Page 14 of The Beautiful Collision
“His rent is less than half that place,total, and you’d be paying half,” Sophie interrupts with surgical precision. “And it’s not like you’re not a party fiend.”
Her sarcasm hits like cold water, because she’s not wrong.
“Maya.” Sophie’s hand finds my arm, warm through the Canada Goose I’ll probably have to sell next week. “I know this isn’t what you planned?—“
“Planned?” I laugh, but it comes out wrong. “Sophie, I planned to work for a charity while my trust fund kept me afloat…”
“But now you need somewhere to live,” she continues gently. “And Maine… well… underneath all the?—“
“Testosterone?” I stop again and turn to face her.
“I was going to say personality.” She squeezes my arm, and I hate how it helps. “He’s Mike’s friend. He won’t be weird about it. And it’s just temporary, right?”
Sure.
Like Eleanor Hayes is going to call up tomorrow with a personality transplant and a working heart. Like my old man will suddenly back down from a decision he’s been wanting to makefor years, and when he’s never backed down on anything in his whole life.
The fight drains out all at once, leaving me deflated. My shoulders slump. My spine curves into a question mark. For the first time since that awful phone call, I feel the full weight of this disaster. Because, deep down, even though I’ve been cut off, I thought I could figure it out.
“Fine,” I hear myself say, the word scraping out like broken glass. “Set up a meeting.”
Sophie tries to hide her relief, but I catch it in the loosening of her shoulders, and the way her exhale fogs between us. She thinks she’s saving me. Sweet, eternally optimistic Sophie, who still believes in happy endings—although, to be fair, she got hers…
“It’ll be okay,” she says, and for one second, I almost let myself believe her. “You’ll see. It won’t be that bad. Maine’s actually really?—“
“If you say ‘sweet underneath it all,’ I’m pushing you into traffic.” I grin, trying to put a brave face on the fact that I want to cry.
“I was going to say ‘surprisingly clean.’”
“Liar.” I wrap my arm around her. “Thanks for coming with me today.”
She smiles in response, already pulling out her phone to text Mike. “But seriously, his place is nice. And he’s barely there between hockey and?—“
“And his rotating cast of hookups?”
“That’s… probably not inaccurate.”
She goes back to texting, setting up the meeting that will either solve my problems or finish what’s left of my dignity. Maybe both. The late afternoon sun breaks through the February clouds, painting everything in deceptively warm gold that makes the garbage look almost romantic.
And then, entirely unwelcome, another mental image arrives like an uninvited party guest who won’t leave: Maine’s hands. Big. Probably calloused from hockey. The kind of hands that could make you forget your name. The kind that could?—
Fuck.
The thoughts arrive from some deep, oxygen-deprived part of my brain that’s clearly been compromised by stress, and it takes an almighty effort to banish them back to there. It’s like some lizard-brain recognition that if I have to have a roommate, at least this one comes with a view?
“Maya? You okay?” Sophie’s looking at me like I might bolt into traffic.
“Fine,” I lie, shoving every inappropriate thought about broad shoulders and bright smiles into the same mental box where I keep my father’s disappointed voicemails. Hell, the box is getting so crowded, I might need a storage unit. “Just processing my descent into actual hell.”
“It’s not hell. It’s Jersey.”
My laugh doesn’t hide the fact I’m completely, utterly, catastrophically fucked.
And not in the fun way.
five
MAINE
