Page 3 of The Probability of Us

“Oh no,” Trent breathes. I assume he didn’t want me to hear that, but I do, just as I realize what song is playing and I freeze.

“What is it?” Ali asks him, but her face blanches just as tears spring to my eyes. I’m not sober anymore and “Cruel Summer” by Taylor Swift steals all the breath from my chest. I can’t ignore it anymore. I can’t push him out of my head.

“Summer,” I whisper, and it breaks the dam holding back my emotions. “I washisSummer.”

I’m too drunk to care that I’ve sucked all the fun out of the air.

I can’t breathe, and something has to fill my lungs.

“Why’d he leave me?” My lips tremble as tears start to roll down my cheeks. “Why didn’t he ask me to go with him?”

Ali sighs sympathetically at me, but mumbles to Trent, “It’s been a while since she’s been drunk enough to bring him up. I thought we might’ve been past it.”

They’re all looking at me like those were rhetorical questions, but I want to know the answers. Not knowing is what’s holding me back from moving on, because it still doesn’t make sense to me, six years later.

“I thought he was going to propose,” I cry, all the pain in my chest exploding with the words. It’s been tearing me apart, over and over, since that day—like a volcano that starts spewing lava again just when you think it might be dormant. “But instead, he left. Who does that?”

“Oh, honey.” Sterling puts his arm around me and I lean into him. I feel more like a child right now than someone about to turn thirty, but I let him comfort me until my tears slow.

“I’m a catch, right?” I look up at his deep-brown skin and bleached, buzzed hair, eyes-wide, desperate. “You’d marry me, wouldn’t you, Sterling?”

My body shakes with his when he chuckles, and he reaches out to grab my hand and raise it to his lips. “If Will hadn’t asked me first, I’d be all yours.”

He winks and I smile into his chest as my eyes flash up to Will, who’s laughing warmly at the interaction. Sterling couldn’t have found a better partner, or addition to our group.

“Thank you,” I murmur.

Now that we’re quiet, I can hear Ali and Trent’s conversation as they talk amongst themselves.

“Maybe we should set her up with your one friend from college, babe,” Ali says to Trent.

“You really want to set her up with someone when she still cries like he left yesterday?” he replies. “It’s been, what, six years? I don’t know if she’s ever going to get over it at this point.”

“She only cries over him when she’s drunk,” Ali says, and it’s technically true. But just because I’ve stopped crying over it, doesn’t mean I don’t still think about it, about him. I’ve become desensitized to the pain his memory causes, but that doesn’t mean the pain isn’t there.

Maybe Trent’s right, maybe I’ll never get over it.

I don’t want to hear what they’re going to say next, so I cut in. “I can hear you, you know.”

Ali gives me a sad, pitying smile. “Usually, when you get like this, you don’t remember it the next day.”

Again, not true. IwishI could forget, but I just pretend I don’t remember because it’s easier than having to talk about it with them sober and have them realize just how in love I still am with the guy that shattered my heart to pieces.

“Well, if that’s the case, has he posted anything new on social media?” I ask. Ali doesn’t like to tell me about it, but I know she keeps tabs on him for me. I refuse to download those apps just to stalk my ex, even though I almost have a thousand times.

She sighs, and because she thinks I won’t remember, she tells me, “He mentioned something about flying this weekend, but no mention of where he’s going.”

The knot in my stomach loosens fractionally—it wasn’t about another girl.

That’s the update I’m dreading hearing.

As the song fades out, I force myself to stop talking about him and pretend my drunken brain has focused on a new topic, but really, it’s just replaying every memory we have in this place. There’s one that’s playing more frequently than the rest and it’s slowly fracturing every other thought I’m having. A few feet away from where we’re sitting is where he kissed me for the first time and I don’t think I’ll forget that night for as long as I live.

After closing the bar down, we say goodbye to Trent and Ali who head to their new apartment on the West side of town, and Sterling and Will drop me off at my building on their way home—we both live in the Northern boroughs.

“Call us if you need anything,” Sterling says before I walk into the small lobby. I smile gratefully at them and wave before heading straight to the elevator. Once I get in my room, I slip into one of the T-shirts in my middle drawer and pray that darkness is the only thing that finds me in my sleep.

But he’s waiting for me, with his squinty-eyes and sunshine smile, just as he always is.

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