Page 47 of Falling Backwards (The Edge of Us #1)

While I’ve been stretched out here on the couch, there has been a lot for me to think about.

Jayden started texting me pissed-off things earlier; I haven’t answered any of them, but they still keep flitting into my thoughts.

My message to Maggie has gone unanswered, too, and it’s been an hour since I sent it. I have oscillated between feeling like she’s ignoring me and thinking she hasn’t seen what I said because she’s asleep.

Then there are the bits and pieces of that voicemail my dad left me. I especially keep remembering the end of it, when he said….

But mostly, my mind has been stuck on high school.

It’s been stuck on things I haven’t thought about in a long time, like how nobody in my life has kissed me quite as gently as Maggie did in my short time with her, even though years have passed since then. I remember how damn gentle her kisses were because they held me still in the moment. The world wasn’t spinning out of my control when she kissed me like that. There was just us in perfect peace—a boy who felt unlovable and a girl who’d found a way to love him anyway.

An unusual detail for me to have held on to, perhaps. Except really, it’s one of those kinds of things you don’t forget. One of those little moments that stir you for some reason, that teach you something new about what life holds and what you want out of it.

I had a lot of those moments with Maggie, actually.

The first time I made her laugh and felt like something in my chest had taken flight because I’d accomplished it by pure accident, not by trying to be funny about anything.

The sweet way she spoke to me when I was dismayed about miserably failing a test for a subject I’d fallen behind in.

The time she was breathless and anxious after almost being in a wreck on the way to school and I sat with her, holding her hands, until she was soothed—I remember we were both almost late to class because of it, which she didn’t like, and yet she only looked at me with gratitude.

Yeah, she taught me new things about joy and kindness and comfort and vividity and softness and…and, fuck, she also taught me new things about heartache and betrayal and regret and lividity and bitterness.

Falling for Maggie Moss the first time taught me a world of new things about myself.

Falling for her again now has done that, too, except that world has become a whole damn universe.

And I don’t want to ever stop falling for her.

I’ll take the bad with the good. I’ll take the challenge with the effortlessness. I’ll take the shadowed minutes with the sunlit days.

That’s the balance of life.

That’s the balance of us.

My phone vibrates in a new-message way and my pulse skips with hope that it’s Maggie this time—but only if she’s sent a good answer, not a….

No, it’s just Jayden again. More insults without any hint of remorse for the things he’s said and done. He hasn’t spent a single sentence trying to redeem himself, only trying to make me feel bad for ditching him like I—

What was that?

I look to my front door.

I wait to hear the little noise again.

I don’t catch it, even after many moments.

In my head, I play it back to try to discern what it might’ve been…other than what it sounded like: the quietest, smallest knock.

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 I know who 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 is not well—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, I had been 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 dad mostly came 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 mean when you ask why I chose to try to embarrass you after you completely and utterly embarrassed 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 I just happened to 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 after that.”

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 they never let 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!”

“And I know I broke your heart, and I’m sorrier than I’ll ever be able to express, but—”

“Even though I’m sorry, too, that I did that, you can’t act like I did it for no reason!”

Her voice is rising, too, her chest nearly heaving.

“Do you think I was wrong to feel like you deserved to be hurt right back in some way?”

“I would’ve rather had you beat the shit out of me, Maggie!”

I burst out in a yell, my mouth skipping over her apology like I haven’t wanted it for years.

“Of course I deserved to be hurt in return, but I wish you’d broken my nose or hit me with a baseball bat or even with a fucking car instead of sharing with hundreds of people that I had a crying breakdown about my dad leaving and replacing me with kids he liked better!”

At that, pain spikes her expression into lifted eyebrows, spikes down into her lungs for a serrated breath.

Her arms finally uncross and she steeples her hands over her mouth, which hides the judder that I’m sure is coming on with her watering eyes, though I still catch the sound that escapes her.

My mind goes back to her apology. This time, it touches me. I can see it. I can almost feel it.

“The lies,”

I say, my voice dwindling towards weakness.

“were stupid ones, but they were still hard to deal with. But as much shit as I caught because of them, and as upset and embarrassed as I was…it doesn’t touch what it felt like for you to include that. For you to air my one actual personal truth for everyone to make fun of. I completely broke down about my dad in front of you and you told everyone about it.”

Her shoulders lift and drop with her shaky breathing. Her eyes overflow with tears.

A minute ago, she stopped me from counting off any more of people’s reactions to the flyers, and I wonder if it’s because she knew what was next in line: the worst one. The tissues people also threw at me and wedged into my locker and snuck into my backpack and stuffed in the collars of my shirts in case I needed to cry about my dad some more. The jokes they made about it.

My eyes are starting to water too.

I say.

“You were the only person I was comfortable enough with to…. You were the only one. I was so overwhelmed and bottled up at the same time, felt fury and this other hollow, hollow thing I couldn’t describe, and I—I had no idea how to handle any of it. Not with my mom, not even with myself. But you were so soft and quiet and safe and I just knew…I couldn’t tell where the breakdown was coming from, but the moment I realized it was happening, I knew I didn’t have to try to stop it. I knew I didn’t have to feel stupid or embarrassed or weak because it was you. I didn’t understand yet that I felt heartbroken and lonely and inadequate—that that’s what the hollowness was—but I knew I could still weep about it because it was you. You would never….”

“God, Luke, I’m so sorry.”

The tearful words are muffled behind her hands, but they reach all the way into my chest.

It feels as if my heart withers and grows at the same time, like it can’t quite let go of the bitterness and also like it wants to jump out of me and into her chest where she can protect it for good.

I take a deep breath, swipe my knuckles over my eyes.

She lowers her hands into a clasp in front of her chest. Sincerity stands out in her pinched features; her eyes are as heavy as my heart feels.

“I hate that I did that,”

she says.

“I hate that I did all of it. Back then, I was so—you hurt me so much and I was humiliated and upset and I’d never felt anything so sharp before. It felt enormous even if it was just between you and Jayden. You said a few minutes ago that the way people reacted to the flyers didn’t ease up after a week or a month or even a year and I-I had hoped for that. It sounds so terrible, but that’s how I felt. I knew I wasn’t gonna get over the pain you caused me in a week or a month or a year. I knew it was gonna stay with me and I wanted you to understand what that was gonna be like.”

Even not being shouted, her confession floods the room and spills chill bumps all over me. Shock and anger prickle at me from hearing it. At hearing her say she wanted me to suffer for as long as she was going to.

It doesn’t last, though. It can’t. I understand too well.

She’s been sniffling and wiping at her cheeks with the sleeve of her sweater. Now she shakes her head, sending ripples through her hair.

“It wasn’t the right thing to do,”

she says.

“I…you know, I talk about why I did it, about what I thought was fair, but…it doesn’t change that I went too far with it. I went too far. I let my hurt get the best of me. Luke, there aren’t words for how much I wish I could take it all back. I’ve been wishing for a long time that I could take it back.”

The bitterness is what withers now. It goes from me like the anger and shock did.

My feet carry me two steps towards her. She takes a half-step at me, too, then recoils like she doesn’t dare to get her hopes up that she can really come close to me.

“And,”

she goes on.

“during our fight yesterday, you said I thought I had a right to be upset about the past and you didn’t, but I swear that wasn’t true. The—the way I must’ve looked when you said you don’t trust me with stuff about your dad…it wasn’t because I felt victimized or something. It wasn’t because I couldn’t believe you said that. It was because I deserved you feeling that way and it was torture. I couldn’t stand—I still can’t stand—that I left you feeling like you can’t trust me.”

She does take a step my way now.

“You can, Luke. You can trust me with how you feel about your dad and with anything else in this world that makes you feel heartbroken and lonely and inadequate. You can trust me with you. It may be hard to believe, but it’s the truth. You’re never gonna see me act like that again—the way I acted back then. I’m never gonna do anything so hurtful to you again. I regret it and I learned from it.”

Every single bit of that furthers the dismantling of the heaviness I’ve kept tucked away for so long. It began with her earnest apology and it hasn’t stopped, has only quickened.

I can’t believe how much lighter I feel with each passing second.

And I can’t go on not touching her.

As I close the space between us, she takes light breaths of soft surprise, of hope, her expression matching them—I grab for her hands at the same time that she grabs for mine. I swear to God, the contact nearly weakens my knees.

My voice comes out whispery.

“I know, beautiful. I promise I know all of that.”

“You do?”

she whispers back. Her eyes are all over my face. I can feel her thumbs brushing anxiously over my fingers.

I nod.

“I do. I’m sorry I snapped at you yesterday. Even though I was keeping stuff about him from you, it wasn’t exactly because I didn’t wanna tell you. I really just didn’t even wanna think about it. But…”

I look down at our hands and watch my thumbs start up their own anxious brushes over her skin.

“…I guess the, uh…the remnants of your payback were still….”

Maggie squeezes my hands.

I squeeze hers.

“Of course those were still there,”

she says.

“I understand.”

I move my eyes back up to hers. For a few moments, I soak up the honesty and sweetness there. Then I tell her what I now know to be true.

“It’s…okay now.”

So, so small is the upwards turn of the corners of her lips. A smile she can’t quite give in to because even though what I said—what I feel—is a relief, this is all still a lot. Remorse doesn’t just disappear.

And there’s more to be said.

There’s more I have to say. Remorse I have to face.

Fear and determination roll through me in equal measure at thinking that—even as I painfully remember how I felt years ago towards both her and myself.

I take a quick breath and finally try again after all this time.

“Maggie, I’m so fucking sorry about the bet.”

Her tiny smile falters away in a heartbeat.

She gulps, shakes her head.

“I know you’ve heard that before,”

I go on.

“but I always have been sorry. Please let me just tell you—let me explain what happened so—”

“No,”

she cuts in weakly.

“I don’t wanna talk about that.”

“I don’t either, but we should.”

“You made me feel stupid,”

she cracks out. The green of her eyes is starting to glisten anew.

“You made me feel so damn stupid, Luke. I didn’t wanna have my face rubbed in it then and I still don’t now.”

I’m blessed with a whisper of relief that she isn’t pulling away from me, but more than anything, I’m being taken over by old guilt.

I tell her.

“I was the stupid one about all of that, not you. It was never you. And I know it’s difficult to think about—I haven’t liked doing that either, or remembering what you did back to me—but we should talk about it. When we became a real couple, we were not smart to try to put all this behind us without talking about it. God, it’s almost like we were sixteen again, the way we weren’t handling things, and we’re not sixteen anymore. We can’t block any of this off anymore, and you know that because you told me the hard things about what you did, which means you have to know I need to tell you the hard things too. We can’t fully get past it if only one of us does their part.”

She inhales deeply, pins me with that watery stare…but she doesn’t refuse again. Her exhalation is slow, shaky.

The next breath in and out is quicker, heavier.

The next even more so.

“You broke my heart,”

rushes out of her.

“I felt something true for you and I believed you felt it for me. You made me believe that. You were kind to me and—and you complimented me and you acted like you cared about what I said and what I liked and what bothered me. You acted like you were growing close with me. You were the first boy I trusted with my heart, and my first boyfriend, and my first kiss. But what were you really doing the entire time? Just playing a game with me because you and your friend thought it would be funny—”

“He thought it would be funny,”

I correct her.

“I never did. Not for a second.”

My stomach swoops with my next correction.

“And none of the other stuff you said was part of my bet with him. I mean, I was supposed to date you, but the way I acted with you, how close we became, me telling you about my dad—all of that was me falling head over heels for you. That first kiss and every single one after it? Any time we touched? Us staying up all night talking to each other? It was all me. Everything you loved, I loved too. Even when I asked you to be my girlfriend, that was me, not the bet. I wasn’t thinking about the bet. I was thinking about what I wanted. Which was you.”

She frowns at me. I can’t tell if it’s because she’s doubtful or confused or cautiously hopeful.

I don’t so much as blink as I hold her gaze.

Her tone doesn’t help me discern how she feels when she asks.

“That…was all real?”

“Yes, it was.”

My resolve to be honest doesn’t stop my throat from trying to constrict around the plea.

“Let me tell you what happened?”

Maggie holds my gaze too. Until she does step back and pull away from me, releasing my hands, slipping hers out of mine.

Worry sends my heart into my stomach.

But she doesn’t try to walk past me to leave—she turns around and makes her way to the big chair. After she awkwardly sits with a wince, she straightens her hurt leg out at an angle and looks at me again. Although she doesn’t tell me to keep talking, it’s clear she’s going to allow me to.

I realize I’ve started shaking a little bit.

My hands feel clammy.

My pulse is uncomfortably fast.

But I remember thinking recently that there isn’t much I wouldn’t do to show Maggie how serious I am about her, remember thinking she’s worth everything, and I meant it. I know this is the ultimate test of that. It’s time to really prove I love her, and I can do that by doing my part to face what we’ve been avoiding, like I said. Even if it hurts. Only by doing that can we have a chance at getting past it.

If you don’t make any effort to change things in your life, they can’t get better.

And it’s true: I can’t really keep her, and I don’t deserve to, if I’m not willing to give her everything I have.

So I give it.