Our Year of Maybe

by Rachel Lynn Solomon

If Peter and I were together, we’d hold hands on this walk. I’d trace the knobs of his knuckles, lean in close, bury my face where his neck meets his shoulder. He’d press me up against a tree, kiss me until we both were dizzy with desire.

When I found the word “bisexuality,” it fit.

Now that he’s in school with me, he’ll know what I really am when he’s not around: a burnt-out light of a person.

I message Peter good night when what I really want to say is I’m in love with you and I want you and Is there any chance you want me the same way?

“Just don’t tell me you’re a Coldplay superfan. We’d have to end this friendship right now.”

The game goes into overtime, and we end up winning. I am sure it was very tense for everyone who actually cared about the game.

Kissing Sophie is a strange mix of familiar and foreign, familiar because this is Sophie and foreign because this is Sophie.

I try to imagine Peter with someone else, a girl with the patience to grow her hair long, one who has no freckles and no scars. They’re in college in a tiny dorm room bed, and he’s on top of her, and he’s whispering to her things he should have whispered to me. Even in my imagination, it’s brutal.

My heart twinges. Their declaration of love is so clear, so confident.

More silence—she’s processing. Her brows furrow and then unfurrow. “You like girls and guys. Is it . . . ? Is it equal? Is that a dumb question?” “No. Not dumb. I doubt it’s an exact percentage.”

there’s something about big groups like this that makes me feel even more alone.

A first kiss in a bookstore has got to be the best kind of first kiss.

I have no words left. All the books in the store have stolen them from me.

If this is life, I’ve missed out on so damn much. I’ve missed that being kissed beneath the earlobe is the most fantastic feeling in the world. I’ve missed that someone tugging you close, pressing their body against yours, turns your stomach inside out. It’s like the world is saying, Welcome to your new life, Peter. We have a surprise for you. And suddenly I love surprises.

“That’s Mark. I always thought it would be funny to have a pet with, like, a super-basic white-guy name.”

I don’t want to break this girl. And I don’t want this girl to break me.

Our lives have revolved around Peter always. He is the earth, and I am the moon. There was never enough I could do to get him to love me the way I wanted, to see me as more than just a moon. I have never been enough, and he has always been too much.

No one will know me in San Francisco.

And then I let go of him first, this boy who never belonged to me. I let go first.