me. I assumed it was Asher going the extra mile to make sure I was prepared for Talent Night, but I was now fully prepared, and yet he was still having a hard time letting me do my own thing. I had seen him like this once before. Asher was usually very independent—like me, he relished creative alone time, so when the same thing happened last summer, it shocked me. He barely left my side all day, telling me long-winded stories and insisting we explore every unexplored inch of the campground. When Asher walked me back to my cabin around midnight, he nervously told me he loved me. Clearly, he’d been terrified to say it that day, but he knew that he needed to get it off his chest, so he followed me around until he found the courage to unleash his truth. But standing here a year later, Asher knew I loved him—there was no need to follow me to vocal lessons and guitar practice, there was no need to skip rehearsal and wait for me outside the camp’s recording studio doors while I was inside. It occurred to me that he had abandoned his entire day in favor of mine.
Asher put his hands on either side of my cheeks. “I’m fine,” he said, his amber eyes wide on mine. I knew Asher Reyes well enough to know he was not fine. He unclenched his jaw nervously, and then closed it just as quickly. He wanted to tell me something, but he didn’t know how.
The second gong sounded, and the remaining bodies flew past us into the dining hall. Asher propped open the door with his foot, waiting for me to walk through it. I hesitated, and he nodded, as if to tell me to move. Suddenly, an arm clasped into mine, tugging me inside. I looked up, seeing my bunkmate, Gracie, with a huge smile on her pointed face.
“Wait till you hear what Conner Lee did in glassblowing,” she sang. Gracie scrunched up her nose. “Why do they do this to us? Sloppy joes are an assault on our digestive systems.”
She tugged me toward the buffet line, where a hot wave of mixed meat made my stomach turn even more. I looked back, seeing Asher’s lanky frame lingering in the doorway. He glanced around the dining hall quickly, and then curved his body outside, disappearing behind the closing door. I felt it for the first time: a pang of romantic heartache. A puzzling uneasiness settled inside my gut.
Ten minutes later, I sat squished toward the edge of a long wooden table, anxiously force-feeding myself crinkle fries. I had just divulged Asher’s bizarre behavior to my bunkmates, and I was waiting for them to tell me something hopeful, anything to make the growing knot in my chest disappear.
Gracie stuck a bobby pin in her wild magenta hair and leaned back with a booming laugh. “He wants to have sex with you tonight,” she said, biting her pierced lip for juicy effect. No one loved the idea of a good story more than Gracie. She was here working on her playwriting—and we were all subject to her wild theories. I shook my head and rolled my eyes.
“No he doesn’t. He—” My throat closed up with the memory of my hand tugging at the elastic of Asher’s shorts, just moments ago. His fingers under my shirt. His body hard against me.
“Oooh my God. Does he?” I searched around the table for confirmation, scanning all the shit-eating grins. My eyes stopped when they got to our cabin sexpert, Pria, who had lost her virginity two weeks before camp. “Pria?”
Pria set her chin on her hand and leaned forward. There was oil paint on her cheek and under her nails. “A hundred percent,” she said. “You better shave your vag tonight. I can help you prep if you want. Want me to give you an artsy vag? I can do a heart or something, depending on what canvas I’m working with.”
I hesitated, picturing Pria using my pubic hair as her latest art project. “I’m good, thanks,” I said.
But I was not good. The fries inside my stomach were bubbling to the surface. I showed up to camp Prepared with a capital P. I had spent all nine months fantasizing about Doing It with Asher. I had a journal full of weird sex tips I’d torn out of Cosmopolitan. I had a runway and I was ready for landing! So why was there suddenly a wave of terror spreading across my limbs? I set my arms across my chest and inhaled deeply, trying to push my shoulders back, but it didn’t help. While I had confidently found my voice, a new kind of stage fright had hopped aboard.
17
FIFTEEN
I GRABBED MY FLASHLIGHT AND quietly edged myself down off the top bunk. Most nights, I tiptoed out of our cabin like a spy, and then sprinted past the rows of cherry-red bunks, through the fields to get to the dock at the lake, giddy to run into Asher’s arms. But as I made my way toward the lake, my feet moved slower, each step making my heart pound faster against my rib cage and louder in my ear.
I took in the full moon hanging over the small lake, with miles of dense trees behind the water’s edge. Fireflies danced overhead, and it was the perfect night to seal the deal with the perfect guy under a sky full of stars, except for the fact that I felt like I might be dying.
My throat was closing up with panic. I set my hand under my shirt, pressing my fingers onto my belly button and drawing in a deep inhale. I exhaled slowly through my mouth—a “sing with your diaphragm” exercise that my vocal coach had taught me. I’m not sure what kind of result I expected from a basic singing drill, but as thick muggy air swirled in my lungs, I wasn’t ready to sing or get naked.
Asher’s silhouette on the dock’s edge turned to life as I stepped closer to his body. He came into crisp view—kicking a hacky sack on his ankle, while muttering his monologue to himself.
“Hey,” I cracked, as my flip-flops slapped the dock.
He turned, catching the hacky sack in midair. His shoulders dropped at my presence, a relieved grin splashed on his face.
“You made it,” he said.
I painted on a smile and walked toward him, clenching my fists to try and get my fingers to stop shaking as he wrapped his arms around me. His body was cool against my sweltering skin, and the feeling of his chest rising and falling against mine only made my heart pound faster. I inhaled the scent of wildflowers and musky citrus on his damp hair, arching back and twisting my curls up into a bun, curiously avoiding eye contact with the one person whose eyes felt like home.
“Circus camp?” he said, raising his brows suggestively and taking my hand in his.
The circus camp was the ideal makeout spot, once you got past the terror of oversized clown paintings on the wall. Soft gymnastic floor mats were stretched over two-thirds of the room. It was the most likely place I would lose my virginity, and I came to camp this summer prepared to do just that. So why wasn’t I tugging his body there? Why was I dropping his hand? Why was I inching away from his outstretched palms? Why was I stepping out of my sandals? Why were my toes curled around the edge of this dock? I felt a rush of blood to my head—heat blinding my vision with white spots as my throat closed. I had none of the answers. All that I knew: the only way to breathe was to jump.
