Maybe Someday (Maybe, #1)

by Colleen Hoover

My entire body is battling itself. My left brain is telling me this is somehow wrong, my right brain is wanting to hear her sing again, my stomach is nowhere to be found, and my heart is punching itself in the face with one arm and hugging itself with the other.

How can two good people who both have such good intentions end up with feelings, derived from all the goodness, that are so incredibly bad?

I know that the way I think about her and feel about her is wrong, but I struggle so much with how right it feels when I’m with her.

Relief is exactly what I find the second our lips meet. It’s as if every pent-up, denied feeling I’ve held toward her is suddenly uncaged, and I’m able to breathe for the first time since I met her.

The closer he moved and the longer we stared at each other, the more my body was consumed by need. It wasn’t a basic need, like a need for water when I’m thirsty or a need for food when I’m hungry. It was an insatiable need for relief. Relief from the want and desire that had been pent up for so long. I never realized how powerful desire could be. It consumes every part of you, enhancing your senses by a million. When you’re in the moment, it enhances your sense of sight, and all you can do is focus on the person in front of you.

Desire is easy to fight. Especially when the only weapon desire possesses is attraction. It’s not so easy when you’re trying to win a war against the heart.

two simple movements that completely shatter entire sections of my heart.

His reaction to my situation with Hunter borders on jealousy, and I hate that this makes me feel good.

Why do things between the two of us have to be so complicated? I wish we could keep things simple, but I have no idea how to do that.

I roll onto my back and release all my pent-up breaths. I’m flustered and confused and angry. I don’t like the situation we’ve put ourselves in, and I know for a fact that even though we haven’t acted on it again, nothing about this is innocent.

feelings are the one thing in our lives that we have absolutely no control over.

The way he’s holding me gives me a glimpse of what things could be like between us.

I feel everything she feels. I understand things she never even has to say. I know that what she needs is exactly what I could give her, and what she’s wishing she could give me is something I never even knew I needed.

She understands me. She respects me. She astounds me. She predicts me. She’s never once, since the second I met her, made me feel as if my inability to hear is even an inability at all.

He’ll never be mine. As much as that hurts to accept, I’m so sick of this constant, ongoing battle with my heart. I can’t take this anymore. I don’t deserve this kind of self-torture.

There isn’t a doubt in my mind that we could be perfect for each other’s life, Sydney. It’s our lives that aren’t perfect for us.

I read her last message, and the finality of our imminent good-bye hits me full-force. I feel it in every single part of me, and I’m shocked at the reaction I’m having to it.

We’re just two completely confused souls, scared of a much unwanted yet crucial good-bye.

I don’t want him to hurt like I’m hurting. I don’t want him to miss me like I’ll miss him. I don’t want him to be falling for me like I’ve been falling for him.

I’m crying tears over the death of something that never even had the chance to live. The death of us.

I want to fall to my knees, right next to our shattered hearts, and beg him to choose me.

it doesn’t excuse the fact that the guy she’s in love with has openly admitted his feelings for someone else. Nothing can excuse that, and I feel like complete shit for being a part of it.

God, even hearing his name hurts.

Sound triggers. They happen a lot, but mostly when I hear certain songs. Especially songs Hunter and I both loved. If I listen to a song during a particularly depressing period, then hear it later on down the road, it brings back all the old feelings associated with that song. There are songs I used to love that now I absolutely refuse to listen to. They trigger memories and feelings I don’t want to experience again.

Everything about the way he makes me feel is absolutely terrifying. The way my heart wants to be held by him is terrifying. The way my knees seem to forget how to hold me up is terrifying. The way my mouth wants to be claimed by his is terrifying.

We try so hard to hide everything we’re really feeling from those who probably need to know our true feelings the most. People try to bottle up their emotions, as if it’s somehow wrong to have natural reactions to life.

My arms want to be around him, my face wants to be pressed against his chest, my back wants to be cradled by him—yet

I’m leaning all my weight into him, because I’ve never been this weak. I can’t think, I can’t move, I can’t breathe. I just… need.

The guilt, the worries, the concern over what happens after this kiss ends. It all melts away the second his mouth claims mine. He gently coaxes my lips apart with his tongue, and all the chaos running through my heart and head is eliminated when I feel his warmth inside my mouth.

This is exactly what I’ve wanted from him. I’ve wanted him to show up and tell me how much he’s missed me. I’ve needed to know that he cares about me, that he wants me. I’ve needed to feel his mouth on mine again so I could know that the way his first kiss made me feel wasn’t just in my head this whole time.

The more I open up to him, the more I need him. The more I admit to myself that I need him, the more it hurts to know that I still don’t exactly have him.

but it’s not his fault. It’s never his fault. It’s no one’s fault. It’s both our faults.

then pulls me against his chest. The comfort that surrounds me makes this even harder. I want this all the time. I want him all the time. I want these tiny snippets of perfection between us to be our constant reality, but that can’t happen right now.

Questions like this keep me from believing he could ever be happy with the outcome of his situation, because he lost her in the end. I don’t want to be someone’s second choice.

Me: If she texted you right now and said she made the wrong choice, would you go? Would you walk out my front door without thinking twice?

Seeing him struggle with who he really wants is more pain than I’m willing to endure. I deserve more than he can give me right now, and his conflict is screwing with my heart. Screwing with my head. Everything with him is just too much.

I relax against his chest, finding the rhythm of his heartbeat. Beat, beat, pause. Beat, beat, pause. Beat, beat, pause. It’s absolutely beautiful. The way it sounds is beautiful. The way it cares is beautiful. The way it loves is beautiful. He presses his lips to the top of my head. I close my eyes… and I cry.

I’ve chosen Maggie over her time and time again, and it’s my own fault that I’ve put doubt into Sydney’s head.

“It’s you,” he says aloud. “My heart… wants you.”

As much as I’m convinced he would do everything he could to protect my heart, I’m still too scared to hand it over. I don’t want to give it to him until I know it’s the only heart he’s holding.

I’ve learned that the heart can’t be told when and who and how it should love. The heart does whatever the hell it wants to do.

He looks the same as he did the last time I saw him, just… incredible. I guess he looked incredible back then, too. I just didn’t feel right allowing myself to admit it when I knew he wasn’t mine.

I’m shaking my head, unable to get it through my mind that this girl is willingly mine and she’s perfect and beautiful and good and, holy shit, I love her so much.

What I never expected was for her to spend those months learning how to communicate with me in a way my own parents didn’t even care enough to learn.