What If (If Only.... #2)(68)

“I was with Miles.” Miles stands only a foot or so behind me, leaning on the counter, and I can feel the tension seeping off his skin. He’ll get over his anger at what I’m doing. Griffin will, too. We all will. That’s what I keep telling myself. Eventually, I’ll believe it.

“I know,” Griffin says, his voice low. His body still trembles, and it takes everything in me not to go to him, to throw my arms around him.

“Griffin, you’re shaking. Let me get you some coffee or tea. I think I have your Minnesota sweatshirt in the back.”

“I don’t want a sweatshirt, Maggie.” Anger tinges his voice now. Frustration. “I want to know why. Why let it go on this long? Why come to Chicago? Why let me believe…”

“Griffin, I don’t know what you’re asking. I don’t…”

“You knew,” he says. “You knew what tonight meant to me—to us. I may be a lot of things, but I’m not enough of an * to promise you something I have no intention of actually delivering.”

I squeeze my eyes shut. Because knowing this has to end, that neither of us are ready for the other, I can’t bear him thinking the last few weeks meant nothing.

“I should have called,” I say, hating the taste of the lie.

His hands rake through his hair, gripping the waves tight before dropping to his sides. It’s then I notice his sandy waves are darker than normal. They’re damp, as is his shirt. When I look past him, out the window, I note the flurries that must have started after Miles and I got inside.

“So this wasn’t your way of teaching me some sort of lesson?” he asks. “Because obviously I failed, right? I mean, look at me. I’m exactly where I was a month ago. Hell, I’m exactly where I was two years ago, falling for the wrong person, trusting when I should have known better. Did you lie about him, too? Because things look pretty cozy. He does get to take you home, right?”

Miles steps forward. “Okay, that’s enough, man.” He stands next to me now, poised to move between us. “You’re drunk, and you’re going to say something you regret. I think you both need to sleep off the events of the evening and talk when you’re thinking clearly.” Miles turns his eyes to me. “Before either of you do or say something you can’t take back.”

I hook my arm through Miles’s, letting my hand rest on his elbow. Griffin flinches at the sight, and I pray for the floor to swallow me up so I don’t have to look in his eyes anymore and see what I’ve done to him, what I’m still doing, all in the name of pushing him away where he’ll be happier…eventually.

“There’s nothing to sleep on,” I say, angling to face Miles, but my eyes still on Griffin. “A clean break, right?” I shrug, a failed attempt at making this casual when it’s anything but. “We walk away with no hard feelings. That was the deal.”

“I thought we changed the rules.” Underneath the anger, his voice pleads.

“I changed them back,” I say, moving closer to Miles, squeezing his arm in mine.

“Maggie,” Miles starts. “Don’t do this.”

“It’s already done,” I say, not fighting the tears.

“Are we ready for our slumber party?” Paige strides out of the bathroom but grinds to a halt when she sees the three of us in front of the door. “I’m gonna take a stab at answering my own question and say no.”

Miles nods to Paige and motions for her to join us. “Take her home,” he says, unlatching my arm from his. “I’ll be there soon.”

Paige lays a hand on my shoulder and asks, “Are you sure?” I nod, letting her lead me past Griffin to the door. But I can’t keep from meeting his eyes one more time.

“I’m sorry,” I say. “I really am sorry. But it’s better like this.”

Better for him, I tell myself. It would only be selfish to keep this going.

Then I let Paige push through the door and take me to her car. She doesn’t interrupt my quiet sobs as we drive through the empty streets back toward campus. She simply lets me cry, her free hand holding mine, no sound but my intermittent sniffles and vents filling the car with what must be heat. But I never warm up, my insides holding on to their chill.

When we get back to my apartment, I am hollow—no tears, no warmth. Paige piles blankets on top of me on the couch, then runs to her place for her giant pillows, the ones that will serve as bed cushions for her and Miles tonight.

But something propels me to move with zombie-like slowness to my bedroom. I stand at the foot of the bed, scanning the wall that spells out exactly who I am—reminding me of who I’ll never be. Photographs and captions mock where they should comfort. I spin to face my bed, see the photo of Griffin lying in his on my nightstand—the perfect night and the photo I took just for me. Not to remember his name or a drink order. The picture is simply him.

I take a few hesitant steps to my desk where my Polaroid sits, pick it up and look through the eye piece, first at the photo of Griffin, next at my bulletin-board wall. Then I slam the camera down on the desk’s faux-wood surface. Again. And again. I’m not sure what will give first, the desk or the camera, and when glass cracks and chips and spills out from where the lens should be, I know the desk has won.

Paige runs back in, a response, I’m sure, to the sickening crunch of plastic parts succumbing to my last-ditch effort at control. My back is to her, but I feel her eyes on me, know she stands in silence in the frame of my bedroom door, waiting for me to speak. I crumple into a heap on the foot of my bed, my eyes stinging from the need to cry, but the tears will no longer come.