Page 16 of Maybe in Another Life

The tension doesn’t dissipate.

“I know,” he says. “But did we have a good reason?”

I look at him and smile. “Did we have a goodreason?” I say, repeating his question. “I don’t know. Teenagers don’t really have to have good reasons.”

He laughs and starts walking back in the direction we came from. I walk with him.

“You broke my heart,” he says, smiling at me. “You know that, right?”

“Excuse me? Oh, no, no, no,” I say. “I was the heartbroken one. I was the one who got dumped when her boyfriend went to college.”

He shakes his head at me, smiling despite himself. “What a load of crap,” he says. “Youbroke up withme.”

I smile and shake my head at him. “I think we’re dealing in revisionist history here,” I tell him. “Iwanted to stay together.”

“Ridiculous!” he says. His hands are buried deep in his pockets, his shoulders hunched forward. He is walking slowly. “Absolutely ridiculous. A woman breaks your heart, comes back to town a decade later, and pins it on you.”

“OK, OK,” I say. “We can agree to disagree.”

He looks at me and shakes his head. “Nope!” he says, laughing. “I don’t accept.”

“Oh, you’re being silly,” I say.

“I am not,” he says. “I have proof.”

“Proof?”

“Cold, hard evidence.”

I stop in place and cross my arms. “This should be good. What’s your proof?”

He stops with me, comes closer toward me. “Exhibit A: Chris Rodriguez.” My senior-year boyfriend.

“Oh, please,” I say. “What does Chris Rodriguez prove?”

“You moved on first. I came home from Berkeley for Christmas ready to knock on your door and sweep you off your feet,” he says. “And the minute I get into town, I hear you’re dating Chris Rodriguez.”

I laugh and roll my eyes just a little bit. “Chris didn’t mean anything. I wasn’t even with him by the time you came home from school for the summer. I thought, you know, maybe you’d come home for those three months and...”

He moves his eyebrows up and down at me, the visual version ofhubba hubba.

I laugh, slightly embarrassed. “Well, it didn’t matter anyway, right? Because you were with Alicia by then.”

“Only because I thought you were with Chris,” he says. “That’s the only reason I dated her.”

“That’s terrible!” I say.

“Well, I didn’t know that at the time!” he says. “I thought I loved her. You know, I was nineteen years old at that point. I had the self-awareness of a doorknob.”

“So maybe you did love her,” I say. “Maybe it was you who moved on from me.”

He shakes his head. “Nah,” he says. “She broke up with me when we got back to school that year. Said she needed someone who could tell her she was the only one.”

“And you couldn’t do that?”

He looks at me pointedly. “Nope.”

It’s quiet again for a moment. Neither of us having much to say or, maybe more accurately, neither of us knowingwhatto say.

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