𝐦𝐢𝐬𝐭𝐚𝐤𝐞𝐬 𝐥𝐢𝐤𝐞 𝐭𝐡𝐢𝐬 | 𝐠𝐮𝐲 𝐠𝐞𝐫𝐦𝐚𝐢𝐧𝐞

¹⁶ | The miracle

ɢᴜʏ ɢᴇʀᴍᴀɪɴᴇ

𝐌𝐀𝐘𝐁𝐄 𝐈𝐅 𝐖𝐄 said these things the first time around--when we first should have--things would have been different. Maybe we could have been happier for longer. Maybe we could have been together all this time. But maybe, just maybe, the world would have been against us then. Maybe it would have not worked out then, the way it will now. Time is on our side, this time. No more thinking about the 'maybes' of it all. This is real and this is now.

"So we'll start from the beginning?" I ask, my fingers playing softly with the rug beneath me.

I'm instantly taken back to when we were young, me and Mae, sitting on her bedroom floor. It's funny how everything works out (if you take out all the depressing parts of it). We are not moving backward, but we are moving toward the way we used to be. Going back is not moving backward, I know now, if it is what's right.

"The beginning," she agrees, just a few feet away from me. "And no fighting."

I grin at the irony and the rewarding sweetness of this whole thing. "Never."

"I loved you a lot when we were little. In every way possible, I think. You were my best friend. You were everything. You were the only thing I knew in my life completely," Maeve says. "I just don't think I knew any of that stuff until you were gone. I wish I did, though. I wish I could have-"

"Hey," I quietly stop her, moving closer and taking her hands into mine. "We talked about this. We're done with the 'I wishes'. We're here. I knew it then and I know it now. It's okay."

Mae smiles weakly. She nods, her eyes already starting to gloss over, and continues. "When you kissed me that first time--when we were nine--I didn't say anything because I didn't know what to say, not because it was bad or I didn't want to. I was just scared that things would be different between us, even though you told me that they wouldn't. I didn't want to lose what we had. I felt like by kissing you then, I was risking everything I knew. I was risking you. I realize now that things only became risky when I didn't say anything--when I didn't tell you what I was thinking."

"I should have waited for you to be ready. I should have just listened. But I was stupid and embarrassed. In that moment, when you didn't say anything, I thought that you didn't love me anymore--or maybe that you never had. I just got so angry. It was dumb."

"We were dumb and just too young to know any better."

"But I missed you every day, those first two years. I thought about you and what I would say if I biked to your house or called you," I say. "I didn't though, because every time I got close, I remembered how it felt to think about you not wanting me to come back. I thought about you and I thought that you didn't care."

"I did care," Mae tells me. "I thought about you, too, all the time. But I was scared to see you. And when I found out about Connie...it was just done for me, I think. I was too stubborn and hurt to do anything."

I close my eyes, letting the stupidity of every single thing I did under the influence of that raging heartbreak slap me across the face. "It was petty. I thought that being with her would make you jealous or at least just fill the place in my life where you used to be. I don't think it ever did, though."

She shrugs, a corner of her mouth pulling her lips into a small smile. "It worked. I was jealous."

"She didn't fill your place, is what I meant," I add. "But I can't lie to you, Mae. I'm not going to. I did like her. I liked her because, even if she wasn't you, she was someone. She took up the space where a void was. She made me feel safe and like everything would be okay even when I was a complete wreck."