Page 43 of Falling Backwards (The Edge of Us #1)

LUKE

I don’t know where the time is going, but it’s sweeping along and taking Maggie and me with it.

Well, technically I do know where it’s going: into the Christmas season. Merry and bright holiday vibes have been popping up since before Thanksgiving, as has somehow become tradition, and by the time we’re a few days into December, all of it is in full swing. Places around town are decorated and playing Christmas music and boasting sales and offering holiday treats—the whole thing.

I like this season well enough, but I gotta admit that when Maggie and I hurry into the sporting goods store from the cold late morning and immediately hear a too-loud song overhead, I can’t help rolling my eyes. The belting voice zigzags over a crazy number of notes (or whatever they’re called) and the jolly tune rings in my ears so much it makes the hairs on the back of my neck stand up. What’s worse is I know this is not the last time an establishment will be playing Christmas music at such an unnecessarily high volume because we’re barely into December; there are weeks left of this.

“You know,”

Maggie says.

“I love ‘You’re a Mean One, Mr. Grinch,’ but I never hear that getting played at Christmastime.”

That has me turning a quizzical look on her not because I disagree but because she’s right.

“Holy crap, you make a good point. That song is a classic in its own right and yet I don’t think I’ve ever heard it in any stores.”

Her expression mirrors mine.

“Exactly, a classic. Why does it get left out?”

“I have no idea, but now I wanna watch….”

My sentence trails off as she trails to a super slow pace, her gaze now hung on a mannequin we’re about to walk past. I slow, too, and follow her eyes and see she’s looking at the shirt that’s been paired with some rather plain leggings: it’s a loose thing that bares the midsection and hangs off one shoulder, made of black fabric sheer enough to show off the sports bra underneath.

Oh, Maggie would look dope in that thing. I glance back and forth between it and her.

She inhales slowly; I can see the clear interest in her eyes.

Then she looks away from the mannequin and picks up her pace again. She keeps walking towards wherever we’ve been going—ah, to the dumbbells. I forgot we’re here to buy some of those.

“Yeah, talking about that song makes me wanna watch the Grinch movie too,”

she says.

“Is that what you were gonna say?”

I catch up with her easily.

“Sure was. Hey, you wanna check out that shirt? Like, go try it on?”

“It’s really cool,” she says.

“Big agree. You should—”

But she’s shaking her head and waving a dismissive hand.

“There’s no point. A crop top wouldn’t suit me.”

This time, my quizzical look is of the, ‘What are you talking about?’ variety.

Her gaze flickers to me and she shakes her head again, though her lips curve into a tiny smile.

“That shirt looks great on the mannequin girl, and I am not the mannequin girl’s size.”

“So? You think only super slim people can wear—”

I gesture behind us and recall what she called it.

“—a crop top?”

Expression faltering, she says.

“Well—well, no. Of course I…. People should wear whatever they like. I support that. They don’t have to be skinny to be beautiful or stylish. But that’s not—I mean, when it comes to me specifically, I don’t think it’s….”

Now she looks unhappy. She wraps her arms around her stomach.

“Just trust me, Luke.”

Well, I don’t, because her logic is flawed. She’s not giving herself the same support and grace that she would give anyone else. Forget my opinion—she’s being unfair to herself, and she’s doing it without even bothering to try the shirt on. A shirt that she clearly fell in love with at first sight.

My lovely, misguided girl.

I hate for her to think things like this about herself; I hate for anyone to. And I get that it comes from ingrained societal pressures and beliefs and all that shit, but at what point are we going to really work to break that down as a society? She was right when she said people are beautiful and can be stylish no matter their size or shape. When can the stupid judgment of others and of self end?

I don’t say any of this, though. Not right now. Because, like I was just thinking, those judgments are ingrained in folks and I know they don’t fade overnight. I also know Maggie has been feeling especially uncomfortable over the last week since her time of the month has come around; that may be contributing to her current self-conscious mood. Plus, she has just started talking about the Grinch movie again. So I tune into that and keep walking with her to the back of the store.

Picking out dumbbells is a more amusing affair. We read that we should each have one lighter set and one heavier set, and watching Maggie test the different weights to figure out which are doable for her is funny. The way her eyes widen at the torso-slanting heft of the fifteen-pound dumbbell actually makes me cackle.

“Okay, hand that over before you hurt yourself,”

I say. I grip the ends so she can let go of the middle, but she doesn’t relinquish it. I tug and so does she.

“Hey, I can hold it,”

she insists with some cross between a pout and a look of impatience. Then she adds more thoughtfully.

“But could I lift it above my head repeatedly…?”

We shake our heads at the same time while I laugh more.

“I highly doubt it, at least when we’re just starting out and especially since a lot of workouts will want you to use two of them, not just one.”

I tug again. “Give.”

She tugs again too.

“Keep. I’ll put it back myself.”

“I gotta see how it feels for me before we put it back.”

“Pick up a different one. This one’s mine.”

This time when I laugh, she does too. The way she looks at me gives away that she knows how silly what she said is. We pull back and forth for another few moments, decidedly teasing now, and then she finally lets go, allowing me to shift the dumbbell into one of my hands. With the other, I gently bump a curled finger beneath her chin.

And for the first time in what feels like forever, she lets her shoulders fall and sets one hip out to the side while her pretty head tilts—she does the shoulder drop. There’s a soft, amused expression on her face, not flatness or exasperation, and it makes my insides go all stupid because I’m realizing I missed this damn thing and because it’s unexpected in this moment and because this is the second cutesy one she’s ever given me and, exactly like the first one, it’s as wonderful as the original.

Ah, God help me.

“What is it?” she asks.

I have, of course, been staring. No telling what my expression is like otherwise.

Since I’m not sure whether I want to let her in on my secret fascination or not, I go with a different truth.

“Just adore you, Maggie Moss. That’s all.”

The softness on her face grows, and I briefly consider suggesting we go make out in the fitting room—maybe we can get into the same one from when we were still faking our relationship.

Mmm, mmm, mmm.

But she won’t go along with that, I already know.

Besides, I also know what kinds of sounds this here Maggie Moss makes when we’re making out and I am not interested in anyone else hearing them.

I only realize she’s been staring at me, too, when she finally breaks this bit of silence.

“Well, your name is on my heart, Luke Bramhill.”

This makes my insides go stupid too.

Such an amazing fucking feeling.

We exchange smiles and I brush her cheek with my knuckles and she sends two gentle rubs over my waist. Then we turn our attention back to the dumbbells.

After some more testing and thinking, we each choose our two sets. It comes to light that we should’ve gotten a cart so we can more easily lug all these things around, so we have a playful powerwalk race back to the front of the store. I don’t miss the way she looks at the crop top again on our way past it and then again when we’re going back to the dumbbells with our cart; she tries to act like she’s ignoring it, but she’s not.

That does it, I think with warm resolve.

I wait until we’re heading up front to pay for all these dumbbells before I finally say it, pointing at the mannequin as we approach it once more.

“I think you should quit making heart-eyes at that shirt and go try it on already.”

Maggie whips her head around to me, confusion on her face.

“Wait, what? Why? Luke, I told you—”

“I say to you, with all the respect and affection my being can hold, that what you told me was some dumb shit.”

She scoffs and cuts a look along me.

“Excuse me?”

I don’t back down.

“I know you love it, so don’t shy away from it. You say it won’t look good on you, but you can’t know that for sure. Plus, you’re being too hard on yourself. In my head, I can see you wearing that and it’s cool as hell.”

Her scoff is quieter this time. We stop next to the mannequin and she looks at it, then at me.

“You’re…. Listen, that’s a sweet thing for you to say, but this is my body. You don’t know how I feel.”

I open my mouth to counter, then sigh. She’s right. She’s really right.

Still, I gently tell her what I was thinking earlier.

“Yeah, those are facts. But what you said about people deserving to wear what they like except for you? That doesn’t make any sense. You deserve to flaunt whatever style you damn well please, just like everyone else does.”

She looks like she wants to argue again.

She also looks like she hadn’t thought of it my way before.

I’m gentle in raising my eyebrows at her too.

“Right?” I murmur.

Her gaze drifts over my face, and as it does, I see vulnerability coming up in it. I catch the slip of her hands over her waist.

She speaks so lightly I only barely hear her.

“I…babe, I can’t pull it off yet.”

Love being called ‘babe’ by her. Do not love the ‘can’t’ or the implication that she has to slim up before relaxing about wearing what she wants. She thinks she can’t wear what she wants yet.

I reach out and take her hands in mine, drawing them off her waist. She doesn’t resist, which is encouraging.

But she goes on with.

“I know I won’t look good in that shirt. Maybe in your imagination, but not in real life.”

I shake my head.

“No, you don’t know that. You think that. You worry that. And it’s a waste of your energy. Do what makes you happy, Maggie. Don’t overthink it or save it for another day, just go for it. Tell the world and your darker thoughts to fuck off because you wanna be happy right now.”

Once again, her expression tells me she’s torn on how to respond.

Unlike before, she doesn’t end up refusing again, only says.

“I—I’ll think about it.”

Relief touches me. I sigh into a smile.

“Awesome. And I’m not saying that just because I like the shirt too. I do wanna see you in it, but….”

A different kind of relief comes to me when she gives me a little smile of her own.

“I know,”

she assures me.

“I know it’s not just that. You…”

she squeezes my hands.

“…you care about me.”

Feels like my insides soften along with her gaze.

I squeeze her hands in return.

“Yeah, I do,”

I confirm.

Her little smile grows.

We resume our walk to the checkout area. She asks what I think sounds good for lunch and we start talking about that. I slip into another one of my usual checks that Kyle isn’t around, and it feels great to still see no sign of him—man, today’s trip to this store has been so different from that one we made weeks ago when he was still a glaring issue. Back then, me being with her made her feel safer, but she was still easy to rattle. This time, though, she’s happy with me, not just safer; she still has something weighing on her mind, but it’s personal, not a dude who didn’t know how to act.

Please let him be acting right this time, I pray. It feels like just maybe he is. Please let that be true.

I don’t know how many times I’ve hoped he would leave Maggie alone, but the longer we go without seeing him or hearing from him, the more I think things with him might have finally come to an end.

It makes my mood feel that much brighter.

Not enough to mention Mellow Burger for lunch, though. Maggie was missing their spicy fries just yesterday, so I wish we could swing by and get them for her today, but even in the thick of yesterday’s craving, she still wasn’t comfortable with potentially seeing Kyle there.

While we pay for the dumbbells, I wonder how hard it would be to recreate the fries at home. That would be fun to try, eh? Our other endeavors have gone nicely.

Honestly, by the time we’re walking out of the store, I’m obsessing over the idea. Does Mellow Burger have an ingredients section on their website? Would they have the seasonings for the spicy fries listed on there? If they do, that would make doing them ourselves easy as shit—but if they don’t, we’d have to do some guessing. Or maybe we could look up similar recipes online and tweak them to Maggie’s liking. That would take some trial and error, though, which sounds like it could be disappointing and annoying. And I’ve never tried to make fries from scratch before, but I’d do it if she—

“I’ll be right back,”

she says on a burst of breath.

I look at her just in time to see her spin away from my side and start walking. I stop pushing the cart and turn to watch her stride across the short distance to the automatic doors, which open with perfect timing, not slowing her for even half a second.

Hm. She must’ve dropped her credit card in the checkout area or something—but as I start following her back into the store, I see she’s not going in the direction of the registers.

Uh oh, is she sick? Is she rushing to the restroom?

I pick up my pace so I don’t lose sight of….

Oh. Oh, wow.

I stop in the middle of the front area, surprise taking me as Maggie makes a clear beeline for the crop top mannequin. She stops at a rack next to it, flips through the hangers there, and extracts two of them, holds them up, inspects them. Then she’s back in that purposeful stride, now going to the checkout area for sure.

I realize I’m smiling.

In no time, she has paid and is coming back to me, clutching her plastic bag, and I’m finally able to see the soft determination on her face.

Now I’m grinning.

I can already see she’s blushing, her eyes having trouble staying on mine; her resolve hasn’t made her feel any less shy.

So freaking cool. So freaking lovely.

When she gets to me, I ask her.

“Now ready to go?”

She nods and tosses her bag into the cart with the dumbbells.

“I got two sizes to try on at home. I’ll just bring them back if I don’t like them.”

I can hear the bit of wispiness in her voice, and I think she can, too, because she clears her throat.

“Or…if I do like one of them, I’ll bring back the other.”

Since these are some of the moments in which she’s avoiding my gaze, I reach out and lightly touch her chin, silently encouraging her to stop doing that. She tucks her bottom lip into her mouth as she looks at me; unlike the last time she did it, she seems to be so preoccupied with the shirt thing that she doesn’t notice what she’s doing.

As much as I’d like to absorb that cute gesture before she does notice and let her lip slip free, I look straight into her eyes instead.

“I’m proud of you,”

I tell her.

I can just hear the slight tremble in her breath as those eyes absorb me, as those cheeks burn pink, as a soft smile graces her lips.

“Thank you,”

she says back.

“I think I am too.”

I feel like sweeping her up in my arms and spinning her around with a hug, kissing her goofy, shouting into the day about how damn much I like who this girl is.

Instead, I sweep her bangs out of my way and kiss her scar, then simply say to her that she is real-life magic.

Oh, what that bit of truth does to her expression.

I can’t wait to keep seeing this look every day until she learns to feel her magic for herself—then I’ll enjoy seeing that every day.

—

Maggie slips and her near-shriek pierces the air of her building’s lot as her knee hits the ground, causing our good mood to come to a shrieking halt.

“Oh, shit!”

I rush to set my dumbbells down and deal with the ones in her arms because she’s kneeling too awkwardly to do anything with them. Then I take hold of her and guide her to standing.

“You okay? You hurt?”

“Ow, ow, ow,”

she whimpers. “My knee.”

“Your knee? All right, we’ll check it out. What did you slip on?”

My eyes search around her feet for what might’ve caused her to fall.

“I don’t….”

As she steadies herself with her hands on me, plastic shopping bag swinging from her wrist, I notice she’s favoring one leg; the other is the knee she landed on, the one that’s hurt.

“My feet didn’t get caught on anything. I didn’t trip. I just suddenly—um—”

‘Suddenly’ is right. One second we were talking about something I can’t even recall right now, and then she was slipping, gasping, going down. She truly didn’t stumble over anything.

Gently, I turn her towards me but keep scanning the ground for any culprits. All I see is a bit of loose gravel littering the asphalt. Pretty close to us, there’s a pothole-type thing and more gravel is surrounding it, so maybe some spread over to this spot from there?

I tell her.

“The best I can guess is that you slipped on this gravel. Must’ve just hit it at a bad angle when we were walking.”

“Okay.”

I think I hear the threat of tears in her voice.

“My knee feels like I really scraped it. It really hurts and stings and…. Oh no, my leggings!”

Indeed, I was just noticing how that one knee of her leggings is now boasting some damage. The fabric isn’t completely ripped open, but it’s torn up enough for me to worry about how the flesh underneath looks, especially since Maggie is in pain and not mere discomfort.

Half of my brain plans while the other registers her pinched expression and the little sounds she makes as she tries to adjust her footing. A decision quickly comes to me.

“Okay.”

I start picking dumbbells up.

“I’m gonna put all these back in my car and figure out what to do with them later. Then we’ll get you upstairs and look at your knee.”

She groans.

“There’s no way it’s not bleeding. You know when you get hurt and you don’t have to look at the place to know it’s gross?”

I shudder and hiss my understanding.

“Ew, yeah. But maybe it’s not too gross? Maybe it feels worse than it looks?”

When I glance at her, she’s nodding with hope touching her features.

“Yeah. Maybe.”

I hang on to that hope with her while I get our many dumbbells put away and help her hobble along. Her ankle is okay, she says, but putting weight on that leg is not. We talk about how grateful we are that she at least didn’t hit her head or drop any of the dumbbells on herself—even in her pained state, she’s able to sigh in relief that she doesn’t have to contend with broken toes or anything on top of however badly she might’ve scraped her knee.

Once we’re in the building and away from all gravel, I’m done making her walk, so I scoop her up into my arms bridal-style. She gasps in more protest than pain and says she’s too heavy for me to carry around, but I assure her she’s not. And I mean it. She’s heavy in that she’s a grown-ass person and I’m unaccustomed to hauling those around, not in that she weighs more than she should. It chills her out a bit when I put her back down for the duration of our elevator ride, but she gets right back to worrying when I pick her up again as the doors open on her floor.

“Magnolia, quit,”

I say. I start my steady pace down the hallway.

“Do I look like I can’t handle carrying you?”

“Well, no, but what if you’re pretending?”

I’m laughing before I can stop myself.

She insists.

“I mean it,”

and the threat of tears is definitely in her voice now. The pain of her injury is weakening any guard against self-consciousness that she has.

Still, I can’t help continuing to smile.

“You’re okay,”

I promise her.

“If you were too heavy for me to walk with, there wouldn’t be a way to pretend otherwise. Remember earlier when you picked up that fifteen-pound dumbbell and you couldn’t hide that you instantly had trouble with it? There’s no faking how much weight a person can handle. If doing this was a huge strain on me, it would be obvious.”

That reduces her to a quiet sniffle and a mumble I can’t discern. Then, as I’m setting her down outside her door, she says where I can hear.

“Okay. Thank you for carrying me. It really helped.”

One of my hands squeezes her waist.

“No problem at all.”

She gives me a slanted-lips look of doubt and sweetness together.

I nod at the door.

“Come on, you. You’ve got a knee that needs at least a little bit of tending to.”

At that, her expression shifts into nervousness, and she starts digging into her purse for her key.

And it soon turns out she was right to be nervous—and right about having scraped her knee badly, and about it bleeding, and about it being gross. While she limps away from her bedroom towards where Emma and I are waiting near the bathroom, I look at the ugly wound on her knee, which is now in full, bloody view since she changed out of her leggings and into shorts.

“It’s bad,”

she wobbles out unnecessarily, her eyes widening beneath a frown.

I wince as I go to her, offering my arm for the rest of her trip to the bathtub.

“Aw, God, Maggie. Holy hell, I know that hurts. Come sit on the edge of the tub so we can get a good look at it.”

Emma groans from where I left her.

“Oh no. Sister, I hate to say it ’cause I wanna help, but the blood—I don’t do so well with—”

Maggie nods.

“Oh, Em, of course. It’s okay. Do you think you can just see if we have any big bandages?”

Her friend jumps to checking that; I think I hear her exhaling heavily as she goes, perhaps to fend off nausea.

I’m glad I don’t have a problem with blood. I both need and want to help Maggie clean the wound. This is a lot worse than when she saw to my tiny scrapes after I fell in that very parking lot, and I’m not going to leave her to suffer through it by herself.

Once she’s perched on the edge of the bathtub, I kneel and peer at her knee. I still don’t feel ill as I inspect the torn-up flesh through the blood, but I do once again shudder and wince.

“The good news?”

I say.

“This isn’t enormous. The bad news? It’s still close to two inches long down your knee, if I had to guess, and it looks fairly deep for a scrape and like you might’ve taken a couple tiny chunks out. Hope you didn’t have plans to dance around to random songs anytime soon, ’cause that ain’t gonna happen.”

She lets out a laugh so small and frail that it’s not too different from the new whimper she lets out next. I’m glad she liked my joke from a recent conversation we had—I don’t even remember how she ended up mentioning she dances around this apartment sometimes, just that it brought a smile to my face—but I hate knowing she’s hurting.

Indeed, she tells me now.

“It hurts.”

“I know,”

I say sympathetically. I rub lightly at her calf, only dimly noting that this is the first time I’ve touched this bare stretch of her skin. I look up at her with sympathy too.

“And I’m sorry as hell, but we gotta clean it with soap and water.”

At that, she looks mildly ill—and very unhappy.

However, she’s Maggie and she’s smart, so while I warm up the stream of water for her in the tub, she points out through wobbles that she won’t have to scrub or really even touch the wound since there isn’t any debris in it. I nod along in confirmation. She’s right about there not being even dirt among the damage, and it makes sense for her to just lightly get soap suds on the wound for a little while, then gently run water over it.

She turns out to do okay with the soap part, but then it comes time for rinsing with the cup that Emma brought along with a bandage, and Maggie hesitates. I can see the plastic of the cup giving in her grip a bit.

Hell, I understand.

“I don’t wanna do this,”

she says. Her voice is tight with dread.

I hold out my hand for the cup.

“Want me to?”

Then I lower the hand and fight not to roll my eyes at myself. I’m an idiot. She was saying she doesn’t want to be in the extra pain that rinsing is going to bring, not that she wants someone else—

“Do you mind?”

she asks in a small voice.

…Oh.

She looks at me sadly.

“I know it’s gross,”

she goes on, “but I—”

“No, it’s no problem,”

I quiet her. I put one hand on her back and decidedly take the cup from her with the other.

“I’ve got you. I’ll take care of it.”

Her sad look softens a bit, and she manages to still be damn lovely even in a time like this, and I have no idea how.

“Thank you,”

she says in a tremble.

I rub at her back.

“Deep breaths, okay?”

She nods and starts right in on those.

I do my best to be thorough, quick, and careful all at once. Maggie still cries some, though. I hate it and find myself chanting.

“I know, I know,”

over and over while I work, wanting to be done already.

Shortly, I am, and I can help her to the couch. I intend to set her up as comfortably as possible so she can relax. As I set to that task, I eye her knee and wonder if we should bandage it now or let it air out for a while.

I start to ask, then pause when she speaks first.

“Luke,”

she says with a thick sniffle.

“how am I gonna exercise with my knee all busted up?”

My mouth had been open, but now it snaps shut. I blink at her in disbelief.

Is she seriously concerned about her workouts right now?

She sniffles again.

“I was—I was just getting going with my exercise. This is gonna set back me getting in shape.”

Yeah, she’s for real.

I sit next to her.

“Hey, don’t waste time and energy worrying about that. You’re fine.”

“No, I’m….”

Her eyes catch how seriously I’m looking at her, and she doesn’t finish her protest. She gulps it away.

Still, I tell her with a squeeze of her uninjured knee.

“Your value doesn’t hinge on whether you can work out or not, ’cause it doesn’t hinge on what shape or size or weight you are.”

She sighs and gingerly adjusts one of the throw pillows around her.

“I mean it,”

I say.

“Be nice to yourself.”

I recall now that before Maggie fell, we were talking about doing some kind of workout with our new dumbbells. It’s why I was carrying my set along with her carrying hers. Definitely not going to happen now—maybe in a few days, but not today.

She murmurs.

“I’ll try.”

I nod. “Good.”

I tuck her hair behind her ear.

“Get back to how you felt when we were leaving the sports store, yeah? When you were proud of yourself for buying the shirt?”

She nods, too, and gives in to a small smile. “Yeah.”

Then she flinches and shifts around, clearly uncomfortable. Neither of us hit her scrape or anything, but I imagine it just hurts.

“Feels like shit?”

I ask with slumping shoulders.

She sniffles. “Yes.”

Just as I’m wondering where Tylenol might be, Emma walks into this living room area from what I suspect is her bedroom. I meet her eyes and lift my chin.

“Hey, y’all got any Tylenol?”

Soon, Maggie has taken a capsule and gotten fixed up nicely on the couch. It’s been decided that she’ll cover her wound in a little while, so I set the bandage on the coffee table. Then we remember we haven’t eaten lunch, so we flip through the food apps on my phone until one sounds good.

I’ve just placed our order when a text notification pops up at the top of my screen. Reading the name there puts an unpleasant jolt in my bones.

Jayden.

I swipe the notification away without reading it, then glance at Maggie—and I’m relieved she doesn’t seem to have noticed the message.

She doesn’t know he’s coming to town in just a few days. I haven’t mentioned it to her. Back when he originally talked about his visit, I told him I’d see him, but I’ve started feeling differently over these last weeks, so I’m not sure what to do or say when his plans come to my mind. And I’m not only unsure of how to talk to Maggie, really; I’ve also been slim on responses to Jayden.

I’ll deal with it later.

It’s what I’ve been telling myself this whole time, so what’s one more bit of procrastination?

Pocketing my phone, I stand and turn my attention back to Maggie, who is settling into looking at me with her back against all those pillows. There’s still pain across her features, but she smiles at me and it gentles everything else, and yeah, this is what I want to fill my mind with. My Maggie.

“Thank you for everything,”

she says, her tone also gentle. Her eyes slip over my face in what can only be described as an adoring way.

“Thank you so much.”

I lean over and down, planting my fists on the couch on either side of her so I can put my face near hers.

“No need to thank me.”

She starts to disagree, so I stamp a kiss to her lips, which makes her chuckle a little. I smile and happily accept the kiss she stamps back to me. Then I straighten up.

“Decide what we’re gonna watch when I get back,”

I say.

“We’ve got a while before my shift.”

Maggie groans and I’m not sure if it’s because she has just remembered with disappointment, like I have, that I’m scheduled to work later or if it’s because she’s relieved she isn’t. I know I’d rather not go so I can instead hang out on the couch with her all day, but if I try to make that happen, she’ll reprimand me forever. She won’t consider her injury a good enough reason for me to call in. So I focus on being glad she doesn’t have to worry about getting through work herself. That would be ass.

And not the good kind of ass.

Man, it’s been, like, a week since she sent me that, ‘Nice ass,’ text, but it still has me laughing as I leave her apartment so I can go get our food.

—

I had a good time with Maggie. We enjoyed our lunch and watched TV and a movie, even dozed for a little while. She was feeling slightly better thanks to the pain medicine, but moving around still hurt her a good deal. Thankfully, by the time I left, her wound had been bandaged, Emma was able to be near, and Joy had arrived; they promised they would both be around to help Maggie with anything she might need.

Now I’m trudging around my apartment, about to get ready for work…and thinking about Jayden, who texted again as I was getting home.

I pull the messages up and look back over the last handful.

There’s where he said he’s looking forward to having drinks with me when he gets to town. I just gave the text a thumbs-up.

In his next message, he talked about how much he needs to relax from all his schooling and how getting shitfaced is going to feel awesome. I remember grimacing at the thought of his drunken side, and I didn’t respond at all.

Only when I got home a bit ago did I finally check what he said earlier when I was ordering my and Maggie’s lunch. It turned out to be, ‘You been quiet lately, dude. Are you working your ass off or what? If so, I hope you’re ready to skip out while I’m there. For real. Special occasion!’ I finally did say a little something back to that. Told him, yeah, I’ve been busy with work and spending time with my girlfriend, and no, I won’t be able to swing calling in to any of my shifts while he’s in town—I didn’t doubt he was serious about me doing that.

And at that point, he sent his most recent message: a response to what I said.

JAYDEN: Ohhhh. It all makes sense now. You’ve been pussy-whipped into dropping your friends and now you don’t do anything but hang with her and earn that money. How much of it does she make you spend on her? Haha

All over again, I’m irritated.

I mean, I know Jayden—I know the kinds of things he thinks are funny, so I know what he said is probably meant to be taken as a joke. But there have been times over the years when I didn’t care for his sense of humor and this is one of them.

I never did think his comments about Maggie were funny. Or warranted. Or true.

Not that he’s aware of her being the girlfriend I’ve spoken of. I haven’t mentioned her to him at all since high school. Seems like he brought her up in passing one time a year or two after that, but I brushed him off; I don’t even recall what he said, just the deeply unhappy feeling I had about it.

It’s not just the thought of her being the butt of his joke—once again—that annoys me, though. It’s that whole attitude; dudes who talk the way he did in his last message sound somewhere between sexist and jealous. Maybe it’s because I have an awesome mom who was the better partner in her marriage, but I’ve never found it funny when people go to the old-ball-and-chain thing when a man mentions being considerate towards his significant other. Obviously, sometimes one partner can be too controlling, which is a problem, but that’s not me and Maggie, and Jayden has no reason to think it is. He just fired off his jokes right out the gate.

Since reading them, I haven’t known what to say back, but now I find I do.

ME: Nah, don’t get like that with it. She’s awesome and hardworking herself

After I’ve sent the message, I realize it’s not as sharp a response as what my insides wanted to send.

It’s something, though.

I have to get ready for work anyway, not get into a texting argument with somebody.

But once I’m dressed, I get an answer from him that actually surprises me in a not-bad way.

JAYDEN: Yeah, I’m just fucking around. I know I don’t even know her

It’s not an apology, but it’s in the same ballpark.

ME: All good

Hard as it is to shake my irritation from before, I do feel a bit better. Like I figured, he was joking—not in a way I understood, but at least he wasn’t being a straight-up asshole.

Jayden’s not an asshole, I remind myself. He’s just Jayden.

Still not going to tell him Maggie is my girl, though.

But…would he apologize for what happened if he knew she was back in my life? Has he been feeling remorse since high school like I have?

I stand in my living room and think about that.

Then I remember I don’t have a lot of time to think about it right now. I need more than a minute or two to ponder whether bringing the past up to him is a good idea when I’m not supposed to bring it up even with the girl those memories revolve around.

That girl drifts around in my head, and I realize I’m going to have to tell her about my drinks with Jayden at some point.

A deeply uncomfortable feeling stirs in my stomach.

Will she be upset? Or will she get it?

Talk about apologizing—I need to apologize to her. I need to tell her I’m sorry. Tell her again that I was sorry back then too.

The feeling in my stomach worsens.

I bring up my messages with her this time, but I just send her a heart. I’d rather think about how much I care about her than…the other stuff.

She gives the text a heart reaction and sends a heart emoji back to me.

My smile is small at first, but as the moments pass, it grows.

I let thoughts of her fully overtake thoughts of Jayden, and I resume preparing for my evening.