Page 86 of The Beautiful Collision
And, because the universe is an asshole, the front door opens, letting in a gust of cold air that cuts through the bar’s stuffy warmth. I don’t look up. I haven’t looked up for the last five people who’ve walked in. But something in the atmosphere shifts, a charge in the air that makes my skin prickle with awareness.
I know it’s her before I even raise my eyes.
She’s here.
But when Idolook up, I see it’s not the Maya I’ve been seeing in my apartment for the past two months. This is the Maya from before—the untouchable party queen, the wild stallion everyone whispers about—with her armor on, all sharp edges and brilliant smiles that don’t reach her eyes.
She’s with some guy I don’t recognize, tall and generic in that way that makes him forgettable even while you’re looking at him. She’s leaning into him, laughing at something he’s saying, her hand on his arm in that casual-but-not way that’s designed to stake a claim.
The performance is flawless.
Except I know her now. I know what she looks like when the mask comes off.
And underneath all that bright confidence, I can see the cracks. Her laugh is too loud, pitched just a little too high. There are shadows under her eyes that her concealer can’t quite hide, a tightness around her mouth that speaks of exhaustion held barely at bay.
She looks tired. Wound tight as a spring. Fragile.
And it’s my fault.
But she’s still so fucking beautiful it hurts to look at her.
I try to shrink into my seat, to become invisible the way I used to as a kid when my parents were arguing about medical bills. If I can just stay small enough, quiet enough, maybe she won’t see me, and maybe I can spare us both this collision.
But the universe has other plans.
“Hey, Hamilton!”
Rook’s voice booms across the bar like a foghorn. His face flushed with bad booze and good cheer, completely oblivious to the grenade he’s about to throw into the room. He pushes himself up from his stool at the bar, that wide, stupid grin spreading across his face like he’s about to do everyone a favor.
No, no, no?—
“There she is!” He cups his hands around his mouth like he’s calling plays from the goal. “Are you going to win the bet or what? Did she say the magic words yet?”
The world stops.
I mean that literally.
Everything just… stops.
The music might still be playing, people might still be talking at other tables, but the entire bar goes silent in my perception, every head turning in slow-motion—first to Rook, drunk and grinning and utterly unaware of what he’s just done, then to our table where I sit frozen, and finally, inevitably, to Maya.
I watch it happen in real-time.
First, confusion. Her perfectly painted lips part slightly, that bright smile that I’d fallen in love with freezing in place like someone hit pause on a video of her. Her eyes scan the room, finding Rook, then following his gesture to our table, to me.
Then comprehension. I see the exact moment the words land—bet,win,magic words. Her eyes widen, the color draining from her face so fast I’m afraid she might faint. The hand on Generic Guy’s arm goes slack, falling to her side like a dead thing.
But it’s the betrayal that kills me.
Because in that endless, horrible moment when our eyes meet across the bar, I watch her rewrite our entire history. Every tender moment, every vulnerable confession, every time I held her while she cried or laughed or came apart in my arms—I watch it all transform in her mind.
The blanket I draped over her.
The lasagna she heated for me.
The night on the kitchen floor when she crawled into my arms.
The way our bodies had conversations our mouths couldn’t manage.
